Poor Tom Friedman! Everyone who knows anything at all about education knows that Tom has egg all over his face. They are either angry at him or laughing at him. He made such a fool of himself with his over-the-top (the same one we are racing to) praise of Race to the Top. If he had ever talked to a real educator, he would have not have praised Race to the Top. Instead, he would have written about Libya or Syria. But, no, he chose to act like Arne Duncan’s PR flack, repeating Arne’s favorite lines and doing no fact-checking.
Fortunately we have EduShyster, who has done the fact-checking. The result of this laborious activity is that E.S. is worried that both Tom Friedman and Arne Duncan have extremely low value-added scores. Before long, both may be replaced by someone young, innovative, and data-driven.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Roughly 25 percent of the turnaround schools, Duncan said, have already showed double-digit increases in reading or math in their first year and about two-thirds showed gains.”
Actually, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that were in fact true, simply because it’s referring to the school, not the kids in the school. After a school gets “turned around”, it’s not usually the same kids coming back to the “turned around” school. It’s a lot like the claim that since charters took over New Orleans, scores have risen dramatically. Of course, the fact that the poorest of the poor kids either died or never returned has absolutely nothing to do with that great “success”. Ahem.
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Yes, but a “fair” value added measure of Duncan’s performance would be the relative change of all American students in all schools, not just a few that he picked out. No child, no school, left behind, right? The teachers don’t get to be judged via VAM based on their 5 favorite kids, and neither should Duncan… if we think this is valid for teachers, it’s certainly valid for the 4th year of a secretary of education.
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Being honest and data challenged are just two of Arne’s major flaws. Having Tom in the choir just adds to it.
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