Mercedes Scheider followed the contretemps around Campbell Brown’s misuse of NAEP data. She decided she would try to educate Campbell.
Mercedes goes through NAEP scores over many years and shows how they went up nicely until 2015, when they stagnated at about 1/3 proficient. She patiently explains that until 2015, scores were going up, not declining as Campbell believes.
Now for Campbell to understand this, she is going to have to read it and think about it.
Will she?
Will she correct her error about 2/3 of US kids in 8th grade being “below grade level”? It is not true.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How can Campbell Brown think about something when it is obvious that she can’t think on her own unless she is paid to think from a script someone else hands her?
Wait, that still means she can’t think on her own.
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Her nose is pointy like a witch’s.
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Remember when journalists simply reported, and didn’t pretend to be experts in areas they knew nothing about, and were therefore happy to correct their errors when they were pointed out?
Yes, I am that old ..,
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But when has the media ever been honest as an industry? There may be rare individuals who are honest and knowledgeable, but the media is a for profit industry and is often willing to do anything to bring in that money. That means honesty and truth be damned if it won’t attract a larger audience share or help achieve the agenda of a wealthy, powerful client like Bill Gates.
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Mmm, Mmm good. Campbell is marketing a new soup in honor of education expert Brown. Coming to your local supermarket real soon: Campbell’s Cream of Baloney.
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This line from Mercedes’ post says it best. “She doesn’t know what she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t care.” Brown will not be corrected or made to understand the errors of her false conclusions. She is like a rabid dog whose nature it is to bite and inflict harm without any measure of understanding.
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Exactly. While I appreciate that we have advocates, “educating” Brown is an exercise in futility. When it’s ideological, then the facts can be whatever one wants to conjure up.
Brown’s misuse of data is one of the hazards of measurement. It all depends on one’s perspective. For example, I was watching a Penguins-Lightning game last week and they noted Sidney Crosby’s points-per-game average and how it’s tops in the NHL since 2007. Yet Crosby has not won a Cup since 2008. The Blackhawks and Kings have won 5 of the last 6. Had the stat gone back to 2010, a different story gets told. It all depends on what the portrayer wants to prove.
Brown wants to “prove” public education is a failure. She isn’t interested in understanding how data works. Only interpretations that suit her.
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Campbell Brown actually knows that she made a mistake and is now trying to make it look like she was just being a little sloppy with terminology.
That’s why she tacked “proficiency” on the end of “grade-level” to create “grade-level proficiency”, as if her use of the term “grade-level” was somehow just a shortening of a term rather than a whole-sale redefinition.
Brown is hoping that most people will buy her disingenuous “story”.
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my favorite part of her response is the linking between me and Trump (never mentioning that her husband Dan Señor is a major Republican policy operative, advised George W. Bush on Iraq). My second favorite is her claim that her critics (me, Carol, Tom Loveless, and others who prefer factual accuracy) are profiting financially, unlike her and the $4 million she got to start a website attacking public schools and teachers. Show me the money! I have yet to see it myself.
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Of course, the term “grade-level proficiency” (used by USDOE, for example) actually means the same as performance at grade-level rather than “proficiency” as used by NAEP, but Brown is undoubtedly banking on the fact that the public won’t know that and will simply buy her “shortened” terminology story.
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The ed reform rule on NEAP is when scores go up it’s a result of ed reform and when scores down it’s a result of public schools.
Here’s Harvard grad Duncan explaining it in 2013:
“The 2013 NAEP report card provides encouraging but modest signs of progress in reading and math for U.S. students.
“In 2013, reading and math scores edged up nationally to new highs for fourth and eighth graders. It is particularly heartening that reading scores for eighth graders are up, after remaining relatively flat for the last decade.
“Achievement among the largest minority group in our nation’s public schools—Hispanic students—is also up since 2011. And higher-achieving students as a whole are making more progress in reading and math than in recent years.
“While progress on the NAEP continues to vary among the states, all eight states that had implemented the state-crafted Common Core State Standards at the time of the 2013 NAEP assessment showed improvement in at least one of the Reading and/or Mathematics assessments from 2009 to 2013—and none of the eight states had a decline in scores.”
I don’t know- maybe it’s time to look at America’s toniest private schools. I’m seeing some low analytical performance.
Public schools can’t win this game. If the scores go up it is due to “reform”. If the scores go down it is due to the ‘status quo”. Ed reform wins either way
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Conclusions are designed to feed the failing public schools narrative. The conclusions are based on bias and spin, and have little to do with the actual data. I don’t know if the misuse of data has anything to do with a private school education, or a willingness to prevail over public education at any cost. We have seen the misuse of data and statistics at each step of “reform.” We have seen sins of commission and omission. We have seen false assumptions and conclusions. We have seen data cherry picking, rigged cut scores and phony algorithms designed to put teachers on the defensive. Much of what “reform” represents is an attempt bulldoze anyone that dares to get in the way of the “reform” mission to destroy locally controlled democratic public schools.
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“retired teacher
May 24, 2016 at 11:11 am
Conclusions are designed to feed the failing public schools narrative. ”
I’m no expert, but I refuse to listen to people who crow about college remediation rates without looking at how colleges determine the need for remediation. You can’t analyze something by looking at exactly half the equation. That’s either nuts or political spin, pick one. I get it- public schools are the “lever” they’ve chosen to hit with a hammer but that doesn’t make it “true” or “complete”. I think part of the reason they only hit public schools is because they’re a soft target. I get that, the political and procedural utility of that, but I don’t have to pretend it’s “science”. No, it’s not.
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Noble effort, but, ultimately, a waste of time. You can’t convince someone of something when they do not want to change their opinion. Witness the politics of today in the good old USA.
Read this. It advises you to cut ties and avoid those who are intransigent. I agree with the addition of challenging their public platform anytime and every time they speak.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ambigamy/201403/why-won-t-they-listen-reason
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My mother had a simple Pennsylvania Dutch saying, that applies here, “Convince a man against his will, and he’s of the same opinion still.”
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Brown is a paid shill for so-called reform, and is thus impenetrable to facts or reason.
However, by engaging with her and correcting her lies, it’s possible to reach those who are not fully informed or are on the fence about these matters: thus the need to keep challenging these serial liars.
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“Mercedes goes through NAEP scores over many years and shows how they went up nicely until 2015 ….”
For example, like this…
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/self-fulfilling-prophesy-atlanta-public-schools-now-broken-ed-johnson
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I used to feel sorry for this little princess for being so naive, but now I’m over it. #howdumbiscampbellbrown
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An image enters my head: A spoiled and stubborn child holds her hands over her ears, shouting “LaLaLaLaLa … I CAN’T HEAR YOU … LaLaLaLaLa … I CAN’T HEAR YOU …”
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Market “choice” always means the choice between filter tip and menthol. Twenty or thirty years ago, a washed up faux-journalist like Campbell Brown would have been hawking Virginia Slims. Today, her ilk are all busy pushing the product of “choice” from Corporate Interest Groups (CIGs), mass market eduware.
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