Research + Politics = Bad NewsAt the Fordham's flypaper blog, Andy Smarick has some sobering news. Yes, Smarick is from the reformster camp, but what he reports this week is concerning to anybody who cares about education in this country.Smarick is reporting about the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the government agency responsible for gathering and sorting the vast ocean of data related to American schools.
Is Standardization a Virtue?One of my largest points of disagreement with the champions of reformy stuff is on the value of standardization.For instance, lots of folks (including some who don't like the Common Core) will observe as an article of faith that it would be better to have national standards than have different standards from state to state. To them, it seems as obvious as air that this is true. To me, it seems as
9-16-14 Curmudgucation - Choice Finance Fantasies (Part II)
CURMUDGUCATION: Choice Finance Fantasies (Part II)I love the internet. In particular, I love the way it allows for conversations to break out between people who would never meet or interact in real life. This is one of those conversations.First, I wrote this piece about what I see as some fallacies in the ideas behind choice financing. Soon afterwards, Neerav Kingsland wrote this response at the b