Steve Rees asks, “When K-12 Leaders Make Mistakes, Who Notices?” His guest blog on EDUWONK, Andy Rotherham’s popular education website, looks at error rates in
School board leader, Jill Wynns, makes a case for asking smarter questions in her essay, “The Art of the Right Question.” It appeared in the
Michelle Carl, editor of EDCAL, interviews Steve Rees about “Mismeasuring Schools’ Vital Signs.” This is the weekly newspaper of the Association of California School Administrators
Jenny Rankin interviews Steve Rees in her column in PSYCHOLOGY TODAY (January 2, 2023). She asks what can be done to reduce the harm caused
Author and charter advocate David Osborne reviews “Mismeasuring Schools’ Vital Signs” in THE 74. His views on governing wisely (see his book “Reinventing Government”) provide
Thanks to Sean Reardon’s team at the Stanford Educational Opportunity Project, and Tom Kane’s team at the Harvard Center for Education Policy Research, the evidence
This opinion essay by the lead education reporter of the Washington Post, Valerie Strauss, reveals a common misunderstanding of the meaning of the term “proficient”
The authors make a daring assertion, after examining 50 years of test results (1971 to 2017). They claim that student achievement has grown a lot.
I’m eager to share a story of our use of two different measures of emerging readers’ skills to gauge whether teachers are referring the right
What is the implied promise in the contract between school districts and the parents who bring them their children to educate? The first promise is
At this year’s annual American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference, education scholars presented 2,188 papers, symposia and roundtables–all of it online, of course. I was
If analysis is what you’re doing, you face some of the same decisions as when you view a work of art. How close to a
In ten years, will historians look back at the 30-year effort to get teachers to interpret test data as a failure? I’m impatient. I don’t
This is a story of connecting the dots, of diagnostic riddles. This is a story about the value of practicing science rather than teaching science.
Although the California Dept. of Education’s Dashboard continues to mismeasure gaps, a team of social scientists at Stanford are interpreting gaps wisely. Meet Sean Reardon
As education leaders declare their support for equal justice, and repeat their commitment to reduce the achievement gap, they are hard-pressed to answer the most
The moment in the fall when school opens will be a moment of reckoning for districts. They will learn to what degree their parents and
As you are putting finishing touches on your district’s LCAP or your site’s SPSA, I hope you’re valuing your interim assessments more highly. With this
For more than 20 years, higher-ups have been urging educators to “just use data” when making decisions. But almost no one has dared study what
I’m feeling very blue today. I vote green. And I stop for red lights. When I tell you what I do or how I feel
Over the past 20 years, I’ve met at least 60 assessment directors among the 240 districts we served. When I asked them to tell me
After reading dozens of district LCAPs this year, I’m appalled and worried. What appalls me most is not their length or the poor writing that
Let me know if this surprises you. I don’t believe in data-driven decision-making. In fact, when I hear someone affirm this phrase, my b.s. detectors
“The key question is whether teaching can shift from an immature to a mature profession, from opinions to evidence, from subjective judgments and personal contact
The Dashboard has changed a little each year in the way it presents and interprets measures of districts’ and schools’ vital signs. But one thing
The CDE’s Dashboard has become the new interpreter of schools’ and districts’ health. Its dials and color matrixes have replaced numbers as the measurement language
The editors of the official journal of the American Statistical Association have put a spike in the heart of a monster of their own creation.
[This interview with me appeared in Jenny Rankin’s PSYCHOLOGY TODAY blog on January 19, 2019. Its title: “War Stories From the Accountability Battlefield.”] Jenny Rankin
The California accountability system’s interpretation of the progress of English learners is wrong. That’s the bad news. Its flaws are explained in a recent article, “Hidden
I spent September 13 at a special event in Palo Alto to discuss the potential for evidence generated when students use online instructional materials. About 30
If your district serves students who you consider to be English learners, you need to read this research article by Peggy Estrada (UC Santa Cruz)
The serious subject of gaps has been a hot one for more than five decades. The Coleman Report of 1966 was the first moment in
When educators talk about their work to parents, they utter buzzwords that leave their audience in the dark. This “ed-speak” phenomenon is so prevalent, it
