CURMUDGUCATION: Covid Slide Panic Is Still Baloney

CURMUDGUCATION: Covid Slide Panic Is Still Baloney

Covid Slide Panic Is Still Baloney

Back in April, NWEA (the MAP test folks) issued a "report" about what we've taken to calling the Covid Slide, which is sadly not a cool new line dance, but is instead an important tool for people in education-flavored businesses who want to try to panic school districts and bureaucrats. Now Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) yesterday threw their weight behind this piece of scholastic chicken littling.

Let me remind you why you can still afford to be unimpressed.

First, even if you do not have first hand experience with NWEA's MAP test (I do--it's a lousy computer-delivered multiple choice test), you should always remember that one of their attempts to make some edu-bucks centers around their program that they promised can read minds by measuring how long it takes students to pick a multiple choice answer.

Second, you know that this "report" is baloney because it leans on that great imaginary measure, the "days of learning." Students during the pandemic will "lose" X number of days of learning. "Days of learning" is actually a measure that CREDO made up themselves, based on some "research" in a 2012 paper by Erik Hanushek, Paul Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann. And if "days of learning" seems like a bizarro world way to measure of education (Which days? Days in September? Days in March? Tuesdays? Instructional days, or testing days, or that day we spent the afternoon in a boring assembly? And how does one measure the amount of learning in a day, anyway?)-- well, here's the technical explanation from that paper:

To create this benchmark, CREDO adopted the assumption put forth by Hanushek, Peterson, and CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Covid Slide Panic Is Still Baloney