Accountability Could Kill US Higher Ed

This is a piece I wrote as the foreword to a book by J. M. Beach -- The Myths of Measurement and Meritocracy: Why Accountability Metrics in Higher Education are Unfair and Increase Inequality -- which was published in 2021.  Last week, I posted the foreword I wrote for the first volume in this series, which … Continue reading Accountability Could Kill US Higher Ed

The Problems that Accountability Metrics Pose for Schooling

This is a piece I wrote as the foreword to a book by J. M. Beach -- Can We Measure What Matters Most? Why Educational Accountability Metrics Lower Student Learning and Demoralize Teachers -- which was published in 2021. For me, this was a chance to provide a brief summary of my thoughts about the problems … Continue reading The Problems that Accountability Metrics Pose for Schooling

The Problems that Accountability Metrics Pose for Schooling

This is a piece I wrote as the foreword to a book by J. M. Beach — Can We Measure What Matters Most? Why Educational Accountability Metrics Lower Student Learning and Demoralize Teachers — published in 2021 by Rowman and Littlefield. For me, this was a chance to provide a brief summary of my thoughts about … Continue reading The Problems that Accountability Metrics Pose for Schooling

Jay Mathews — We must dump marginal learning standards and other annoyances in return to classrooms

This post is a recent piece by the Washington Post education columnist, Jay Mathews.  Here's a link to the original. What I love about this column is the succinct way in which Mathews skewers the entire school standards movement.  The targets we use for student learning, he says, are not things that students will ever … Continue reading Jay Mathews — We must dump marginal learning standards and other annoyances in return to classrooms

Let’s Measure What No One Teaches: PISA, NCLB, and the Shrinking Aims of Education

This post is a piece I published in Teachers College Record in 2014.  Here's a link to the original.   It's an analysis of two major players in the world movement for educational accountability:  OECD's Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), and the US No Child Left Behind law.  The core argument is this: Both PISA … Continue reading Let’s Measure What No One Teaches: PISA, NCLB, and the Shrinking Aims of Education