Policy & Politics Blog

The K-12 Contrarian

A former high school teacher, Dave Powell is an associate professor of education at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. In this blog, Powell examined efforts to fix education, including whom you should trust and why. This blog is no longer being updated.

Education Opinion The Assault on Public Education Continues in North Carolina
Our friends down in North Carolina have been engineering a revolution in state government ever since it looked like the state might change its political stripes. Much of it seems to be built on the idea that public things need to be dismantled. You can bet public education is in the crosshairs.
Dave Powell, April 14, 2015
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8 min read
Curriculum Opinion Social Studies Is Dead; Long Live Social Studies!
A former student of mine stopped in yesterday with a story to tell—and a good one, at that.
Dave Powell, April 7, 2015
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6 min read
Teacher Preparation Opinion No, Really, Don't Become a Teacher... Unless You Do This
Nancie Atwell just one the "Nobel Prize of Teaching," and promptly warned young people not to become teachers. I don't blame her for the frustration, but here's my attempt to be a little more hopeful.
Dave Powell, March 31, 2015
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8 min read
School & District Management Opinion Is It Time to Abolish the School Board?
Maybe it's sour grapes, or maybe it's a great idea: I just can't stop thinking about the possibilities that would open up if we just abolished the local school board.
Dave Powell, March 24, 2015
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7 min read
Education Opinion I Ran for School Board... And I'm Kind of Sorry I Lost
A spot opened on our local school board last week so I applied for it. Of course I wasn't chosen, but it was an interesting process.
Dave Powell, March 18, 2015
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9 min read
School & District Management Opinion What Does the Research Say About Value-Added Models and Teacher Evaluation?
My last post of VAMs raised some questions about the credibility of the information I cited—and whether it was enough to support the conclusions I drew. So here's some research for everyone to consider, and a point to think about too: even if the research did confirm the effectiveness of VAMs, they would still be bad policy. Period.
Dave Powell, March 11, 2015
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7 min read
Teacher Preparation Opinion Does the Teacher Matter or Not?
It's taken as an article of faith among proponents of value-added teaching evaluation that teachers are the single most important variable determining student success in school. But what if the statisticians inadvertently used their own research to undermine the central premise of their argument?
Dave Powell, March 7, 2015
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6 min read
Assessment Opinion The Declining Value of Value-Added Models, and Why They Persist Anyway
Not content to leave a bad idea alone, policymakers now seem intent on applying value-added methods as a means of assessing teacher effectiveness. To just about anyone who has ever actually spent a significant amount of time teaching, this is a terrible idea. But the policy machine marches on anyway—how come?
Dave Powell, March 2, 2015
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7 min read
Assessment Opinion Homework, Oh Homework...
What do you get when you put unreasonable expectations on teachers and parents to make sure kids do things that adults they've never met really, really think they ought to do? You get homework. Even in first grade.
Dave Powell, February 24, 2015
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4 min read
Equity & Diversity Opinion Oklahoma Is Not OK
Out in Oklahoma, a state representative wants to repeal and replace AP US history. Here we go again.
Dave Powell, February 19, 2015
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5 min read
School & District Management Opinion The Future Is Now for NCLB... Or Is It?
The battle lines in the debate over ESEA reauthorization—the debate to put NCLB behind us, once and for all—are now as clear as they've ever been, but the bills likely to come out of Congress do more to push an ideological agenda than they do to improve education. Don't expect big changes any time soon.
Dave Powell, February 14, 2015
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6 min read
Teacher Preparation Opinion Are We Ready to Have a Real Conversation About K-12 Grading?
Looking at all the ways my kids are being graded has me thinking: is there anything we can do about it? We could start by slowing down to think about the nature of intelligence, what graded assessment tells us about it, and what it would take to think about it differently.
Dave Powell, February 8, 2015
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6 min read
School & District Management Opinion Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Look at Another Report Card: Here Comes One From Pre-K
Just when you thought you'd seen it all: along comes a report card for a four-year-old. And it's probably even more ridiculous than you thought it would be.
Dave Powell, February 3, 2015
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8 min read
Assessment Opinion The Incredible True Story of the 1st Grader With 40 Grades on His Report Card
It was report card day today for our first grader. I'm still trying to figure out how he's doing.
Dave Powell, January 28, 2015
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8 min read
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