Taos/ Voters Renew Taos County Educational GRT
By Matthew van Buren
Taos News
September 18, 2012
Taos County voters voted strongly in favor of the re-imposition of the Taos County Educational GRT (gross-receipts tax).
Unique to Taos County, the half-cent tax goes toward paying off bonds used to improve school facilities and grounds countywide.
According to unofficial Early Voting results, 1,496 people voted in favor of the tax, while 422 voted against it.
In Early Voting, 506 Taos voters voted in favor of the tax, while 100 voted against. In Peņasco, 36 early voters were in favor of the tax, while one voter was against. In Questa, 10 early voters voted for the tax, while two voted against it.
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Santa Fe/ Superintendent Joel Boyd Unveils Plan to Evaluate School Principals
By Robert Nott
The New Mexican
September 18, 2012
Noting that principals are key players in the success of a school and its students, Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Joel Boyd on Tuesday night unveiled a new plan for evaluating principals and holding them accountable.
He said it offers both a quantitative and qualitative method to evaluate principals in four focus areas: student achievement, community satisfaction, school operations and instructional leadership.
- "We want every school to be good," the superintendent told the school board, reiterating a goal he's stated often since taking the job on Aug. 1. "What gets measured gets done."
While Boyd said the district is still gathering data and setting measurement ratios before cementing in place what he calls the Santa Fe Public Schools Performance Compacts by Oct. 1, principals will be given clear goals over the course of a year.
- For instance, increasing Standard Based Assessment test score results by a certain percentage.
- Schools with overall proficiency levels below 25 percent must increase by eight percentage points in one year;
- those with levels in the 25 percent to 50 percent range must increase by six percentage points in one year, and so on.
- Principals must also prove that they are in compliance with state- and district-mandated special education, English-language learning and safety procedures.
- In addition, student and parental input, via a survey, on such issues as school safety, Code of Conduct compliance and disciplinary measures will be included in the evaluations.
Other evaluation factors include:
- how successful principals are at improving both teacher and student attendance rates,
- increasing the number of students who participate in SAT, ACT and Advanced Placement testing, and
- using their schools' discretionary budget funds.
Boyd called these evaluation standards "ambitious but realistic targets" that heighten expectations, align goals with administrative support for principals and ensure accountability.
- "What's become clear is that there has been no performance-management system in place," Boyd said. "People have been evaluated on their personality, not their performance."
The state Public Education Department continues to refine its new teacher/principal evaluation method as part of Gov. Susana Martinez's education reforms. But Boyd said before Tuesday's meeting that while he intends to meet with department's Secretary-designate Hanna Skandera this week to discuss his new plan, he intends to go through with it whether he gets that department's OK or not.
He said he began discussing the ideas with all the district's principals at a meeting about 10 days ago.
Only two Santa Fe principals attended Tuesday's presentation. Santa Fe High Principal Leslie Kilmer and DeVargas Middle School Principal Diane Garcia-Piro both said they were aware of the evaluation plan. Garcia-Piro said she was among principals who provided some input for it.
"At least it lays out expectations in each area," Kilmer said, noting that this is the first time in her 27 years of education experience in Texas and New Mexico that she has seen such a compact. "Overall, we need accountability," she said. "That equates to responsibility, and we have to be responsible in our jobs."
Under the evaluation measure, she said, her school has to improve SBA test scores by six percentage points in a year. "My question is, if we don't meet that six percent goal, what will the discussion be? I don't know," she said. "I haven't heard."
Garcia-Piro echoed that concern, praising the plan for its clarity of focus when it comes to accountability and responsibility, but asking, "How will it ultimately be used in terms of the evaluation process? We're not at all sure about that."
Asked before the meeting if the compact for principals could lead to re-assignments, dismissals or disciplinary or probationary measures, Boyd said it's too early to discuss such hypothetical questions, but acknowledged, "Anything is a possibility."
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ABQ/ APS Insurance Rates Rising
By Hailey Heinz
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
September 19, 2012
Albuquerque Public Schools employees will likely have to pay more for health insurance next year, in both their premiums and co-pays.
The APS school board's finance committee voted unanimously Monday to approve a new benefit plan that requires more money from employees, but which administrators said is necessary to keep the district's insurance solvent.
The plan must still be approved today by the full school board, but all members of the board serve on the finance committee, so the vote is unlikely to change.
