Collateral damage from the accountability wars
[This interview with me appeared in Jenny Rankin's PSYCHOLOGY TODAY blog on January 19, 2019. Its title: "War Stories From the Accountability Battlefield."] Jenny Rankin (JR): What are some faulty conclusions you have seen educators draw from data in the California School Dashboard, the state's accountability measurement system? Steve Rees (SR): Let’s start with two examples of schools’ vital signs [...]
CERA’s gentle nudge to improve members’ measurement readiness
Keynote speech by Michael Wimberly at the CERA annual conference, November 2018 Michael Wimberly was the keynote speaker on the morning of the first day of the California Education Research Association annual conference on November 13. Over 45 minutes, he walked us through the Air Force’s approach to preparing him to succeed as a jet engine mechanic and [...]
Site and district leaders are learning online how to put numbers to work
Prof. Alex Bowers, Teachers College, Columbia University Meet Alex Bowers. He is a hard-charging, energetic professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College who is opening doors for school and district leaders. Those doors lead to the numbers way of knowing. Numbers that can help district leaders solve riddles like these: Are students missing more days of instruction in schools [...]
Good news awaits if we stop measuring ELs and start measuring “Ever-ELs”
The California accountability system’s interpretation of the progress of English learners is wrong. That’s the bad news. Its flaws are explained in a recent article, “Hidden Progress of Multilingual Students on NAEP.”* that appeared in the August/September 2018 issue of AERA’s bimonthly journal, “Educational Researcher.” The irony is that we are missing a happy conclusion. If we look at students who were [...]
Why I’m a skeptic of “best practices”
I spent September 13 at a special event in Palo Alto to discuss the potential for evidence generated when students use online instructional materials. About 30 people gathered from around the country, and they shared deep experience and concern with building better evidence, enabling applied research to improve K12 education. The star of the day was Mark Schneider, the newly appointed chief [...]
Dan Walters sees a “big void” in our return-on-investment in education
Dan Walters, veteran reporter and author covering California politics Dan Walters, a veteran reporter covering California politics, including education, has 57 years of experience under his belt. He's developed a sharp eye for the slow-moving, big stories that many others miss because it is not an event.... and a finely tuned b.s. detector for passing fashions. When he left [...]
What’s wrong with California? A report from the STATS-DC conference
For the fourth time in six years, I spent more than two exciting days at the annual conference called STATS-DC hosted by the National Center for Education. I attend to stay up-to-date on the condition of K12 data, learning from the 400-500 state agency leaders of many states' data and technology divisions of their departments of education. Learning is indeed [...]
Scholars scorch State Board’s resistance to a true growth measure
When the State Board of Education sat down on July 11, 2018, to reconsider how the dashboard based accountability system will measure year-to-year change, two circles of scholarly critics weighed in. The voices from both circles were strong and clear. One circle was a comprised of a group of more than a dozen scholars from Harvard, USC, UC Davis, Tulane [...]
Paul Warren Criticizes CAASPP’s Misuse in CDE’s Dashboard
Paul Warren, research associate at the Public Policy Institute of California Paul Warren, who was deputy for testing and accountability at the CDE from 1999 to 2003, has written a tough but fair critique of what’s being done with CAASPP results. Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) published it the last week of June 2018. This is not [...]
David Jansen at Fresno USD is mapping student networks to boost attendance
On June 8, 2018, I had the good luck to enjoy a conference at Teachers College, Columbia University, joining nearly 100 scholars, district leaders, business leaders and research people. All of us were drawn by an unusual topic: Education Leadership Data Analytics Summit. The list of those who care about the low level of data literacy among K12 leaders is [...]
How much progress do the CAASPP results reveal?
How often have you been asked: “Tell me whether our kids in middle school achieved gains in math equivalent to the gains other middle school kids attained.” Eric Zilbert has made it possible to answer that question (and more just like it). He’s the CDE’s go-to guy on the psychometric measurement front. In late May, he and his team released [...]
This scholar knows how long-term English learners are created
If your district serves students who you consider to be English learners, you need to read this research article by Peggy Estrada (UC Santa Cruz) and Haiwen Wang (SRI International). Here’s the article. It’s the lead piece in the April 2018 issue of the American Education Research Journal. Its title may be a bit stodgy: “Making English Learner Reclassification to [...]
Stale data in West Contra Costa USD’s LCAP triggers legal challenge
Wendy Lopez and Kateryn Ochoa, have a problem with their district, West Contra Costa USD (WCCUSD). But it’s not the usual sort. These two, one a parent and the other a student, want current data in their district’s LCAP. They are not taking the district’s excuses as a suitable answer. When they asked politely for this data, their LCAP parent [...]
Pockets of 11th graders who refused to take the CAASPP
We Californians would like to think we’re special. Parents and students in other states may be rebelling against the Common Core and the test that comes as its companion. But we think the rebellion can’t happen here. Well, it’s happening in parts of California … not at the scale of the “soccer mom” rebellion in New York, and not at [...]
What could young analysts add to your district’s team?
I spent the afternoon of February 12 at Stanford to attend an education research conference hosted by Sean Reardon’s Center for Education Policy Analysis. The room was filled with scholars – visiting faculty, resident faculty and Stanford grad students. All were hungry to either learn or share what they’ve learned. I was excited to be among more than 120 talented [...]
Mismeasurement of gaps in LCAPs: bad arithmetic, bad logic
The serious subject of gaps has been a hot one for more than five decades. The Coleman Report of 1966 was the first moment in my lifetime when leaders shined a light on inequities in schools. Prior Supt. of Public Instruction, Jack O’Connell, ran on a platform that made gap reduction his calling card. (Did he ever admit that his [...]
California’s 2017 CAASPP trouble is common to most SBAC states
California’s troublingly flat result on the 2017 CAASPP English/language arts assessment is similar to the results that are being reported in twelve of the thirteen other Smarter Balanced Consortium states. This discovery, by retired psychometrician Doug McRae, casts our California problem in an entirely new light. The question is no longer, “Why didn’t our students make progress in English/language Arts?” [...]
Two researchers’ works on gap analysis deserve attention
I confess. I read research. When looking for guidance, for a challenge, for opportunities to make better sense of education data, I look toward those in the social sciences who do this best. My work requires it. My curiosity begs for it. The thorny questions posed by dramatic differences in the rates at which kids learn are the ones I [...]
CERA 2017 conference notes: my favorite presentation
Todd Langager, from San Diego CoE, presenting at CERA, 11/30/17 Todd Langager, a program evaluation coordinator with the San Diego County Office of Education, told an engaging story at CERA's conference on November 30, 2017. His title, "Flipping the Evaluation Narrative," only hinted at the message. The core of his terrific talk was a lesson in story-telling, and [...]
Time to see gaps from new angles
When we discuss achievement gaps or gaps in opportunities to learn, why do we represent those gaps with bar charts? It’s time for us to look at those gaps from new angles, and see if we can discover new insights. Stanford social scientists by Sean F. Reardon, Demetra Kalogrides and Kenneth Shores have already rescued us from the prison of [...]
