Data and thoughts on public and private school funding in the U.S.
In the face of all of the public criticism over the imprecision of value-added estimates of teacher effectiveness, and debates over whether newspapers or school districts should publish VAM estimates of teacher effectiveness, policymakers in several states have come up with a clever shell game. Their argument? We don’t use VAM… ‘cuz we know it … Continue reading Take your SGP and VAMit, Damn it!
Among the take-home points of our recent review of Newark school reforms are that: Resources, when considering school size, are positively associated with growth; The productivity of large charter operators in Newark – TEAM and North Star in particular – depends on how we treat school size in our models; Jumps in student growth percentiles … Continue reading Beneath the Veil of Newark Charter Productivity
THIS IS A FIRST CUT AT MY MUSINGS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARCC AND NJASK SCORES ACROSS NEW JERSEY SCHOOLS. MORE REFINED BRIEF FORTHCOMING. BUT I WANTED TO GET SOMETHING OUT THERE ASAP. A little background During the spring of 2015, New Jersey schools implemented their first round of new assessments from the Partnership for … Continue reading Strolling through the PARCC (data)
After having a series of conversations with Star Ledger reporter Julie O’Connor about her desire to write a cover story about how TEAM Academy is producing miracles in Newark, I wrote this post: https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2015/01/30/ed-writers-try-looking-beyond-propaganda-press-releases-for-success-stories/ The reason for this post is explained in this paragraph: Well, one reason I’m going there is that I’m sick of … Continue reading The Willful Ignorance of the NJ Star Ledger
A while back, I wrote this post explaining the problems of using measures of student achievement growth to try to sort out “where the bad teachers go.” The gist of the post was to explain that when we have estimates of student achievement growth linked to teachers, and when those estimates show that average growth … Continue reading Friday Graphs: Bad Teachers? or Bad Policy & Crappy Measures in New York?
PDF: BBaker.SGPs_and_OtherStuff In this post, I estimate a series of models to evaluate variation in New Jersey’s school median growth percentile measures. These measures of student growth are intended by the New Jersey Department of Education to serve as measures of both school and teacher effectiveness. That is, the effect that teachers and schools have … Continue reading On Teacher Effect vs. Other Stuff in New Jersey’s Growth Percentiles
Recently, the Center for American Progress (disclosure: I have a report coming out through them soon) released a report in which they boldly concluded, based on data on teacher ratings from Massachusetts and Louisiana, that teacher quality is woefully inequitably distributed across children by the income status of those children. As evidence of these inequities, … Continue reading The Endogeneity of the Equitable Distribution of Teachers: Or, why do the girls get all the good teachers?
Recently, TB Fordham Institute released a report by AIR researcher Michael Hansen on “Rightsizing” the classroom. Hansen based his analysis on data from the state of North Carolina, using distributions of teacher value added scores and class sizes to derive conclusions about how “great” teachers could be given larger classes, thus reducing students exposed to … Continue reading Rightsize this! When simple, ignorant solutions & simulations just don’t cut it
Much has been made of late regarding the erroneous classification of 44 teachers in Washington DC as ineffective, thus facing job consequences. This particular erroneous rating was based on an “error” in the calculation of the teachers’ total ratings, as acknowledged by the consulting firm applying the ratings. That is, in this case, the consultants … Continue reading Litigating DC IMPACT: The real usefulness of the Dee/Wyckoff Regression Discontinuity Design
A while back, in a report from the NJDOE, we learned that outliers are all that matters. They are where life’s important lessons lie! Outliers can provide proof that poverty doesn’t matter. Proof that high poverty schools – with a little grit and determination – can kick the butts of low poverty schools. We were … Continue reading Comments on NJ’s Teacher Evaluation Report & Gross Statistical Malfeasance
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