The plan would increase employee premium contributions by varying degrees, depending on which insurance plan they use.
- APS employees can choose to be insured in either the Lovelace or Presbyterian networks, and the increases will be steeper for those on a Lovelace plan.
- The Lovelace plan is currently cheaper, and the district is increasing those premiums more.
- Depending on how much employees earn and which plan they use, their per-paycheck contributions could increase by as little as $1 or as much as $20.
- For employees on the Presbyterian plan, premiums would increase by about 2 percent, compared to 8 or 9 percent for employees with a Lovelace plan.
- The new rates would take effect in January.
- Co-pay increases also would vary, depending on the service.
- The cost of generic prescription drugs would increase by $5, while the
- co-pay for outpatient surgery would increase from $100 to $250.
APS is self-insured, and district officials said the new plan is necessary to keep the plan solvent.
Claim costs are projected to outstrip contributions over the next two years. According to a letter sent to employees Tuesday, this is mainly due to the increased cost of health care, which has increased by about 10 percent nationally.
The district had built up cash reserves in its insurance fund, but has spent those down over the past few years to avoid increasing costs to employees.
APS board member Analee Maestas ultimately voted for the change, but said she is concerned about the impact to employees.
"That's quite a hit for people who haven't had a raise in five years," she said. "It's a double whammy."
APS Chief Financial Officer Don Moya agreed the increase will be hard on employees, but said APS' plan is still better for employees than the state plan used by most smaller districts. He also said he is optimistic that no more increases are on the horizon.
"I'm hoping this will be the worst of it," he said.
Board member Martin Esquivel, who chairs the finance committee, complimented district administrators for holding down costs over the past two years.
"I think it's nothing short of phenomenal these rates have not increased over these last two years," Esquivel said. "That's almost unheard of."
APS employees can prevent their premiums from increasing by an additional $20 for individuals by participating in wellness screenings, which have been going on annually for the past three years. They can also make changes to their insurance during an open enrollment period, to be held in late October.
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ABQ/ APS, Community Take On Bullying
By Kim Vallez
KRQE-TV, Channel 13
September 18, 2012
Bullying was the focus of a meeting Tuesday organized by Albuquerque Public Schools.
District officials say they recognize that something needs to be done to get a handle on the problem. Now they're turning to the public for help.
The problem is how to do that.
APS officials say they regularly get reports of bullying and regularly address it.
But some in the public don't think they're doing a good enough job.
Take Jill Frankel.
"I feel completely blown off by APS," she said.
Last school year her son received hate text messages from another student.
The district suspended the other boy until January. To Frankel's surprise the kid was back in school this year.
APS officials later told KRQE News 13 they determined a long-term suspension wasn't appropriate but never notified Frankel.
Some say that is evidence something is seriously lacking in the district's approach to bullying.
- "If everyone in school and the community are doing the same thing, talking the same language accepting the same things and not accepting the same things we can put a dent in this," Kristine Meurer of APS Family and Community Support said.
Meurer said that is the goal of the community meetings, to find out from parents, teachers and community members what they need to do differently.
A big challenge is making sure they address the problem while assuring bullies get the education they deserve.
Also, they have to deal with today's technology.
Bullying is no longer just kids pushing around others on the playground.
"If bullying only happened in the schools, we would probably be able to control it," Meurer said. "It occurs outside of schools, and now with the age of technology it could occur 24/7.
"What are the things that can prevent it?"
Tuesday's meeting was at Sandia High School from 6-8 p.m.
There will be another one Thursday at LBJ Middle School.
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Washington DC/ Interplay of Strategies Seen as Key in Turnarounds
By Sarah D. Sparks
Education, Vol. 32, Issue 4 [Edweek.org]
September 19, 2012
What makes one low-performing school turn around and build momentum over time, while another, seemingly similar school tries the same strategies but continues to struggle?
It's not just particular programs or practices, but the interplay of school implementation with district policies and support, according to the Institute of Education Sciences' Turning Around Low-Performing Schools project-the most comprehensive federal research on such schools to date.
- "There's not a lot out there on how you know that a school has turned around-and will stay turned around rather than just jumping up for a year," said Rebecca Herman, a managing research analyst and school improvement expert for the American Institutes of Research. The AIR collaborated with Policy Studies Associates, the Urban Institute, and Decision Information Resources on the project.
