As I embark on 2014, I reflect upon the many competing, yet interdependent, tensions discussed in education circles in 2013. In conferences, classrooms and statehouses, adults who care about kids debated the best ways to implement: New academic standards (Common Core State Standards or other College and Career Ready Standards)
Students with missing test scores are often highly mobile students and are more likely to be low-achieving students. It is important to include these students in any growth/value-added model to avoid selection bias, which could provide misleading growth estimates to districts, schools and teachers that serve higher populations of these
Welcome to Part 2 of the value-added Myth Busters blog series…have you heard this one before? Educators serving high-achieving students are often concerned that their students’ entering achievement level makes it more difficult for them to show growth. “How can my students show growth if they are already earning high
As the holidays approach, we’ll all have some down-time to catch up on personal and professional reading, hopefully cozied up by a fire with a cup of hot chocolate in hand. While most books regarding data-driven decision making and value-added analyses can be pretty heavy, I’d like to suggest two
K-12 education reform and policy has seen a recent surge in the cinema with "Waiting for Superman," "The Lottery," and this fall’s "Won't Back Down.” However, if you can’t bring yourself to spend $9.00+ at the box office, or (like me) have a hard time finding babysitters to even get
Halloween is around the corner and children everywhere will wear masks throughout their neighborhoods for a night of trick-or-treating fun and, likely, too much candy. A masking has also occurred in education policy with the No Child Left Behind Act, sans the candy at the end of the night. That
