2007 August 26 « Thespis Journal

Public Education Reduced to Simplistic Statistics/Rankings

Scott Elliot is an excellent reporter for the Dayton Daily News. He avoids tabloid style coverage of the Miami Valley Schools, and he makes an extra-effort to get it right. However, he and the Dayton Daily News are facilitating public misunderstandings of exactly what is going on in Miami Valley schools today. You will want to look at the latest lurid rankings in the Dayton Daily News today. There are several articles.

The federal and state government has won a major victory in the public relations battleground by establishing readily understood, simplistic testing data that is widely reported as the singular measurement of school success. This testing regimen and the data generated reduce education to the level of sports metaphors and an unsophisticated win/loss lens for viewing and understanding public education.

In commenting on our essay of last Sunday, Scott accurately commented that many measurements of school success are difficult to quantify. There is currently no data reported in the Dayton Daily News or otherwise that measures parental success. There is currently no data available or reported that indicates a control group that measures intellectual abilities at the onset of instruction and the progress made toward the undefined goal of the Ohio Achievement tests. The underlying premise of all the test data is that all students are sent to school with equal skills, equivalent homes, food, clothing, shelter, love, care, instruction, nurturing and identical intellectual ability. The implicit hypothesis is that the kids are all the same, and the schools are either succeeding or failing as measured by one high stakes test.

It appears that it would take too much time for legislators, news reporters, and parents to generate the comprehensive data that would be needed to truly assess the success of a school and its teachers. It is much easier to take the baseline of flawed tests, make snap and erroneous judgments. It seems that parents and news reporters along with the anti public school alliance expects us to generate our own system of reporting school progress and to do so with the already limited resources afforded to school districts. It wouldn’t surprise us since unfunded mandates have been the hallmark of the legislature and the congress.

In an age of sophisticated technology, the state report card should have many more determining factors that reflect a comprehensive picture of achievement and progress in the individual schools and school districts. Schools and students are more than test scores, yet these success stories go largely unreported. Of course, the state government isn’t generating a huge data base of “educational excellence” that is ready-made for drive-by media types. This would require some serious in-depth reporting and research.

Reporting on and evaluating schools using the same paradigm as coverage of major league baseball is a disservice to the taxpayers, teachers and students.

Thespis Journal Reaction to the 2006 Report Card as reported by Scott Elliot

Erroneous Blogging at the Dayton Daily News

Media Played Like A Violin by the ODE

August 26, 2007 Posted by Thespis | Education & Thought Leadership | | 4 Comments

Shame on Robin Roberts

Robin Roberts of ABC News and Good Morning America is recovering from breast cancer. We wish her well. No doubt, Robin has had a positive impact and has encouraged other women and breast cancer patients and survivors. However, Robin has chosen to make her medical condition the platform for universal health care. Being part of the liberal elite, effete establishment means that Robin has to have a one-dimensional cause that will endear her to the public and therefore, protect her job. One article even states that Robin is echoing Michael Moore and his ridiculous unproven assertions in his latest mockumentary, SiCKo.

Here’s what an angry moonbat has to say.

August 26, 2007 Posted by Thespis | Liberal Nonsense | | 30 Comments

Tim Russert: Political Hack

Tim Russert is a disgusting liberal, political hack. In a question to “I’m Afraid I might lose my Seat” Senator John Warner, Russert asks, “will any of the Republicans in the senate now have the courage to separate themselves from the President?”

Courage….what courage? Russert has an unusual definition of courage. It is currently the easiest thing in our moonbat infested capital to bash President Bush and demand an immediate troop withdrawal. If Russert wants to ask about courage, why doesn’t he ask one democrat why they have not been able to do anything about the war in their first nine months of controlling congress?

Even at the apex of his power and influence as a journalist, Russert preens before the cameras and carries the water of feckless democrats. Tim Russert is leading the charge at NBC to convince our country that liberalism has something substantial to offer our country. I’m not sure when Russert went from newsman to propaganda specialist.

August 26, 2007 Posted by Thespis | Liberal Nonsense | | 1 Comment