Wednesday, June 06, 2007

This guy should be fired!

Report Shows Indiana's Achievement Gap Still A Problem:

"Perhaps the only clear-cut data the report showed about Indiana is that the achievement gap between white students and poor or minority students is large and doesn't seem to be going away. Many other states have the same problem, said Jack Jennings, president and CEO of the Center on Education Policy, an independent nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C.
I don't know who hired him, but they should probably be looking for someone else. "Many other states" don't have the same problem. EVERY STATE has the same problem. There isn't a single state without a large achievement gap. OK, maybe that isn't true. Some states have large achievement gaps, the other states have gigantic achievement gaps. With the exception of Washington state, the states that do show the lowest achievement gaps pretty much have crappy overall scores anyway.

You think if he was going to make excuses, he would go with "everybody else sucks as well", instead of "we aren't the only one who sucks". Put it perspective baby, put it in perspective.

Reference: Education Trust: Education Watch State NAEP Tables

3 comments:

nbosch said...

Thought you might like to look around this site--just read some stuff about it. I wonder how rigerous the math program is--I looked at the sample courses and some looked intriguing. http://www.thenationalacademyforthegifted.org/

nbosch said...

* rigorous--oops a spelling snafu. N

Unknown said...

The problem with data aggregated by state is that you don't learn much. It would be much more interesting to compare gaps between, say, urban schools and suburban or rural schools. Uh, I'm not volunteering, since I'm flying to Charleston tomorrow. Maybe after I get back next week.