Pundit Claim 1 – Value added modeling is necessarily better than the “status quo” There exists this strange perspective that we are faced with a simple choice in teacher evaluation – a choice between using student test scores and value-added modeling, or continuing with the status quo. This is a false dichotomy, false dilemma orContinue reading “On False Dichotomies and Warped Reformy Logic”
Monthly Archives: September 2010
A few thoughts on the unlikely alliance…
Today was the day of the big Oprah-Christie-Booker-Zuckerberg event, which I guess we can all watch around 4pm if we really want to. I’ve been trying to dig up any information I can, without wasting too much time on this, because there are certainly more important things to get to. That said, I do haveContinue reading “A few thoughts on the unlikely alliance…”
If money doesn’t matter…
A) Then why do private independent schools, like those attended by our President’s children (Sidwell Friends in DC), or by Davis Guggenheim’s children (?), spend so much more than nearby traditional public schools? Davis Guggenheim, producer of Waiting for Superman, frequently explains to the media these days that he feels uneasy that he has madeContinue reading “If money doesn’t matter…”
Value-Added and “Favoritism”
Kevin Carey from Ed Sector has done it again. He’s come up with yet another argument that fails to pass even the most basic smell test. A few weeks ago, I picked on Kevin for making the argument that while charter schools, on average, are average, really good charter schools are better than average. Or,Continue reading “Value-Added and “Favoritism””
Searching for Superguy in Gotham
Who is Superguy? By most popular accounts, Superguy is a figure of mythical proportion (urban legend proportion) capable of swooping down into the poorest of urban neighborhoods of America’s largest cities, gaining immediate access to schooling facilities, rounding up unthinkable private contributions from wealthy philanthropists and quite simply saving the lives of low-income urban schoolContinue reading “Searching for Superguy in Gotham”
Value-added and the non-random sorting of kids who don’t give a sh^%t
Last week, this video from The Onion (asking whether tests are biased against kids who don’t give a sh^%t) was going viral among the education social networking geeks like me. At the same time, the conversations continued on the Los Angeles Times Value-Added story, with LAT releasing the scores for individual teachers. I’ve written manyContinue reading “Value-added and the non-random sorting of kids who don’t give a sh^%t”
