The accuracy of federal education data
Correcting mistakes may be an essential part of a good education, but that doesn’t apply inside the branch of the U.S. government that compiles and keeps education statistics. Indeed, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) knowingly leaves in errors that are discovered two to three years later. And then this error-ridden data is used […]
Data on teacher evaluations
Here’s a really wonky description of data studies on teacher evaluations, What Do We Know About the Tradeoffs Associated with Teacher Misclassification in High Stakes Personnel Decisions?, published by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching on April 15, 2013. In a nutshell, we make too many mistakes. Current evaluation systems tend to overlook many […]
Data on bullying
It’s a myth that “bullying” at schools is a worse problem today than in the past, according to a task force report released on April 30 commissioned by the American Education Research Association (AERA). Indeed, major categories of bullying, such as being threatened by a weapon on school grounds have remained stable — between 7 […]
Data on taking algebra in eighth grade, and the watering down of U.S. math instruction
Here’s some of the findings presented at a session on U.S. math instruction at the AERA annual meeting on Tuesday, April 30, 2013. Another data-driven study shows that the judgment of teachers can often be wrong. In a study of middle-school math education in a California school district, standardized test scores and grades were a […]
