Good News, Transparency: Louisiana CREDO Data No Longer Exclusive to CREDO
According to Louisiana-based Research on Reforms (ROR), between 2010 and March 2015, the Stanford-University-based, Hoover-Institute-run Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) was the only research body allowed access to decoded student data on Louisiana students.
Prior to 2010, from 2005 to 2009, the Louisiana State Department of Education (LDOE) also sent the same decoded data to ROR. However, ROR findings regarding the state-run Recovery School District (RSD) often did not support the state’s own findings on its state-run district (a conflict of interest, no?). So, according to ROR, beginning in 2010, LDOE stopped sending ROR decoded student data but continued to send such data to CREDO.
In short, CREDO remained the favored research outfit in shaping an image for New Orleans RSD.
Given CREDO’s favor with a pro-privatizing LDOE, one might wonder: Who funds CREDO?
Well, you won’t find a list of CREDO funders on the CREDO website. However, that does not mean CREDO’s funders cannot be found. In 2012, New Jersey blogger Mother Crusader found CREDO funding by researching CREDO director, Margaret Raymond:
…I did a bit of digging, and found that her (Raymond’s) bio on the Hoover Institution’s website disclosed her funding sources.
In partnership with the Walton Family Foundation and Pearson Learning Systems, Raymond is leading a national study of the effectiveness of public charter schools. The public-academic-private partnership helps public charter schools adopt information technologies as a means to both support their operations and generate information required by the study design. (emphasis mine)
So CREDO is funded not just by Walton, but by Pearson as well. Pearson, the biggest test pusher on the planet, and Walton, whose “core” education strategy is to “infuse competitive pressure into America’s K-12 education system by increasing the quantity and quality of school choices available to parents, especially in low-income communities.”A marriage made in heaven for CREDO which seems to be using test scores to push charters.
Speaking of “marriage,” Raymond is married to Hoover Institute Senior Fellow Eric Hanushek, who is also a CREDO researcher and who is fine with larger class sizes and lesser school funding. (Don’t get me started. I wrote a chapter on Hanushek in my ed reform whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes. Feel free to read it.)
Regarding those “test scores” on which CREDO’s power rests, education writer Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post observes:
CREDO’s unique studies of charter schools around the country….What gets often lost in these discussions is that the studies are based on reading and math standardized test scores. Even if you think that high-stakes standardized test scores reveal something about how much a student knows in the tested subject — and many researchers and educators don’t — it is a different thing altogether to judge an entire school on the results of narrowGood News, Transparency: Louisiana CREDO Data No Longer Exclusive to CREDO | deutsch29:
