Comments on: Science!

By: Sherman Dorn

Sherman Dorn — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:41:14 +0000

It's good that tying individual teachers and students together isn't a requirement because it's inherently messy.

By: Loren Steele

Loren Steele — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:20:24 +0000

FOUL!

Data and evidence are only as good as the methodology designed to collect them, and can easily be manipulated to mislead the uninformed or biased listener. That’s what most “reformers” are doing now. Eduwonk, you throw around a definition of science that wouldn’t meet any science teacher’s standards. It’s no wonder science gets a bad rap.

Jonathon,
Those are 2 areas where blatantly vague results have been used by reformers to avoid making difficult financial and political decisions, and your intrepretation has been picked apart over and over again.

By: john thompson

john thompson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:19:39 +0000

So, you’ll join with us to ban data from those identifiers for use in teacher evaluation, and support the termination of administrators who try to sneak that data in through the back door? (and if Klein has turned a blind eye to the misuses of data reported in Gotham Schools, you’d join the dump Klein effort? In the NYC case they are actually violating the law and its hard to endorse scientific honesty while protecting criminal activity)

If you want teacher identifiers to be used down the road after the sceince is worked out, we have another debate for another time. If you want teacher identifiers and use the resulting data to supplement, but not drive evaluation, I’d agree. But surely you understand that no union and the vast majority of teachers have no choice but to resist efforts to devise those models until AFTER we’ve nailed down an enforcable agreement.

By: Jonathon

Jonathon — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:29:37 +0000

Excellent post! The education arena seems to be very resistant to utilizing science and resulting data effectively. As a former teacher with an applied math background this particularly irks me. Research tells us that small changes in class size, lets say 30 to 28 does not impact student achievement, while research also tells us that the teacher is the most important factor in improving academic achievement. Yet in California, where I reside, there is a large economic investment in incremental class size change.