ALEC's Report Card Receives Failing Marks

May 10, 2013 in Article

EAST LANSING, Mich. (May 9, 2013) – Ranking states is a popular tool for education advocacy groups, with the goal of advancing a policy agenda based on ideologically driven pre-packaged reforms. These report cards receive considerable media attention, although few reflect research-based evidence on the efficacy of particular polices. The 18th edition of the American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform is no different according to an academic review.

Christopher Lubienski, associate professor of education policy and Director of the Forum on the Future of Public Education at the University of Illinois, and T. Jameson Brewer, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, reviewed ALEC's Report Card for the Think Twice think tank review project. The review was produced by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), with funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

Lubienski and Brewer find that ALEC draws its grades exclusively not from research organizations, but from like-minded market-orientated advocacy organizations.

"Furthermore, when studies are highlighted in this report, they do not represent the peer-reviewed research on a given issue, are often of extremely poor quality, and generally unsuited for supporting their claim."

In their review, Lubienski and Brewer provide two key areas – alternative teacher certification and school choice – to highlight gaps between ALEC's agenda and empirical evidence. Despite multiple claims that a "growing body of research indicates…" – the report offers absolutely no supporting evidence. Math results, which have a lower pass rate, were used to compare traditionally-certified teachers to alternatively-certified teachers. Meanwhile alternatively-certified teachers were portrayed using their reading results.

"Many of the grades given to states reflect the level to which pro-market policies have been implemented while the grades systematically ignore meaningful measurements of equality and outcomes" according to the review.

Readers of ALEC's Report Card should consider it a statement of policy preferences and not an overview of research on education reforms.

The reviewers conclude, "At best, the report serves as an amalgamation of other like-minded think tanks' assessments of states' adoption of pro-market policies, and thus offers nothing new … it provides little or no usefulness to policymakers."

Find the report by Lubienski and Brewer on the Great Lakes Center website: www.greatlakescenter.org

Teacher Evaluation Reform - Report from NBPTS

October 05, 2011 in Article

The The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards has released their "Getting it Right: A Comprehensive Guide to Developing and Sustaining Teacher Evaluation and Support Systems" report.

The National Board’s framework for developing and sustaining a teacher evaluation and support system includes four major stages:
1. Developing an Evaluation and Support System
2. Implementing and Managing the Evaluation and Support System
3. Conducting Collaborative Evaluations that Enhance Teaching Practice and Student Learning
4. Supporting Teachers

The report also notes "While those who evaluate teachers could take student test scores over time into account, they should be fully aware of their limitations"

Getting It Right

Relying on Magic: The Foundations of Would-be Education Reformers

June 14, 2011 in Article

With high unction, priests of educational reform often proclaim their notions are grounded on a strong scientific base. Embarrassingly, the President and his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, have made similar assertions of scientific footings, notwithstanding the failure to actually support those claims.

Science, of course, has certain advantages, in that its proofs are subject to verification, are based on careful observations, must generally be replicable, and must follow commonly accepted designs and rules of evidence. But science has the pesky drawback of not necessarily confirming the answers we want to hear. There are all those awkward things to explain like reformer Joel Klein claiming success as an “established fact” while Arne Duncan says 83 percent of the schools are failing.

Magic, however, has been discovered to be a far more flexible and useful tool for supporting policy reforms. Contrary scientific findings can be brushed away with the same untroubled ease as an end-of-worlder explaining why the apocalypse didn’t happen last week.

As magical notions gain political traction, a supporting “science” is retro-invented. Contemporary retro-science includes reports that provide squishy, oblique and leading evidence on how untrained teachers will do as well or better than trained ones, class sizes can be increased without harm to children, and test-based accountability will save all despite the last twenty years of less-than-stellar success. Magicism is most easily recognized by its strong declaratory incantations, frequently delivered by people with limited or no experience in the field. Being short on science, it relies on the brandishing of symbols, rituals, and rites.

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Lots of SB5 news from around the state

May 10, 2011 in Article

Yesterday, police from all around the state held mass efforts to protest SB5. It garnered a lot of local press coverage. Here's a sampler of some of those stories;

In related SB5 news, businesses seem to want to either back away form supporting the collective bargaining busting measure, or wholly support its repeal

We should start seeing some petition signature counts in the next week or so. Don't forget to return your petition books once you are done, so the signatures you have collected can be verified and counted. There's only about 50 days left until the June 30th deadline!