Every year the National Education Policy Center announces the winner of its not-at-all coveted Bunkum Award for the shoddiest think tank report of the previous year.
This year’s winner is the Center for American Progress, for its report purporting to show that the Common Core standards raise the achievement of poor students.
Winner of NEPC’s 2016 Bunkum Award\
BOULDER, CO (PRWEB) FEBRUARY 23, 2017
The 89th Academy Awards will be celebrated this weekend, which means it’s also time to announce the winner of the 2016 National Education Policy Center Bunkum Award. We invite you to enjoy our 11th annual tongue-in-cheek “salute” to the shoddiest think tank report reviewed in 2016.
This year’s Bunkum winner is the Center for American Progress (CAP), for its report, Lessons From State Performance on NAEP: Why Some High-Poverty Students Score Better Than Others.
To learn who our editors judged to be Bunkum Award-worthy, be sure to watch the 2016 Bunkum Award video presentation, read the Bunkum-worthy report and the review, and learn about past Bunkum winners and the National Education Policy Center’s Think Twice Think Tank Review project:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/think-tank/bunkum-awards/2016
About the Think Twice Think Tank Review Project:
Many organizations publish reports they call research – but are they? These reports often are published without having first been reviewed by independent experts – the “peer review” process commonly used for academic research.
Even worse, many think tank reports subordinate research to the goal of making arguments for policies that reflect the ideology of the sponsoring organization.
Yet, while they may provide little or no value as research, advocacy reports can be very effective for a different purpose: they can influence policy because they are often aggressively promoted to the media and policymakers.
To help the public determine which elements of think tank reports are based on sound social science, NEPC’s “Think Twice” Think Tank Review Project has, every year since 2006, asked independent experts to assess strengths and weaknesses of reports published by think tanks.
Few of the think tank reports have been found by experts to be sound and useful; most, however, are found to have little, if any, scientific merit. At the end of each year NEPC editors sift through the reviewed reports to identify the worst offender. We then award the organization publishing that report NEPC’s Bunkum Award for shoddy research.
Find Documents:
Press Release: http://nepc.info/node/8504
NEPC Review: http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-CAP-standards
The National Education Policy Center (NEPC) Think Twice Think Tank Review Project (http://thinktankreview.org) provides the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. The project is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://www.greatlakescenter.org
The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces and disseminates high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu
Diane Ravitch's blog 
cross posted at Oped news
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/NEPC-Bunkum-Award-for-Shod-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Common-Core_Corporate-Fraud_Fraud_Public-Education-170225-898.html
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Alternative think tanks report on Alternative Studies based on Alternative Facts that the Alternative Malignant Narcissist in the White House can tweet about so his Repugnant Alternative Secretary of Education can hijack this godless world for her god of greed.
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Me gusta.
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Thank you.
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This “research report” was published to help market the Common Core. It is a blatant promo put together by one data analyst, one marketer of TFA policies, and one person with experience working for Congress.
I am a big fan of NEPC and especially their Bunkum Awards. If you have any interest in research get on the mailing list and explore the website. NEPC offered some excellent reviews of the $64 million Gates funded “Measures of Effective Teaching” project conducted by economists at Harvard, one at Dartmouth. The study was all about the virtues of VAM, Danielson’s teacher observation scheme, and survey of survey of teachers. I mention this only because the PR for this deeply flawed study extended to Congressional testimony ( e.g., we can measure teacher quality) and multiple publications that were not peer reviewed until NEPC did that work. I recall some reports from USDE were award winners and for a while all of these awards were publicized at the National Press Club.
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Billionaires can buy alternative “research” as well as policymakers. We get fake news as well as fake “research” in pursuit of capitalism. That is why we need legitimate, independent reviews of practice and policy in a democracy.
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Bravo. The Center for American Progress is a Podesta-borne sham that has tried and failed to be the Left’s Heritage Foundation. If you want to know why the Democratic Party is in the mess it is in, you don’t have to look much farther than this “think tank” with no core principles. They study polls before they decide what they believe.
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