{"id":6965,"date":"2014-02-17T08:55:07","date_gmt":"2014-02-17T12:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=6965"},"modified":"2014-02-20T19:24:18","modified_gmt":"2014-02-20T23:24:18","slug":"education-policy-noise-index","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=6965","title":{"rendered":"Education Policy Noise Index"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">Well, I feel as if Nicholas Kristof&#8217;s column yesterday on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/02\/16\/opinion\/sunday\/kristof-professors-we-need-you.html\">the need for academics as public intellectuals<\/a> was pointed right at me, since I have fallen way behind in blogging thus far this year. For the record, Kristof is wrong on the trends but correct on the general need.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">So, for this morning, a small something based on UC Riverside physicist\u00a0John Baez\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/math.ucr.edu\/home\/baez\/crackpot.html\">Crackpot Index<\/a>: a way to measure how much you may be contributing to education policy noise without making substantive contributions. The higher the number, the more you contribute to noise.\u00a0Note: Asterisks denote carryovers from Baez\u2019s Crackpot Index<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A -5 point starting <em>credit<\/em>.* (I.e., you get a few points&#8217; leeway.)<\/li>\n<li>A -1 point <em>credit<\/em> for every full year as a classroom teacher. (I.e., more leeway with teaching experience.)<\/li>\n<li>A -1 point <em>credit<\/em> for every full year that a child of yours attended school\u2026 and you were the parent getting her\/him\/them up, fed, dressed, and out the door. (I.e., more leeway with active parenting.)<\/li>\n<li>1 point for every undocumented factual claim that is widely agreed to be false by those with varying policy preferences.<\/li>\n<li>1 point for claiming that a single empirical study is definitive proof of anything.<\/li>\n<li>2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous.*<\/li>\n<li>3 points for every statement that is logically inconsistent.*<\/li>\n<li>5 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful correction.*<\/li>\n<li>5 points for each ad-hominem slur against someone who disagrees with you on policy.<\/li>\n<li>5 points for each uncritical repetition of someone else\u2019s false statement or ad-hominem slur.<\/li>\n<li>5 points for rationalizing one&#8217;s ad-hominem slur, someone else&#8217;s ad-hominem slur, or a repetition of someone else&#8217;s ad-hominem slur by reference to free speech, the need to balance opponents&#8217; views, or &#8220;starting a conversation.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>5 points for each claim that the anecdotal experience of a single school or school district represents universal experience or otherwise is proof of a policy claim.<\/li>\n<li>5 points for each claim that a single figure or chart is demonstrable proof of a policy claim. (10 more for referring to such a figure\/chart as an \u201cinfographic\u201d)<\/li>\n<li>5 points for each reference to an unreviewed paper that contradicts the results of a widely accepted empirical study published in a refereed journal.<\/li>\n<li>5 points for each conclusory use of \u201cdisruption,\u201d \u201cparadigm shift,\u201d \u201cthe new normal,\u201d or any term that has appeared on the Lake Superior State University\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lssu.edu\/banished\/\">List of Words to be Banished from the Queen&#8217;s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>10 points for each mention of \u201cpersonalization\u201d when the referent is the use of a computer algorithm.<\/li>\n<li>10 points for any (other) reinterpretation of an existing word to mean the opposite of its recognized, ordinary denotation.<\/li>\n<li>10 points for each new term you invent and use without properly defining it.*<\/li>\n<li>10 points for each reference to a policy opponent as a \u201cspecial interest group\u201d or member thereof (10 more for describing one or more allies as pure-hearted, hard-working, etc., in the same piece).<\/li>\n<li>10 points for each mention of \u201cdefenders of the status quo\u201d to refer to opponents of any current policy\/practice.<\/li>\n<li>10 points for each mention of \u201ccorporate reformer\u201d to refer to policy opponents who are not in fact employees of or direct recipients of support from a for-profit corporation.<\/li>\n<li>10 points for each reference to current practices as \u201cindustrial-era education\u201d (or similar phrasing).<\/li>\n<li>10 points for having a PR firm or other non-academic proxy be the primary disseminator of an allegedy empirical paper.<\/li>\n<li>20 points for each reference to an unreviewed paper that contradicts the results of a competent meta-analysis published in a refereed journal.<\/li>\n<li>30 points for every use of a John Birch Society argument. (20 more for referring to water fluoridation or world government.)<\/li>\n<li>40 points for comparing those who argue against your ideas to Nazis, stormtroopers, or brownshirts.*<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I reserve the right to modify this list based on any absurdity that appears in education policy discourse.<\/p>\n<p><em>Addendum<\/em>:\u00a0Parenting and teaching earn <em>negative<\/em>\u00a0points, or credits against creating noise. My apologies if that was not clear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I feel as if Nicholas Kristof&#8217;s column yesterday on the need for academics as public intellectuals was pointed right at me, since I have fallen way behind in blogging thus far this year. For the record, Kristof is wrong on the trends but correct on the general need. So, for this morning, a small [&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":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-1Ol","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6965","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=6965"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6975,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6965\/revisions\/6975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}