Overheard: a business CEO will hire any Harvard MBA before they even begin the program. It isn’t the education itself that makes them valuable employees, in this estimation, it’s the screen that let them in that proves their quality. In education, it turns out all of our traditional screens, and even some untraditional ones, don’t [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'Tom Kane'
Finlandia
We returned from Finland on Saturday, so here are my initial overall impressions, focused mostly on the implications for K–12 education. To begin, let me acknowledge that one can’t draw firm conclusions about cause and effect after a short visit. Spending a week in a far-off country means you return knowing a lot more than [...]
g(t)?
Writing in the Boston Globe (per Matt Yglesias), Harvard economist Edward Glaeser cites Tom Kane’s research on teacher quality, saying:
The first step toward improving teacher quality is to attract more talented teachers. The second step is to improve teacher selection on the job, promoting the best and encouraging the worst to help society in some [...]
Value-Added Comes of Age
About four and a half years ago, I was working on a policy paper focused on a developing and controversial method of measuring teacher effectiveness called “value-added.” Created by Dr. Bill Sanders in Tennessee in the mid-1990s, the essence of value-added is pretty simple: Using annual standardized test scores, look at the prior achievement history [...]
Two Down, Five to Go
I wasn’t going to read Bob Herbert’s education column today, because Bob Herbert is boring, but then I thought of T.A. Frank’s excellent article on the Herbert boringness phenomenon, and decided to give it a shot. I’m glad I did! Instead of the standard establishment fare I was expecting, Herbert comes strong from the edu-reform [...]
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.