This And That

Eduwonk’s Andy Rotherham begins a rejoinder to Eduwonkette’s brief that the NCLB testing regimen is narrowing the curriculum with this line:

In her growing role as an apologist and propagandist for the status quo…

Now if you are going to substitute name calling for argument and evidence, at least you should be original and creative in your tropes, so the end product has some entertainment value. Rotherham’s friends at Tweed have been using this line so much for the last five years that NYC education watchers were placing bets on whether or not it would become part of their stationery…

Speaking of Tweed, take a look at this defense of their value-added pilot project, which we previously discussed here. Of special note is the last paragraph, which alludes to the fact that the period being measured between tests covers a minimum of two different teachers ["the testing calendar in NYC"]. The purpose of the study, we are told, is to see if this presents a problem. We actually thought that in this era of budget cuts, they might save a little money by skipping the study and putting the following question on the 8th grade Math exam:

If two Math tests are given to a student, one in January 2006 and one in January 2007, and if teacher A teaches the student for 5 months and teacher B teaches the students for 5 months between the two tests, can we know what each teacher contributed to the student’s learning by dividing the student’s total progress in two?

We are willing to bet that NYC’s 8th grade students know the answer to that question.

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