The Science of Making Up Stuff

[Catshrink]

This article about the weaknesses of NCLB is from March, but pretty good.

"No Child Left Behind demanded simplicity. All 666 regulation-packed pages of it. It simply demands states set some cut score on some standardized test, declare that that score measures something they must call “proficiency” without any pesky evidence that it means any such thing, then name, blame and shame a school that doesn’t meet its quota of children hitting the cut score, labeling the entire school as failing “Adequate Yearly Progress”, again inventing a term that sounds extremely scientific, objective and quantifiable but which, in fact, means Diddily Poop.

<snip>

I’m good. So I’m mad. Now that it’s time to fix the current abuse of using a child’s standardized test to label an entire school, there’s a move to use a cut score to label an individual teacher.

To do this, of course, they have to Make Stuff Up since there is no pyschometrician, analyst or sober test manufacturer who has ever found evidence that a child’s test is a valid assessment of a teacher. In my class, one student might get an A and another might get an F. Does that make me a C teacher? Well, good teacher evaluation is complicated. Best keep it simple and Make Stuff Up:

Start by using words that sound swell, even though there is no science to defend their use. How about “Effective” teachers?

Pitch: Effective Teachers’ kids have high test scores. Ineffective Teachers’ kids have low test scores. Simple to know who gets the prize. And who gets fired. Pundits can phone this one in.

More:

http://lilysblackboard.org/2010/03/nclb-science-of-making-up-stuff/