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Data and thoughts on public and private school funding in the U.S.
Browsing All Posts filed under »Race to the Top«
Deconstructing Disinformation on Student Growth Percentiles & Teacher Evaluation in New Jersey
CROSS-POSTED FROM: http://njedpolicy.wordpress.com/ Deconstructing Disinformation on Student Growth Percentiles & Teacher Evaluation in New Jersey (Printable Policy Brief): SGP_Disinformation_BakerOluwole Bruce D. Baker, Rutgers University, Graduate School of Education Joseph Oluwole, Montclair State University Introduction This brief addresses problems with, and disinformation about New Jersey’s Student Growth Percentile (SGP) measures which are proposed by New Jersey […]
Friday AM Graphs: Just how biased are NJ’s Growth Percentile Measures (school level)?
April 12, 2013
New Jersey finally released the data set of its school level growth percentile metrics. I’ve been harping on a few points on this blog this week. SGP data here: http://education.state.nj.us/pr/database.html Enrollment data here: http://www.nj.gov/education/data/enr/enr12/stat_doc.htm First, that the commissioner’s characterization that the growth percentiles necessarily fully take into account student background is a completely bogus and […]
Briefly Revisiting the Central Problem with SGPs (in the creator’s own words)
April 11, 2013
When I first criticized the use of SGPs for teacher evaluation in New Jersey, the creator of the Colorado Growth Model responded with the following statement: Unfortunately Professor Baker conflates the data (i.e. the measure) with the use. A primary purpose in the development of the Colorado Growth Model (Student Growth Percentiles/SGPs) was to distinguish […]
On Misrepresenting (Gates) MET to Advance State Policy Agendas
April 10, 2013
In my previous post I chastised state officials for their blatant mischaracterization of metrics to be employed in teacher evaluation. This raised (in twitter conversation) the issue of the frequent misrepresentation of findings from the Gates Foundation Measures of Effective Teaching Project (or MET). Policymakers frequently invoke the Gates MET findings as providing broad based […]
Who will be held responsible when state officials are factually wrong? On Statistics & Teacher Evaluation
April 10, 2013
While I fully understand that state education agencies are fast becoming propaganda machines, I’m increasingly concerned with how far this will go. Yes, under NCLB, state education agencies concocted completely wrongheaded school classification schemes that had little or nothing to do with actual school quality, and in rare cases, used those policies to enforce substantive […]
Gates Still Doesn’t Get It! Trapped in a World of Circular Reasoning & Flawed Frameworks
January 9, 2013
Not much time for a thorough review of the most recent release of the Gates MET project, but here are my first cut comments on the major problems with the report. The take home argument of the report seems to be that their proposed teacher evaluation models are sufficiently reliable for prime time use and […]
It’s good to be King: More Misguided Rhetoric on the NY State Eval System
December 12, 2012
Very little time to write today, but I must comment on this NY Post article on the bias I’ve been discussing in the NY State teacher/principal growth percentile ratings. Sociologist Aaron Pallas of TC and economist Sean Corcoran of NYU express appropriate concerns about the degrees of bias found and reported in the technical report […]
It’s time to just say NO! More thoughts on the NY State Tchr Eval System
December 5, 2012
This post is a follow up on two recent previous posts in which I first criticized consultants to the State of New York for finding substantial patterns of bias in their estimates of principal (correction: School Aggregate) and teacher (correction: Classroom aggregate) median growth percentile scores but still declaring those scores to be fair and […]
AIR Pollution in NY State? Comments on the NY State Teacher/Principal Rating Models/Report
November 17, 2012
I was immediately intrigued the other day when a friend passed along a link to the recent technical report on the New York State growth model, the results of which are expected/required to be integrated into district level teacher and principal evaluation systems under that state’s new teacher evaluation regulations. I did as I often […]
On the Stability (or not) of Being Irreplaceable
November 17, 2012
This is just a quick note with a few pictures in response to the TNTP “Irreplaceables” report that came out a few weeks back – a report that is utterly ridiculous at many levels (especially this graph!)… but due to the storm I just didn’t get a chance address it. But let’s just entertain for […]
May 2, 2013
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