The Network for Public Education Action is grading the presidential candidates.
If you want to keep track, read here.
“For an explanation of why the candidates received the grades they did, click on their names to the left.”
Ratings may change as candidates express their views.
If you attend a town hall and learn more about a candidate’s views, let us know.
Contact Darcie Cimarusti, Research Associate, NPE Action at darciecimarusti@gmail.com
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you, NPE. Go Bernie.
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Booker and Trump can share their epic “fail,” even though Booker sells himself as a progressive.
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Love seeing this development. Quibbling, I think Biden deserves considerably lower marks if he fails to repudiate the education policies of the Obama Administration.
But, overall, A+ for this endeavor.
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You will be hearing more from me about the candidates. Especially Biden, Booker, Bennett.
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Excellent, Diane. Thank you!
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“This rating measures. . . ”
No it doesn’t measure anything. The rating assesses, evaluates, or better yet judges but it does not measure.
When will we quit bastardizing the meaning of to measure?
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Take a thermometer and measure the global warming temperatures. Measure the billionaires’ wealth and create an inequality index. Count my homeless students. Count DeVos’ yachts. Go to all our ongoing war zones and do a body count. Measure the cost of life saving drugs in the U.S. versus Canada.
One can ‘measure’ the importance of getting Bernie into the Oval Office: On a scale of 1-10, it’s YUGE. Using a debunked devalue added algorithm, YUGE. Using an A-F scale, Bernie gets a grade of YUGE. Democracy is being tested, and on the test Sen Sanders scores beyond ‘proficient’ and ‘advanced’ — YUGE.
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Counting is not measuring.
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What I say about measuring holds true for your example!
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I glossed over your first example, your temperature example is a true measure.
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Just playing with words, English teacher’s privilege. I can count how many times a day I think about how important it is to have a progressive president in 2021. It’s the number ‘yuge’.
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Duane, correct me if I am wrong, but your position is that a measurement has to be of an independently verifiable physical quantity in relation to some physical standard. Is that correct?
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No, it’s not an “independently verifiable physical quantity”. If it was then counting would be considered measuring and it’s not. A measurement must involve a measuring device calibrated against an agreed upon standard unit of measurement for whatever aspect-length, mass, wave length, temperature, etc. . . it is that one is trying to determine.
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Duane, I added that “independently verifiable” business because that’s what makes something scientific. Actually, what is verified is that something is or is not falsified. See Karl Popper on that. You do realize, I suppose, that you are using the term “measurement” in a very narrow sense and that it is generally used in that sense and in much broader ones. Yes, the further we get from concreteness, the more any sort of measurement is going to be subject to a wide range of issues. But it’s difficult for me to see how we could possibly adopt, exclusively, such a narrow view. There’s a LOT that we seek to have understanding of in the sciences that deal with human behavior (economics, education, psychology, cultural anthropology, etc) to which we apply sophisticated tools of measurement and analysis, and it would be crazy to dismiss all of that as utter nonsense. Typically, what happens in these fields is that we operationalize the vague thing that we want to understand so that it can be “measured”–by which we mean quantified. So, we are interested to know how confident people are about the economy, and we develop the consumer confidence index, and this is calculated by averaging responses to five questions about current and future business conditions, employment, and expected income. The result is useful for prediction. Now, one can argue about the particular operationalization, but simply to dismiss it entirely sounds to me like committing oneself to being unable to know anything about this matter. Words are arbitrary symbols that stand for whatever we decide to have them stand for. In science, we try to have them stand for specific, independently observable stuff that can be quantified. And the stuff that fits that bill extends far, far beyond physical measurements in units represented by some physical standard. Recognition that in these other cases we are always substituting some operationalization for the thing to be measured because it cannot be measured directly is wise. Throwing out all nonphysical measurement as useless–well, that’s not sensible, because the fact is, that it isn’t always useless.
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Yes, I understand that my usage is a very narrow usage. And that’s on purpose.
Practitioners of psychometrics, with the emphasis on psycho, love to consider themselves and their endeavors as scientific, objective, and therefore “THE” answer to important questions in the teaching and learning process. That is a false stance. All testing is subjective, with certain biases built in and cannot be considered as objective as other scientific facts are considered as such.
The practitioners deny that subjectiveness and want all to accept their proclamations without question. Notice not one has addressed Noel Wilson’s condemnations of their practice. No one!! (at least that I know an I’ve been looking for almost twenty years)
The purpose of the narrow usage is to deny the psychometrician’s claim of objectivity as that objectivity, is for a good part, based upon the concept that the tests are scientifically measuring something (ask them what and they cannot properly define what it is other than through a weak circular logic that they use A is B because B is defined by A because we say it is-trust us) when in fact they are not measuring anything at all. Are the tests assessing, evaluating and/or judging something, again many times not explicitly defined? Of course they are.
“to which we apply sophisticated tools of measurement and analysis, and it would be crazy to dismiss all of that as utter nonsense.”
Please give me an example of a “sophisticated tool of measurement” in the social supposed sciences. Explain what the agreed upon standard unit of measure is for that supposed measurement, and what the measuring device is and how it has been calibrated against that standard unit. You can’t because there is none.
To call these “sophisticated tools” a form of measurement is to belie what the term to measure means. Again counting things and then doing supposed significant statistical analysis on those numbers is not measuring, it is a statistical analysis, for good or bad, and nothing more.
“Throwing out all nonphysical measurement as useless–well, that’s not sensible, because the fact is, that it isn’t always useless.”
