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Data and thoughts on public and private school funding in the U.S.
Browsing All Posts published on »December, 2010«
Introducing the Reform-Inator!
Introducing the Coolest New Gadget of the Year – just in time for last-day shopping! The Reform-inator! Can be used to instantly fire and/or de-tenurize teachers. However, in order to use the reform-inator for these purposes you must line up 100 teachers including all of the good, bad and average ones. The reforminator is a […]
Is it the “New Normal” or the “New Stupid?”
December 23, 2010
I’ll admit from the start that I’m recycling some arguments here (okay… all of the arguments) … but this stuff needs to be reinforced, over and over again. Quite honestly, to me, from a school finance perspective, this is the most important issue that has surfaced in the past year, and potentially the most dangerous […]
A few comments on the Gates/Kane value-added study
December 13, 2010
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A few comments on the Gates/Kane Value-added study (My apologies in advance for an excessively technical, research geeky post, but I felt it necessary in this case) Take home points 1) As I read it, the new Gates/Kane value-added findings are NOT by any stretch of the imagination an endorsement of using value-added measures of […]
Still searching for that pot of gold
December 10, 2010
The rhetoric about our decades-long drunken spending spree just won’t stop, nor will the rhetoric that the money is all gone. All of it. Nothin’ left. We spent it all. We taxed ourselves to the limit and those damn teachers unions and public schools just took it all and left us with the bill. It’s […]
The problem? Cheerleading and Ceramics, of course!
December 8, 2010
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David Reber with the Topeka Examiner had a great post a while back (April, 2010) addressing the deceptive logic that we should be outraged by supposed exorbitant spending on things like cheerleading and ceramics, and not worry so much about the little things, like disparities between wealthy and poor school districts. I finally saw this […]
Potential abuses of the Parent Trigger???
December 7, 2010
This article in the LA Times has been getting a lot of buzz today – http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-compton-parents-20101207,0,1116485.story The article discusses the use of what is called a “parent trigger” policy. Here’s the synopsis: On Tuesday, they intend to present a petition signed by 61% of McKinley parents that would require the Compton Unified School District to […]
The Circular Logic of Quality-Based Layoff Arguments
December 6, 2010
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Many pundits are responding enthusiastically to the new LA Times article on quality-based layoffs – or how dismissing teachers based on Value-added scores rather than on seniority would have saved LAUSD many of its better teachers, rather than simply saving its older ones. Some are pointing out that this new LA Times report is the […]
December 23, 2010
Comments Off on Introducing the Reform-Inator!