- While final reports will not be issued until later this year, researchers released the results of their four interconnected longitudinal studies of 750 chronically low-performing schools, in Florida, North Carolina, and Texas, during a symposium at the Society for Research in Educational Effectiveness conference here Sept. 6.
Comparing Apples
The project used an independent method to identify chronically low-performing schools and track them from 2002-03 through 2007-08;
- researchers developed their own identification system because other methods to identify persistently low-performing schools for the School Improvement Fund or No Child Left Behind Act accountability differed from state to state and did not include student growth.
- The study schools included the lowest 5 percent of schools in each of the three states, with achievement in the bottom 15th percentile for that state and less than 40 percent student growth over time in both reading and mathematics.
- Student achievement was based on the performance in each school's highest grade-typically 5th for elementary schools and 8th for middle schools-and
- student growth was calculated on the basis of the change in students' performance between grades 3 and 5 for primary schools and 6 and 8 for middle schools.
"What one state may consider a low performer, another may not," said Michael Hansen, a member of the project team and a longitudinal-data research associate at the AIR, based in Washington.
- "We wanted to compare apples to apples ... and we wanted to find authentic improvement in performance, rather than statistical-measurement error or demographic changes."
About half the schools identified as initially low-performing were able to show some signs of improvement within three years; another 35 percent showed no increase in student-achievement status or growth.
But 15 percent of schools were considered true turnarounds:
- They improved the number of students reaching proficiency in math or reading by at least 5 percentile points, with student growth rates in the 65th percentile statewide.
- The study looked back at performance during the last three years of the study to ensure early improvement continued over time.
Turnaround rates varied considerably by state and subject, with schools much more likely to improve poor performance in mathematics than in reading, and only 3 percent to 4 percent able to improve in both subjects at once. Those two-subject-turnaround schools were more likely than other schools to report low turnover of highly qualified teachers and more technical assistance with data use.
Need to Read
Still, the lower reading-improvement rates caused "serious misgivings" for Jennifer O'Day, an AIR principal research scientist not involved in the project.
- "Let's face it, for kids to graduate from high school and do well in life, they really need to read, and read well, and if we aren't helping them do that, we have a real problem," Ms. O'Day said. "This is particularly true as we move toward the new Common Core State Standards," which have an increasing focus on literacy across the curriculum.
In another of the project's studies, Brenda J. Turnbull, a principal associate, and researcher Erikson Arcaira, both with the Washington-based Policy Studies Associates, conducted site visits and in-depth interviews at 36 of the schools identified as initially low-performing in 18 districts across the three states. Case-study schools did not know they had been identified as improving or not, and neither did those assigned to visit the schools.
- Data use, targeted student interventions, and teacher collaboration topped the most common strategies at the schools deemed to be turnaround schools, while
- more schools that did not improve used new curriculum or professional development.
A related study in the project found strategies such as extended content periods and schedule changes were more likely to be used at improving middle schools than primary schools.
Though strategies overlapped in both types of schools, Ms. Turnbull argued they were only surface similarities.
- "There were some schools where there was a data wall, the numbers were in everybody's face all the time, ...but when we asked them what was central to your improvement effort, there was variation," and
- teachers did not have a clear sense of how the data was being used, she said.
Working in Combination
Improving schools tended to combine strong leadership and data use with strategic teacher recruitment, management, and "intensive" professional development.
Ms. Turnbull noted that most of the schools, regardless of whether or not they improved, said they used professional development, but researchers only counted that training as "intensive" if it was ongoing throughout the school year and designed to address the specific issues raised in the school's turnaround plan. For example, turnaround schools were more likely to provide professional development specifically on how to analyze and use student data to improve instruction.
- "It's different from just saying 'professional development was our central thing'-there's so much drive-by professional development," she said.
The differences between improving and non-improving schools became clearer when researchers looked at groups of strategies and supports.
- For example, more than a third of the turnaround schools implemented a combination of data use and targeted interventions, compared with fewer than one in 10 of the schools that didn't improve, Mr. Arcaira said.
- In fact, the researchers found turnaround schools implemented on average fewer improvement strategies, 2.3 during the period studied, than schools that did not improve, which used 2.6.
Staff in 17 percent of the schools that did not improve reported "too many strategies" were being used.
