The Bunkum Awards in Education go to Rhee, Gates, ALEC and more of your edu faves
This marks our eighth year of handing out the Bunkum Awards, recognizing the lowlights in educational research over the past year. As long as the bunk keeps flowing, the awards will keep coming. It’s the least we can do. This year’s deserving awardees join a pantheon of divine purveyors of weak data, shoddy analyses, and overblown recommendations from years past. Congratulations, we guess—to whatever extent congratulations are due.
2013 Bunkum Honorees
To Public Agenda for Review of Failure Is Not an Option
The “Do You Believe in Miracles?” Award goes to the Public Agenda Foundation forFailure is Not an Option: How Principals, Teachers, Students and Parents from Ohio’s High-Achieving, High-Poverty Schools Explain Their Success
A particularly egregious disservice is done by reports designed to convince readers that investment in disadvantaged communities can be ignored. In this increasingly common mythology, students’ substandard outcomes are blamed on teachers and schools that
