Drum Roll: The Bunkum Awards
Just days ago, the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado announced the winners of its annual Bunkum Awards.
These are awards given to the worst educational research of the previous year. Being mundane or trivial is not enough to win these awards. They go only to “prime exemplars of incompetent science.”
The Grand Prize for Bunkum, or “Cancer is Under-rated” award,” went to the Progressive Policy Institute, for its report “Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best.” It achieved distinction for its “weak analysis, agenda-driven recommendations, and the most bizarre analogy we have seen in a long time.” The report compared the growth of charter schools to the growth of cancer and viruses. The citation read: “Beyond the analogy, the report suffers from an almost complete lack of acceptable scientific evidence or original research supporting the policy suggestions. It presents nine “lessons” or suggestions that are essentially common and vague aphorisms from the business world. Yet it fails to make the case that the suggestions or references are relevant to school improvement.“
The First Runner-Up –the “Mirror Image (What You Read Is Reversed) “Award was the Bill & Melinda Gates
These are awards given to the worst educational research of the previous year. Being mundane or trivial is not enough to win these awards. They go only to “prime exemplars of incompetent science.”
The Grand Prize for Bunkum, or “Cancer is Under-rated” award,” went to the Progressive Policy Institute, for its report “Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best.” It achieved distinction for its “weak analysis, agenda-driven recommendations, and the most bizarre analogy we have seen in a long time.” The report compared the growth of charter schools to the growth of cancer and viruses. The citation read: “Beyond the analogy, the report suffers from an almost complete lack of acceptable scientific evidence or original research supporting the policy suggestions. It presents nine “lessons” or suggestions that are essentially common and vague aphorisms from the business world. Yet it fails to make the case that the suggestions or references are relevant to school improvement.“
The First Runner-Up –the “Mirror Image (What You Read Is Reversed) “Award was the Bill & Melinda Gates