Guest Post: The Facts Not Included in Steve Brill's Tell All
By John Thompson
Steve Brill’s Class Warfare is full of breathless accounts of the rich and powerful that are reminiscent of the biographies of Kitty Kelly. Ironically, the most valuable part of his Class Warfare may be his accounts of dramatic decisions to undertake risky and revolutionary "reforms" based on minimal evidence and some strange assumptions.
According to Brill, "Identifying Effective Teaching Using Performance on the Job" by Tom Kane, Robert Gordon, and Douglas Staiger was used to convince Bill Gates and President Obama that "teacher quality," measured by standardized tests, must be the focus of reform. According to Brill, they argued that tests showed, "remarkable consistency among teachers," and that "obviously" this suggested that the person in front of the classroom was the key to closing the achievement gap. Gates was supposedly told that the "surprising" lack of volatility in the test scores of one district meant we could trust algorithms to drive the firing of teachers. If we believe Brill,
Steve Brill’s Class Warfare is full of breathless accounts of the rich and powerful that are reminiscent of the biographies of Kitty Kelly. Ironically, the most valuable part of his Class Warfare may be his accounts of dramatic decisions to undertake risky and revolutionary "reforms" based on minimal evidence and some strange assumptions.
According to Brill, "Identifying Effective Teaching Using Performance on the Job" by Tom Kane, Robert Gordon, and Douglas Staiger was used to convince Bill Gates and President Obama that "teacher quality," measured by standardized tests, must be the focus of reform. According to Brill, they argued that tests showed, "remarkable consistency among teachers," and that "obviously" this suggested that the person in front of the classroom was the key to closing the achievement gap. Gates was supposedly told that the "surprising" lack of volatility in the test scores of one district meant we could trust algorithms to drive the firing of teachers. If we believe Brill,