Morgan PolikoffNAEP scores are in, and the results aren’t pretty. Critics of education reform and testing are using the occasion to rail against policies, or people, they disagree with.
Morgan Polikoff, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California, calls this “misNAEPery.”
“Overall, it’s a sad turn of events. And what makes it all the more sad is the knowledge that the results will be used in all kinds of perverse ways to score cheap political points and make policy decisions that may or may not help kids,” Polikoff writes on his blog.
The truth is, no one really knows what, exactly, causes the rise or fall of NAEP scores. Education is complex, and not every shift in test scores signifies something meaningful.
There are countless policies being enacted, retracted, or even ignored all across the country. Statistical vagaries, demographic shifts and other unseen factors all muddy the picture even more. With so many variables in play, it's tough enough to isolate the effects of any single policy in a serious academic study, let alone in blog posts and articles published wee hours after the test results are released to the public.
That doesn't mean declines shouldn't be lamented, or success stories celebrated. Let's just be honest about what we know, and what we don't know, about what caused them.
Jack Lessenberry, a political analyst for Michigan Radio and department head of the School of Journalism at Wayne State University, wants to end the charter school experiment in Michigan. “That’s right – get rid of them, all of them,” wrote Lessenberry last week.
Lessenberry’s reasons boil down to charters “draining resources” from district schools and not being any better, on average, than district schools.
Even if he were right, why recommend a political cudgel that would eliminate better-than-average schools, too? More importantly, what about the desires of parents?
The good news is that charter school performance in Michigan is better than Lessenberry believes. CREDO studies show Detroit and Michigan charter school students perform as well as, or better than, their district school peers across most subgroups.
Simon Birmingham. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Australia gave us Hugh Jackman, Steve Irwin, AC/DC, the Bee Gees, Men at Work, Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee, but what has the United States ever done for the land down under?
That trade imbalance may change as the Liberal Party's new Education Minister of Australia, Simon Birmingham, has been a supporter of American-style education reforms, including school vouchers and charter schools.
While the Liberal and Liberal National parties, which currently form the governing coalition in Australia, aren't ready to push vouchers, Birmingham is willing to have a discussion about education reform and parent empowerment. Hopefully he’ll soon be able to do more than just talk about those things.
