Great Moments In Reformy Backtracking
Earlier this week, I blogged about a reformyist group in Connecticut, the Connecticut Council for Education Reform, that said something pretty dumb: poverty doesn't much matter in student achievement. Their proof was that poor students in New Jersey and Massachusetts do better than those in Connecticut; the reason was that NJ and MA had implemented reformy policies similar to those proposed by Governor Malloy.
There are two reasons that this is nonsense: first, neither NJ or MA has yet implemented anything like Malloy proposes; second, NJ and MA actually addressed school financing reform years ago when CT didn't, and that is far more likely to stand as the reason for their relative successes.
Bruce Baker weighed in on this - twice. Jon Pelto weighed in. Jon Pelto then pointed to a whole bunch of other people who weighed in. All said the same thing: the notion that poverty has little to do with student achievement is absurd on its face.
Well, I guess embarrassment can be a powerful motivator, because Rae Ann Knopf of CCER is dialing it way,
There are two reasons that this is nonsense: first, neither NJ or MA has yet implemented anything like Malloy proposes; second, NJ and MA actually addressed school financing reform years ago when CT didn't, and that is far more likely to stand as the reason for their relative successes.
Bruce Baker weighed in on this - twice. Jon Pelto weighed in. Jon Pelto then pointed to a whole bunch of other people who weighed in. All said the same thing: the notion that poverty has little to do with student achievement is absurd on its face.
Well, I guess embarrassment can be a powerful motivator, because Rae Ann Knopf of CCER is dialing it way,