"We found multiple interlocking strategies that formed a framework for improvement, rather than discrete strategies that one might call a silver bullet. The sense of coherence, collaboration, leadership, and support came across as different atmospherically in the way people described them," Ms. Turnbull said. "Certainly, just throwing multiple reform efforts at the school is not a good way to go."
Schools that made substantial improvement were more likely to have accountability pressure and support from their district leaders, and to have heard explicitly how their school's improvements fit into district reform.
"It really confirmed the importance of these local factors at implementation and the complex network of policies, programs, practices, and supports in school turnaround," Mr. Arcaira said.
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New York NY/ Coursera Education Site Expands Slate of Universities and Courses
By Tamar Lewin
New York Times
September 19, 2012
Coursera, a start-up online education company that has enrolled 1.35 million students in its free online courses since it began just five months ago, is now more than doubling, to 33, its partners, universities that will offer classes on its platform.
All together, Coursera will provide more than 200 free "massive open online courses," known as MOOCs.
The new partners include:
- 2 more Ivy League institutions, Brown University and Columbia University;
- a liberal arts college, Wesleyan University;
- specialized institutions like the Mount Sinai School of Medicine;
- public research universities like the University of Florida; and
- more international schools like the University of Melbourne, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
The caliber of Coursera's partners - Princeton, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania were among the original partners - has given it credibility and cachet in higher education circles, so much so that some university presidents have begun to fret that it will reflect badly on them if they fail to sign on.
"You're known by your partners, and this is the College of Cardinals," said E. Gordon Gee, the president of Ohio State, one of the new partners. "It's some of the best universities in the country."
Mr. Gee, whose university[Ohio State ] will offer two courses from its College of Pharmacy, said he had some concerns about giving away content with no revenue stream in sight.
- "That does keep me up at night," he said. "We're doing this in the hope and expectation that we'll be able to build a financial model, but I don't know what it is. But we can't be too far behind in an area that's growing and changing as fast as this one."
Columbia will start on Coursera with two engineering courses, according to the provost, John Coatsworth, but expects to expand to more courses in a variety of fields over the next year.
The new courses will range broadly from Mount Sinai's three classes on systems biology to Berklee College of Music's four: introduction to guitar, introduction to improvisation (with the Grammy Award winner Gary Burton), introduction to music production and songwriting.
"We've also been about expanding the reach of the college," said Debbie Cavalier, Berklee's vice president for online learning. "We've always had some kind of free online offers, and we couldn't be more excited about this."
Coursera's explosive growth shows no sign of leveling off.
- It enrolled its millionth student on Aug. 9; l
- ess than six weeks later, the student ticker on the Web site passed 1.35 million.
- The students come from 196 countries, with
- about a third from the United States and the next largest contingents from Brazil and India.
A report from Moody's Investors Service last week predicted that the rise of MOOCs might help leading universities reach more students, bolster their reputation and eventually generate revenue from distributing content or issuing certificates. The report warned, however, that the growing popularity of free online courses could be a problem for small local colleges and for-profit institutions.
Coursera was founded by two Stanford computer science professors, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, who are on leave. (Another Stanford computer scientist, Sebastian Thrun, whose Stanford course on artificial intelligence last year had 160,000 students, is the co-founder of Udacity, another thriving MOOC company.)
Although Stanford remains one of Coursera's partners, the university is also experimenting with other approaches to massive online courses.
- Those include a newly developed open-source platform of its own, Class2Go, which will offer classes next month on computer networking and solar cells, fuel cells and batteries.
- "We really want to see what works," said John C. Mitchell, the recently appointed vice provost for online learning at Stanford. "We've started out in one direction with Coursera - which is a great company, and it's great working with them - but it's not clear that the current mode of producing courses is where we're going to end up in five years."
Many faculty members, he said, expressed a preference for offering online courses internally, on an open-source platform like Class2Go.
- Stanford has also offered a technology entrepreneurship MOOC on a third platform, Venture Lab. Ultimately, he said, different schools at Stanford may choose different approaches.
A revenue stream may not be long in the making. Mr. Mitchell said he could imagine licensing courses, with other colleges paying a fee to use the material, just as they would for a textbook.
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New York NY/ More Colleges Team with Coursera, For-Profit Web-Based Educator
By Melissa Korn
Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2012
As the demand for online learning continues to grow, another 17 prominent universities Wednesday joined Coursera, a company that hosts free Internet-based college classes.
