Rhee Knows Nothing About Inequality
I finally got around to watching failed author Michelle Rhee's appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher from last night. Maybe I'll say more about it later, but I wanted to get to one of the little data points she threw out last night:
In 2009, the National Center for Education Statistics released a report that included this table:
That score of 551 was higher than any other country in the world - including countries where the child poverty rate is way under 10%. Mel Riddile pointed out than most developed countries have child poverty rates
MAHER: "I have some statistics here on studies they have done on schools here in America, and it doesn't really indicate that it's the schools that is the problem. I mean, we hear all the time that America is falling behind, but in three major international tests - there's the one, Progress of International Reading and Literacy Study - I'll just give the two - the Trends in International Math and Science...
Students in U.S. schools where the poverty rate is less than 10% are first in reading and science in the world."
RHEE: "Compared to the average kids in the other countries - you can't do an apples to oranges comparison. If you look at the top quartile of kids in our country by income level - right, so the most privileged kids - and you compare them internationally to the top quartile of other countries, they rank 23rd."My ears pricked up at this one, because I wrote a series of posts last year about this very topic: here, here, hereand here. Let me summarize:
In 2009, the National Center for Education Statistics released a report that included this table:
NJ Teacher Evaluation: Math Fail #2
I ask again, as I did before:
Do the Broad-funded interns at the New Jersey Department of Education understand math?
Do the Broad-funded interns at the New Jersey Department of Education understand math?
When the NJDOE rolled out their new teacher evaluation system, Operation Hindenberg Achieve NJ, theyincluded a slideshow to help explain how their proposals would work.
Slide 14 (annotations mine):
