My post on the Brookings Chalkboard about adding more research to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

It’s been years since No Child Left Behind pushed for more ‘scientifically based research.’ The world has moved on, of course. Now, lots of people are thinking about how to use big data, the web is everywhere, […]

My post here on the Brookings Chalkboard forum about the $1.2 billion program that doesn’t do anything for student outcomes.

Reactions were easily predicted. The afterschool program community trotted out its standard lines about kids needing to be safe, about how programs reduced exposure to crime and participation in delinquent activities, about kids […]

My post on the Bush Institute web site about annual testing. Looking at the numbers, annual testing does not take a lot of time away from classroom activities. But periodic benchmark testing, which a lot of districts are doing thinking they are preparing students for the annual test, may be taking a lot of […]

My post on the Brookings chalkboard about teacher preparation, an institution for which research and evidence are hurdles that test scores need to get over before programs will use them.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/12/04-chalkboard-dynarski-teacher-prep

Which seems backward: why would test scores have to pass muster to be used as outcomes? Scores already are used as outcomes by teachers and schools. […]

My post here on the Brookings Chalkboard. Access to experienced teachers clearly is imbalanced between affluent and high-poverty schools. Access to effective teachers is much less so.

I want to put forward three questions for education policy. I think many current discussions will prove to be ones in which at least one of the three questions is not answered in advance, with the result that people are talking more loudly, but past each other.

We have a common interest. America will be a […]

My post on the Bush Institute forum on ‘corporate education reform.’ It’s rhetoric more than reality. The reality is measurement, which is happening everywhere including in business.

http://www.bushcenter.org/blog/2014/09/04/corporate-education-reform-no-just-measurements

My post on the Chalkboard forum is here. From a researcher perspective, these highly technical approaches to teacher evaluation have real strengths. It is puzzling they have become a norm so quickly.

Ellen Kisker and I wrote this brief for the Institute of Education Sciences on how to write complex research concepts for a policy audience. There’s little doubt that social-science and statistical jargon deters policymakers, but what is jargon to a policymaker is the vocabulary of a scholarly discipline to a researcher. So it’s a challenging problem […]

My post on the Brookings Chalkboard is here. And another thought. There’s a lot of back and forth about ‘market-based reforms’ of public education. The concept gets confused by advocates pointing to the involvement in education reform of the Gates Foundation (‘obviously supporting reform so schools buy more Microsoft products:’ I don’t think so), or Pearson (‘obviously […]