{"id":5775,"date":"2013-02-20T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T16:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=5775"},"modified":"2013-02-19T22:49:56","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T02:49:56","slug":"the-grading-game-or-a-think-tank-report-review-addendum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=5775","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Grading Game,&#8221; or a think tank report review addendum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The think tank report review by Ken Libby and me is <a href=\"http:\/\/nepc.colorado.edu\/thinktank\/review-Students-First-Grades\">up on the National Education Policy Center website<\/a> today. This is a review of the StudentsFirst <em>State Policy Report Card<\/em> from January, and there isn&#8217;t too much more to say than what is in it, but for what it&#8217;s worth:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 13px;\">Ken (a doctoral student at the University of Colorado-Boulder) is a joy to write with &#8212; if you have the chance to work with him, do so. Usually the TTR reviews appear a little faster after the initial report; this has been about six weeks in the works. Blame me, not Ken, for the delay.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li>Supplementary documents are available online for the <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheet\/ccc?key=0Aqyzet2PR3hodFI4eXJKeDRvQTJWU1gwR0Rvck9ZU3c&amp;usp=sharing\">state-by-state &#8220;grade&#8221; variations<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/document\/d\/1z4ouBYC3OFkoqF_1tpdS_PmZPaIayvQLcwodfjpXOgs\/edit?usp=sharing\">citations in the section of the report<\/a> talking about StudentsFirst&#8217;s policy preferences.<\/li>\n<li>We used a generous definition of research (and research review) when looking at the citations in the section on SF&#8217;s policy preferences. As they say in the (American) car ads, your mileage may vary.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I am skeptical of the value of &#8220;grading the states&#8221; exercises. Yes, I understand the value of the news hook, to give reporters across the country a local angle even when the report is from a national organization. But once you have dueling &#8220;grading the states&#8221; press releases in the same month, there is a Dali-like quality to the third press release. &#8220;What&#8217;s the grade this time, and why should our readers care?&#8221; is the logical question any editor should ask at that point.<\/p>\n<p>Not directly connected with Ken&#8217;s and my review: someone needs to conduct a meta-analysis of voucher evaluations, with separate &#8220;what happened to students?&#8221; and &#8220;is there a competitive effect?&#8221; analyses. The piece cited by StudentsFirst as a review is not a meta-analysis, and I could not find one in searching for it. When a USF doctoral student took her best shot at one a few semesters ago, neither she nor I could find a published meta-analysis then, so it is not just my inadequate search skills this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The think tank report review by Ken Libby and me is up on the National Education Policy Center website today. This is a review of the StudentsFirst State Policy Report Card from January, and there isn&#8217;t too much more to say than what is in it, but for what it&#8217;s worth: Ken (a doctoral student [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountability-frankenstein","category-education-policy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-1v9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5775"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5778,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5775\/revisions\/5778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}