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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Who will be held responsible when state officials are factually wrong? On Statistics & Teacher Evaluation | School Finance 101

Who will be held responsible when state officials are factually wrong? On Statistics & Teacher Evaluation | School Finance 101:


Who will be held responsible when state officials are factually wrong? On Statistics & Teacher Evaluation

While I fully understand that state education agencies are fast becoming propaganda machines, I’m increasingly concerned with how far this will go.  Yes, under NCLB, state education agencies concocted completely wrongheaded school classification schemes that had little or nothing to do with actual school quality, and in rare cases, used those policies to enforce substantive sanctions on schools. But, I don’t recall many state officials going to great lengths to prove the worth – argue the validity – of these systems. Yeah… there were sales-pitchy materials alongside technical manuals for state report cards, but I don’t recall such a strong push to advance completely false characterizations of the measures. Perhaps I’m wrong. But either way, this brings me to today’s post.
I am increasingly concerned with at least some state officials’ misguided rhetoric promoting policy initiatives built