Latest News and Comment from Education

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

5-6-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter:








Houston Teachers File Federal Lawsuit Over Use of VAM
  Seven teachers, union suing HISD over evaluationsWhen Bill Sanders, the agricultural statistician and adjunct professor who developed TVAAS and EVAAS and became a multimillionaire as a result, is asked about how he derives his estimates of teacher effects on test scores, he flashes his algorithm, which is supposed to satisfy those who wonder how the Wiz does his thing:Statisticians may be impre


Can a Weingarten Stamp of Approval Mean Anything Good for NYC Teachers?
The saddest part of Randi Weingarten’s rainy day trip to Lake Placid to get some press press photos of her protesting at the DFER ed deform meeting is that the Misleaders of the AFT and NEA have endorsed most of the agenda of the hedge funders inside the meeting, whether it is bonus pay for test scores, teacher eval based on test scores, segregated corporate charter reform schools, and the Common


5-5-14 Schools Matter
Schools Matter: those brave new testsEd Week cheerfully reports field-tests for Smarter Balanced and PARCC tests are going jus' fine:"Early Reports Suggest Few Field-Testing Snags" [http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/05/06/30fieldtest_ep.h33.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1]I posted this comment: This "field-testing" seems to be mostly about technical aspects of implementation. I get