Ken's Spot

In a recent contribution to the growth/value-added discussion on the DATAG listserv, it was stated that "We invite comment from any of our DATAG Colleagues but are especially interested in the opinions of our resident statisticians." The arc of this discussion is exactly what I had feared - and predicted in my initial posting on May 31.

It runs like this: Growth and value-added models are extremely technical. Here, try to read these extremely technical articles. If you do not understand them, d… Continue

The Capital Region BOCES recently sponsored a useful conference entitled Ready, Set, Grow!: School Improvement through Value-Added Analysis. Value-Added is clearly an idea whose time has come, and the conference was co-sponsored by the New York State School Boards Association, the New York State Council of School Superintendents, and the School Administrators Association of New York State. If you looked in the eyes of the attendees - it was a crowded house - there was a mixture of attenti… Continue

I imagine it will be anti-climatic when the bureaucratic button is finally pushed to close Part I of this year's biggest data drama. The Special Education Snapshot is - or will soon be - done.

For those of you who will not start watching until Season Two, the special education snapshot - or the annual count of all New York State students who receive special education services as of the first school day in December - was reported this year, not through aggregate counts, but via individual studen… Continue

Chapter 57 of the Laws of 2007 stipulates that New York State teachers cannot be awarded tenure unless they successfully use student performance data (including, but not limited to, performance on state assessments) to guide their instruction. A 2008 amendment to Chapter 57 prohibits districts from using test scores to evaluate teachers, while maintaining the requirement that teachers use test scores to improve instruction.

School districts must therefore provide teachers with "timely an… Continue

Three changes have affected education in the United States; all involve access.

All children now have the right to access educational services. There are no more places to hide those students who are harder to teach or slower to learn.

All customers of educational services - students, teachers, parents, and other taxpayers - now have a right to access educational data. There are no more places to hide those teachers and those practices that fail to educate.

And, of course, technology has prod… Continue