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Thursday, May 31, 2012

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: NEPC announces it annual Bunkum Awards

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: NEPC announces it annual Bunkum Awards:


NEPC announces it annual Bunkum Awards

For Immediate Release Thursday, May 31, 2012
Contact: Jamie Horwitz (202) 549-492, jhdcpr@starpower.net

BUNKUM AWARDS FOR SHODDY EDUCATION RESEARCH ANNOUNCED

Grand Prize Winner Compares Charters Schools to Cancer – Where Cancer is a Good Thing 


National Education Policy Center for the First Time Awards a “Get a Life(time) Achievement Award” to an Individual – Dr. Matthew Ladner, an Advisor to Jeb Bush’s Advocacy Organization

Boulder, Colo. -- The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), housed at the University of Colorado Boulder, has announced via online video the winners of the 2011 Bunkum Awards –presented for the most compellingly lousy educational research for the past year.  The video is now available for viewing at http://nepc.colorado.edu/think-tank/bunkum-awards/2011.

The 2011 Bunkum Grand Prize goes to the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), which received the “Cancer is Under-Rated Award” for Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best. In its report, which advocated the rapid expansion of preferred charter schools, PPI compared those charters to viruses and cancers.

PPI says that it “conducted research about when and how exponential growth occurs in the natural world, specifically examining mold, algae, cancer, crystals and viruses. We used these