The new additions-including Columbia University, Emory University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine-give the for-profit company a larger footprint in the increasingly crowded market for the so-called "massive, open online courses [MOOCs]."
Coursera, which was founded in fall 2011 by two Stanford University professors, signed its first partners and brought in $16 million in venture backing in April. It now has 33 partners.
Under the current business model, universities develop their own classes, and Coursera provides the online platform and operational support free of charge.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company is just one in a growing field of online-course providers.
Udacity, Udemy and edX-the latter of which is backed by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-are all competing with Coursera for attention, students and venture dollars.
- Despite the fact that many of the providers and schools are still trying to figure out how to turn the free-online-learning model into a steady revenue stream, these experimental courses have gained substantial ground in the world of education, with some industry analysts speculating that they could someday supplant traditional campus programs.
- Although the company has no firm deadline for turning a profit, Coursera is weighing options, including charging for certificates or selling student data to recruiters, said co-founder Andrew Ng. Charging students an upfront fee isn't on the table, he added.
Coursera offers about 200 courses to more than 1.3 million registered users. But not all registered users participate in classes, which generally include taped lectures, interactive quizzes and exams. About 30% of students who begin courses actually finish them, according to the company.
Many students in online courses already have degrees and are seeking a career boost; others are using the classes to get a taste of higher education.
Kate Popp, an account manager at Crimson Hexagon Inc., a Boston social-media analytics company, has signed up for 10 Coursera classes this fall and winter in subjects including statistics, mathematics and global policy challenges.
"Right now, grad school doesn't really work with my schedule," said Ms. Popp, 23 years old, who graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 2011 and is considering an M.B.A. program or a masters in literary theory. "Free courses online seem like the best way to get that education" without enrolling in a degree program, she said.
Providers of massive, open online courses could threaten the business of some commuter colleges and for-profit online institutions. A Moody's Investors Service report from last week warned that the rise of free, online courses could erode the value propositions of those costlier programs.
University of Florida, a new Coursera partner that plans to offer six classes on the platform next year, looked into a number of free online models before signing with the company, said Andy McCollough, associate provost for teaching and technology.
- The University of Florida brought in about $70 million in gross revenue last year from its 100-plus online undergraduate and graduate degrees and certificates. The school plans to use Coursera partly as a way to refine its paid offerings, as well as to fulfill its public mission of granting access to a broad swath of students, Mr. McCollough said.
- Brown University, another new Coursera partner, is also wading deeper into online classes with this venture. That school, which has some "blended" online and in-person courses at its school of continuing education, will begin offering three courses in comparative literature, archaeology and computer science next summer.
Katherine Bergeron, Brown's dean, says the technological advances-such as watching lectures at home, rather than in a lecture hall-should make the residential student's experience "more collaborative and interactive."
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Washington DC/ OPINION: Schooling Beyond Measure
By Alfie Kohn [Kohn is the author of 12 books, including The Case Against Standardized Testing and The Homework Myth]
Education Week [Edweek.org]
September 19, 2012
The reason that standardized-test results tend to be so uninformative and misleading is closely related to the reason that these tests are so popular in the first place. That, in turn, is connected to our attraction to-and the trouble with-grades, rubrics, and various practices commended to us as "data based."
The common denominator? Our culture's worshipful regard for numbers. Roger Jones, a physicist, called it "the heart of our modern idolatry ... the belief that the quantitative description of things is paramount and even complete in itself."
Quantification can be entertaining, of course. Readers love Top 10 lists, and our favorite parts of the news are those with numerical components: sports, business, and weather. There's something comforting about the simplicity of specificity. As the educator Selma Wassermann observed, "Numbers help to relieve the frustrations of the unknown."
If those numbers are getting larger over time, we figure we must be making progress. Anything that resists being reduced to numerical terms, by contrast, seems vaguely suspicious, or at least suspiciously vague.
In calling this sensibility into question, I'm not denying that there's a place for quantification. Rather, I'm pointing out that it doesn't always seem to know its place. If the question is "How tall is he?," "6 foot 2" is a more useful answer than "pretty damn tall." But what if the question were "Is that a good city to live in?" or "How does she feel about her sister?" or "Would you rather have your child in this teacher's classroom or that one's?"
"To be overly enamored by numbers is to be vulnerable to their misuse."
