Data and thoughts on public and private school funding in the U.S.
I know I said I’d stop addressing the Third Way report on Middle Class Schools, but I do have one more thing to point out. Third Way issued a memo in which it aggressively attacked my assertion that they had used district level data to characterize middle class schools. Again, this assertion was relevant to … Continue reading Third Way’s “Revisionist Analysis” [Bold-faced lie!]
I gotta admit that my favorite part of the Third Way memo responding to my critique of their “Middle Class” report is the end of the memo. Here are the two concluding paragraphs from the Third Way memo in reply to my rather harsh critique of their report: There are 52,860 public and charter schools … Continue reading Insult of insults from Third Way – Baker, You… You… Status Quo…er!
Third Way has posted a response to my critique in which they argue that their analyses do not suffer the egregious flaws my review indicates. Specifically, they bring up my reference to the fact that whenever they are using a “district” level of analysis, they include the Detroit City Schools in their entirety in their … Continue reading Third Way Responds but Still Doesn’t Get It!
Occasionally on this blog, I slip in some jazz references. I often see commonalities between jazz improvisation and policy analysis. But I think I’ve finally found one thing that is very different. A lot of jazz teachers will joke around with students about what to do when you’re improvising a solo over chord changes, perhaps … Continue reading One difference between Playin’ Jazz and Policy Research: Comments on the Third Way “Middle Class” Reply
Yesterday, Matt Di Carlo over at Shankerblog put out his April fools post. The genius of the post is in its subtlety. Matt put together a few graphs of longitudinal NAEP data showing that Maryland had made greater than average national gains on NAEP and then asserted that these gains must therefore be a function … Continue reading When Real Life Exceeds Satire: Comments on ShankerBlog’s April Fools Post
I’ve already beaten the issue of the various flaws, misrepresentations and outright data abuse in the Third Way middle class report into the ground on this blog. And it’s really about time for that to end. Time to move on. But here is one simple illustration which draws on the same NAEP data compiled and … Continue reading Newsflash! “Middle Class Schools” score… uh…in the middle. Oops! No news here!
School Finance 101 