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Data and thoughts on public and private school funding in the U.S.
Browsing All Posts published on »April, 2011«
Debunking Myths: Characteristics of Stayers & Leavers in New Jersey
For this one, the graphs pretty much tell the story. I’ve had these data sitting around for a while and just never got around to making the graphs. I’ve used data on migration patterns across cities and states from the American Community Survey in the past. The American Community Survey data are annual survey data […]
The Perils of Favoring Consistency over Validity: Are “bad” VAMS more “consistent” than better ones?
April 29, 2011
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This is another stat-geeky researcher post, but I’ll try to tease out the practical implications. This post comes about partly, though not directly in response to a new Brown Center/Brookings report on evaluating teacher evaluation systems. From that report, by an impressive team of authors, one can tease out two apparent preferences for evaluation systems, […]
Research Warning Label: Analysis contains inadequate measurement of student poverty
April 27, 2011
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I’ll likely regret writing this post at some point. But this is a really, really important issue and one that undermines a very large number of prominent research studies on the effectiveness of various school reforms, especially when evaluated in high poverty contexts. I blogged about this a few weeks back – the problems of […]
Blank Slate: Private School Leaders Step Up!
April 18, 2011
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I’ve noted on several occasions on Twitter (@schlfinance101) and on my blog that I am actually a supporter of high quality private independent schools. In the 1990s, I was a middle school science teacher at The Fieldston School in Riverdale, NY. That experience sticks with me to this day as I write about public education […]
ConnCan Cluelessness
April 15, 2011
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Or is it just a school finance Conn-job, in a CAN? In their response to my Think Tank Review of Spend Smart: Fix Our Broken School Funding System, ConnCan asserts that I claim that Connecticut’s school finance formula is not broken. (see: http://ht.ly/4BknI) As I state in my report, it’s not that the formula is […]
Graph of the Day: Private School Day Tuition vs. Public School Expenditures (Boston Metro 2009)
April 15, 2011
I’ve written extensively in the past about private school tuition and expenditures. Here is a link to a report on private school expenditures I produced in 2009. http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/private-schooling-US The graph below is actually stacked heavily in favor of showing that public schools have higher spending than private schools. Why? Because I am comparing private school […]
Logic Gaps in the NJ Ed Reform Debate
April 14, 2011
Not much time for another full length post today. There are numbers to be crunched. But, I did feel it necessary to clear up a few issues regarding NJ Education Reform proposals, including those laid out yesterday focused on a) reforming teacher evaluation to focus on student assessment data, b) tying evaluation to compensation, tenure […]
More expensive than what? A quick comment on CAP’s CSR report
April 14, 2011
The Center for American Progress today release a report on class size reduction authored by Matthew Chingos, who has conducted a handful of recent interesting studies on the topic. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/04/pdf/class_size.pdf This report reads more or less like a manifesto against class size reduction as a strategy for improving school quality and student outcomes. I’ll admit […]
Dumbest “real” reformy graphs!
April 8, 2011
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So in my previous post I created a set of hypothetical research studies that might be presented at the Reformy Education Research Association annual meeting. In my creation of the hypotheticals I actually tried to stay pretty close to reality, setting up reasonable tables with information that is actually quite probable. Now, when we get […]
A trip to the Reformy Education Research Association?
April 8, 2011
So, as I head off to AERA in New Orleans, I’ve been pondering what it would be like if there was a special education research conference for reformy types. What would we find at the Reformy Education Research Association, RERA? How would the research be conducted or presented? What kinds of research thinking might we […]
April 30, 2011
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