eduwonkette
Through the lens of social science, eduwonkette took a serious, if sometimes irreverent, look at some of the most contentious education policy debates in this opinion blog. Find eduwonkette’s complete archives prior to Jan. 6, 2008 here. This blog is no longer being updated.
Education
Opinion
Come on Feel the Noise!
Last week, New Yorkers scratched their heads and tried to make sense of the Progress Report results. What does it mean, for example, when 77% of schools that received an F last year jump to an A or a B? Michael Bloomberg has a resolute answer to this question, “Not a single school failed again....The fact of the matter is it’s working.”
Education
Opinion
COWAbunga Award!
This week's COWAbunga Award goes to DoubleDown, who provided his take on NYC's Progress Reports. Readers outside of New York, listen closely - this system could very well become a model for the nation. Here's an excerpt:
Education
Opinion
GothamSchools Geeks Out on Sampling Error!
Philissa Cramer totally geeks out over at GothamSchools, and posts a great figure showing that smaller schools were more likely to experience wild swings in their school grades. Head over and check it out.
Federal
Opinion
Between a Political Rock and a Statistical Hard Place
Some days, skoolboy feels bad for the hard-working folks in the New York City Department of Education. They’re caught between a political rock and a statistical hard place. The political rock is the New York State accountability system, which complies with No Child Left Behind’s requirements to test students annually in grades 3-8 in Mathematics and English Language Arts, and to classify students, based on their test scores, as either Not Meeting Learning Standards (Level I), Partially Meeting Learning Standards (Level II), Meeting Learning Standards (Level III), or Meeting Learning Standards with Distinction (Level IV), and then aggregate the performance of students, and subgroups of students, to assess the school’s progress toward the goal of 100% proficiency for all students by the year 2014. The mechanism for this is a series of grade-specific exams, with a broad (but arbitrary, as Dan Koretz explains in Measuring Up) standard-setting process that define the scores on the exam that correspond to the four proficiency levels. Whatever a student’s scale score on the exam, he or she is classified into a particular proficiency level.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Guest Blogger Daniel Koretz on New York City's Progress Reports
Daniel Koretz is a professor who teaches educational measurement at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is the author of Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us. Below, he weighs in on the NYC Progress Reports that were released yesterday.
Education
Opinion
NYC Progress Report Chutes and Ladders!
A week ago, skoolboy encouraged readers to predict schools' upward and downward grade mobility. Here's how that shook out. When 26% of elementary and middle schools that received Fs last year - 9 schools - climb from a F to an A, it does make you wonder what exactly it is that we are measuring. Likewise, 26 schools cascaded from As or Bs to Ds or Fs. Readers, stare into the table and tell me what you see...
Education
Opinion
In NYC, More F Schools than A Schools in Good Standing with NCLB
Some of you have asked what fraction of NYC schools receiving each Progress Report grade are in good standing with NCLB. As a refresher, NCLB labels schools in need of improvement based on overall proficiency. NYC's system is based 60% on year-to-year growth, 25% on proficiency, 5% on attendance, and 10% on surveys.
Education
Opinion
All Progress Reports, All the Time
The new NYC Progress Reports are out, and I'm busy analyzing the data now. Have ideas about what I should look at? Leave a comment below.
Education
Opinion
Irreconcilable Differences: Why NYC’s Surveys Provide a Misleading Portrait of School Quality
My heart went out to Charlie Gibson last week, as he stared into those doe eyes that will not blink and realized that he could not wrangle a single straight answer out of Miss Wasilla.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Let the Spin Begin
Suppose that your fourth-grader takes a state test that shows that she understands the associative property of multiplication, can multiply two-digit numbers by two-digit numbers, and can find the perimeter of a polygon by adding up the length of the sides. A year later, as a fifth-grader, she takes a test that shows that she can compare fractions and decimals using <, > or =; identify the factors of a given number; simplify fractions to their lowest terms; and knows that the sum of the interior angles of a quadrilateral is 360 degrees—but she cannot yet create algebraic or geometric patterns using concrete objects or visual drawings (e.g., rotate and shade geometric shapes). Would you say that your child had lost ground in proficiency, or actually gone backward?
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Cool People You Should Know: Doug Downey
To many observers of public education, there is no doubt about which schools are failing - it's the schools with low rates of students passing state tests, stupid!
Federal
Opinion
Schools Restructuring under NCLB: Blow ‘em up Good?
This morning, the Center for Education Policy in Washington, DC is issuing the latest in a series of state-level reports on the fate of schools restructuring under NCLB policy. Today’s report, authored by Brenda Neuman-Sheldon (a one-time student of skoolboy’s, but I hear that she’s back on solid food), examines restructuring schools in Maryland. In 2007-08, Maryland had 38 schools in restructuring planning, a huge increase over the four schools the preceding year, and 64 schools in restructuring implementation, a 7% decline from the preceding school year. The restructuring schools are concentrated in a small number of Maryland’s 24 school districts, with 61% of the restructuring schools in Baltimore City, and an additional 30% in Prince George’s County, which adjoins Washington, DC. This concentration has stretched the capacity of the state and these districts to support restructuring planning and implementation. Prince George’s County, for example, soared from one school in restructuring planning in 2006-07 to 21 in 2007-08.
Education
Opinion
COWAbunga Award!
This week's COWAbunga Award goes to two comments that explain why medicine and education have followed very different paths when it comes to accountability. The first comment is from eiela, a teacher librarian:The second winner is Erin Johnson, who, in a series of comments, made compelling arguments about the differences in the evidence bases for educational and medical practice. Read them all here, and here's a tasty morsel from one of them:
Education
Opinion
(Un) Heartbreaking Links of Staggering Genius
1) Once Upon A School: Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, was awarded the TED Prize to help him fulfill this wish:Now there's a website called "Once Upon A School" that's tracking project ideas for engaging in local schools. If you're looking for a little shot of edu-Red Bull this week, check them out.