Why U.S. News college rankings shouldn’t matter to anyone
Another year, another set of college rankings from U.S. News & World Report, another opportunity to explore what value the most closely watched “best school” lists actually offer to students and families.Not much, if any.
Each year at this time, the magazine ranks schools in various categories — national universities, liberal arts colleges, etc. — on anever-changing methodology that this year reduces “the weight of input factors that reflect a school’s student body” and increases “the weight of output measures that signal how well a school educates its students.”
That means more weight was given to college graduation rates and less to the rankings that incoming freshman earned in high school. (With fewer and fewer high schools actually ranking students, that data point has become unavailable.) The rankers also
Why U.S. News college rankings shouldn’t matter to anyone
Another year, another set of college rankings from U.S. News & World Report, another opportunity to explore what value the most closely watched “best school” lists actually offer to students and families. Not much, if any. Each year at this … Continue reading →
Good or bad? New rating system can’t decide about this principal
I recently published a post about how a teacher in New York was wronged by the state’s controversial new educator evaluation system, which is based in large part on student standardized test scores. Here’s a story about a school principal’s … Continue reading →
The ‘grim new normal’ in Philadelphia schools
Consider this: The constitution of Pennsylvania says that the state legislature must provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth. Now consider what students and … Continue reading →
How big can Teach For America get?
Even in school districts where teachers have been laid off because of budget cuts, Teach For America manages to keep expanding. An education blogger in Massachusetts who writes about corporate-influenced reform on the website EduShyster.com, writes about this in the … Continue reading →
