$50 million. 3 years. No clue.
In my last post, I showed how in the final report from the Gates Foundation MET project they produced a very misleading graph. Though the implication of this graph — namely, that value-added measures are consistent from one year to the next — was not the only point of this study, I called it THE $50 million lie because it is the thing that will be used by ‘reformers’ for years to come as ‘proof’ that test scores should be a significant factor in teacher evaluations.
Here is the cover of the report. Note the hip white male teacher and the black student with both a hoodie (and wearing it with the hood on in class!) and glasses (note to the sensitive reader: I’m not saying that no black kids who wear hoodies also wear glasses not that no black kids with glasses also wear hoodies. Also I’m aware that anyone can need glasses which has nothing to do with intellectual ability or academic motivation. I just found this picture to contain a lot of ‘subtext’). Also how the effective ‘teaching’ is actually using ‘blended’ learning as the kid learns at his own pace with the aid of a very old computer with the old-school giant monitor.
There are an infinite number of ways to make charts and graphs of different results obtained. The choice of which ones to include and which ones to omit can reveal what the authors THINK the data proves. The authors
Here is the cover of the report. Note the hip white male teacher and the black student with both a hoodie (and wearing it with the hood on in class!) and glasses (note to the sensitive reader: I’m not saying that no black kids who wear hoodies also wear glasses not that no black kids with glasses also wear hoodies. Also I’m aware that anyone can need glasses which has nothing to do with intellectual ability or academic motivation. I just found this picture to contain a lot of ‘subtext’). Also how the effective ‘teaching’ is actually using ‘blended’ learning as the kid learns at his own pace with the aid of a very old computer with the old-school giant monitor.
There are an infinite number of ways to make charts and graphs of different results obtained. The choice of which ones to include and which ones to omit can reveal what the authors THINK the data proves. The authors