Using nonphysical measurement, whatever that supposedly is, oh I know it’s what the practitioner says what it is-trust him/her, is ludicrous and risible and can only be considered logically useless due to the inherent non-measureable nature of the concept being studied that renders any measurement bogus. Bogus assessments masquerading as measurements results in bogus conclusions. And you are right in that those things aren’t always useless. . . bogus measurement concepts enabled the eugenicists and those who propounded racial inferiority to “prove” that they were right. And those bogus pseudo-measurements currently provide the basis for such insanities as VAM, school report cards, discriminating against many students through test scores, etc. . . .
I can’t and don’t understand your seemingly total acceptance of such insanities that are the pseudo-scientific pseudo-measurement regime we are currently suffering under. (Unless of course, you’re just trying to help me sharpen my arguments against such nonsense, if so, thanks!)
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It is an altogether good thing to question, carefully, supposed measurements. The current high-stakes ELA standardized tests, for example, are an utter joke. They should have been laughed of the stage by educators a long, long time ago, and that they haven’t been makes me question their judgment.
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I used to pay attention to you. But then I realized you’d even be against rulers, thermometers, air pressure gauges, and barometers.
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Boy, have you gotten things all wrong about what I am saying in regards to measuring. How you came up with that bullshit is . . . inexplicable except in your own head.
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Biden’s donors are mostly big money lobbyists, the same as the other neolibs. Just because none of them are specifically charter/voucher/privatization proponents doesn’t mean his positions on education privatization are any different. Biden’s positions on education are quite clear – he has a track record of eight years in the Obama administration. Never once have I heard him criticize or repudiate anything that was done during that time as far as Obama’s educational policies. If you liked Obama on education, by all means vote for Biden and you’ll get more of the same.
Biden’s donors generally: https://theintercept.com/2019/04/25/joe-biden-presidential-bid-lobbyists-fundraiser/
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I will certainly vote for Bernie in the primary but for any Democrat in the general election, including Biden. You know the reasons why: the SCOTUS and lower courts, Trump is just as bad if not worse on education with Betsy DeVos, Biden is at least better on social issues and does not offer dog whistles (fog horns) to racists, white supremacists, xenophobes and nativists.
I was also wondering why Biden got such a high mark for donors since he takes so much corporate money. I hope Biden loses in the primary elections.
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exactly said: If you liked Obama on education, vote for Biden and you’ll get more of the same.
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True, vote for a Republican, that’ll show ’em.
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Never once did I hear Bernie criticize the education policies of the Obama administration despite sitting on an education committee. I did see that he voted for Obama’s Every Student Succeeds Act and he has never repudiated that vote but instead has it on his Senate website as one of his education accomplishments that he is clearly proud of.
Can we stop smearing candidates based on some supposed past selling out of public education which pretty much ALL progressives were just as complicit as Democrats in during the past?
Soon we will have posts about how NPE is a tool of some right wing funder or something else designed to smear them because the organization did not give Biden the F rating that they insist must follow him forever because only their chosen candidate is allowed to change his mind as much as he wants and sell out public education for some greater good anytime he feels like it, because their double standard is truly incredible.
I don’t like Biden, but this hypocrisy where nothing Bernie has ever supported in the past is allowed to be mentioned but every other candidates is untrustworthy no matter what they currently support is getting tiresome. It is the propaganda the far right wants to push and it doesn’t surprise me that the people saying it the most are the very same ones who insisted that having Trump was absolutely no different than having a Democrat as President.
They were wrong. Trump and the Republicans are far worse. And their far right Supreme Court Justices will harm our country for decades.
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MOST importantly now – that no candidates drop out.
The president is lying in wait (pun intended) to stomp on the candidates.
Attacking 20 candidates is a challenge. The sooner the democrats narrow the field, the more time the president, the WMP* and Russia have to concentrate on a couple of candidates.
*WMP = the GOP should forever be known as the White Males Party
(and the silent senators WiMPs)
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There are a lot of white females in that party.
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Even some black females.
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A very negligible percent.
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Dwayne, have a look at footage of a camera panning over the delegates at a Repugnican National Convention. Old, white males. Very few others. And Harlan, dear Harlan, William Hurd, the ONLY black Repugnican Representative, just announced that he is retiring. The only black Repugnican Senator is Tim Scott. This is truly, the party of white, ignorant males, the WIMPs.
BTW, Trump rallies, of late, have featured crowds of Anglo men in hats holding up Latinos for Trump signs. LMAO.
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We’re educators.
Is that “a lot” statistically significant?”
(or significant)
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Wait, what?
I’d say so. . .
. . . but don’t quote me as I have no “research” to back me. I haven’t been paid by the stink tank lately so. . . . .
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How do you measure that?
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You don’t, you count it.
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Based on announced retirements, the number of projected GOP House representatives- zero black and, only 11 women.
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each year less and less women: PBS Newshour has even noticed and done look into the shrinking numbers
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Thanks for this. It is helpful to know the prior stances of candidates and the donors to whom they are beholden. Bernie keeps winning in all education related categories (plus others) for me.
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Bernie for 2020!
His campaign will thrive despite the PR machine of the billionaires trashing or trying to ignore him, e.g. CAP, WaPo, NYT, etc.
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Thanks, folks.
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Today, a defrauded student explains at Huffpo why more than 158,000 students are suing Betsy over student loan debt. “This debt has already affected 3 generations of our family”.
The states should enact laws that enable students to sue for the harm caused by
cyber and contractor K-12 schools. The threat of punishment might deter cyber stalking sellers of bogus education.
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