The habit of looking for numerical answers to just about any question can probably be traced back to overlapping academic traditions like behaviorism and scientism (the belief that all true knowledge is scientific), as well as the arrogance of economists or statisticians who think their methods can be applied to everything in life. The resulting overreliance on numbers is, ironically, based more on faith than on reason. And the results can be disturbing.
In education, the question "How do we assess kids/teachers/schools?" has morphed over the years into "How do we measure ... ?" We've forgotten that assessment doesn't require measurement, and, moreover, that the most valuable forms of assessment are often qualitative (say, a narrative account of a child's progress by an observant teacher who knows the child well), rather than quantitative (a standardized-test score). Yet the former may well be brushed aside in favor of the latter by people who don't even bother to ask what was on the test. It's a number, so we sit up and pay attention. Over time, the more data we accumulate, the less we really know.
You've heard it said that tests and other measures are, like technology, merely neutral tools, and all that matters is what we do with the information. Baloney. The measure affects that which is measured. Indeed, the fact that we chose to measure in the first place carries causal weight. His speechwriters had President George W. Bush proclaim, "Measurement is the cornerstone of learning." What they should have written was "Measurement is the cornerstone of the kind of learning that lends itself to being measured."
One example: It's easier to score a student writer's proficiency with sentence structure than her proficiency at evoking excitement in a reader. Thus, the introduction of a scoring device like a rubric will likely lead to more emphasis on teaching mechanics. Either that, or the notion of "evocative" writing will be flattened into something that can be expressed as a numerical rating. Objectivity has a way of objectifying. Pretty soon the question of what our whole education system ought to be doing gives way to the question of which educational goals are easiest to measure.
I'll say it again: Quantification does have a role to play. We need to be able to count how many kids are in each class if we want to know the effects of class size. But the effects of class size on what? Will we look only at test scores, ignoring outcomes such as students' enthusiasm about learning or their experience of the classroom as a caring community?
Too much is lost to us-or warped-as a result of our love affair with numbers. And there are other casualties as well:
- We miss the forest while counting the trees. Rigorous ratings of how well something is being done tend to distract us from asking whether that activity is sensible or ethical. Dubious cultural values and belief systems are often camouflaged by numerical precision, sometimes out to several decimal places. Stephen Jay Gould, in his book The Mismeasure of Man, provided ample evidence that meretricious findings are often produced by impressively meticulous quantifiers.
- We become obsessed with winning. An infatuation with numbers not only emerges from but also exacerbates our cultural addiction to competition. It's easier to know how many others we've beaten, and by how much, if achievements have been quantified. But once they're quantified, it's tempting for us to spend our time comparing and ranking, trying to triumph over one another rather than cooperating.
- We deny our subjectivity. Sometimes the exclusion of what's hard to quantify is rationalized on the grounds that it's "merely subjective." But subjectivity isn't purged by relying on numbers; it's just driven underground, yielding the appearance of objectivity. An "86" at the top of a paper is steeped in the teacher's subjective criteria just as much as his comments about that paper. Even a score on a math quiz isn't "objective": It reflects the teacher's choices about how many and what type of questions to include, how difficult they should be, how much each answer will count, and so on. Ditto for standardized tests, except the people making those choices are distant and invisible.
Subjectivity isn't a bad thing; it's about judgment, which is a marvelous human capacity that, in the plural, supplies the life blood of a democratic society. What's bad is the use of numbers to pretend that we've eliminated it.
Skepticism about-and denial of-judgment in general is compounded these days by an institutionalized distrust of teachers' judgments. Hence the tidal wave of standardized testing in the name of "accountability." Part of the point is to bypass the teachers and indeed to evaluate them, too. The exalted status of numerical data also helps explain why teachers are increasingly being trained rather than educated.
To be overly enamored of numbers is to be vulnerable to their misuse, a timely example being the pseudoscience of "value-added modeling" of test data, debunked by experts but continuing to sucker the credulous. The trouble, however, isn't limited to lying with statistics. None of these problems with quantification disappears when no dishonesty or incompetence is involved. Likewise, better measurements or more thoughtful criteria for rating aren't sufficient.
At the surface, yes, we're obliged to do something about bad tests and poorly designed rubrics and meaningless data. But what lies underneath is an irrational attachment to tests, rubrics, and data, per se, or, more precisely, our penchant for reducing to numbers what is distorted by that very act.
