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Wednesday, January 8, 2014

1-8-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter:





Anthem for High Stakes Testing Era (with apologies to Country Joe McDonald)
To be sung to the tune of “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die” by Country Joe and the Fish (see video below)Well come on all you teachers and tykes,Uncle Sam’s made a problem he’s tryin’ to hype,He got himself some pressure to privatize, All the schools in the nation right before our eyes,
So put down your books and grab a #2, We've got a whole lot of testin’ to do.
And its 1,2,3 what are we learning f

1-7-14 Schools Matter
Schools Matter: Quantitative Research of 2013 that Reflects Reality, Part IIThe inherent flaws of attaching stakes to value-added estimates of teacher effectiveness were obvious from the beginning. Even if a statistical model magically found a way to control for poverty, race, and other factors, there was no guarantee that systems would adopt the model that was most fair. Even if an algorithm was