Daniel Koretz, a professor who teaches educational measurement at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, generously agreed to field a few questions about educational testing. He is the author of Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us. EW: What are the three most common misconcepti... Read Full Post >
Some days, skoolboy feels bad for the hard-working folks in the New York City Department of Education. They’re caught between a political rock and a statistical hard place. The political rock is the New York State accountability system, which complies with No Child Left Behind’s requirements... Read Full Post >
Daniel Koretz is a professor who teaches educational measurement at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is the author of Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us. Below, he weighs in on the NYC Progress Reports that were released yesterday. eduwonkette: One of the key points o... Read Full Post >
Suppose that your fourth-grader takes a state test that shows that she understands the associative property of multiplication, can multiply two-digit numbers by two-digit numbers, and can find the perimeter of a polygon by adding up the length of the sides. A year later, as a fifth-grader, she t... Read Full Post >
To many observers of public education, there is no doubt about which schools are failing - it's the schools with low rates of students passing state tests, stupid!Of course, this assumes that students' achievement is a direct measure of school quality. "Yet we know that this assumption is wrong....I... Read Full Post >
New AYP numbers are out, folks. In California, only 48% of schools made AYP, and only 34% of middle schools did so. In Missouri, only about 40% of schools made AYP. Pick almost any state, and you'll see that there are soaring numbers of schools designated as "in need of improvement." With numbers li... Read Full Post >
Sometime soon, with great fanfare, the New York City Department of Education will release this year’s School Progress Reports. (Word on the street is that schools already know their grades.) The School Progress Reports, for better or worse, are the centerpiece of the NYC accountability system.... Read Full Post >
Bruce Fuller, sociologist and professsor of education and public policy at the University of California - Berkeley, has co-edited a new book, Strong States, Weak Schools: The Benefits and Dilemmas of Centralized Accountability. Below, he provides a Q&A on the book’s findings. Q. Media reports... Read Full Post >
Economist David Figlio, who has extensively studied the intended and unintended consequences of accountability systems, recently made a move from the University of Florida over to Northwestern. Figlio has a knack for the creative - but still substantive - paper: for example, see his papers on the u... Read Full Post >
On Tuesday, David Figlio - an economist who does great work on the intended and unintended consequences of accountability systems - and I will chat with Ed Week readers about testing and accountability. The event description is below, and you can submit questions here:Raising student achievement has... Read Full Post >
