The envelope please...

I'm rather behind on my national posting (sorry about that), but it is time again for the annual National Education Policy Center Bunkum Awards.






The top award this year goes to Progressive Policy Institute for Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best, which compares charter schools to...cancer. And this is a report in favor of charter schools.Plus:

 Beyond the analogy, the report suffers from an almost complete lack of acceptable scientific evidence or original research supporting the policy suggestions. It presents nine “lessons” or suggestions that are essentially common and vague aphorisms from the business world. Yet it fails to make the case that the suggestions or references are relevant to school improvement.

Among much else, a Bunkum was also awarded this year to Senior Advisor Matthew Ladner of Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education:

One cannot, however, deny Dr. Ladner’s salesmanship: gullible lawmakers throughout the nation have been pulling out their wallets and buying into his evidence-less pitch for flunking of low-scoring third graders and other policies likely to harm many more students than they help.  See here and here for more analysis of Dr. Ladner's body of bunk and its unfortunate reach.

And I'd be remiss if I did not point out that our neighbors to the south in ConnCAN also received an award for their advocacy for a remarkably regressive education funding system:

The report’s empty claims are perfectly combined with its evidentiary barrenness. Consider, for instance, the genealogy of the report’s claim that the current formula provides low-income children with only an additional 11.5% of funding. That claim is based on a previous ConnCAN report, which refers readers to information in a footnote, which then refers readers to that report’s appendix. But pity the intrepid reader who makes it that far; the appendix provides no justification or further reference to the phantom 11.5% figure. Our reviewer pointed to similar evidentiary black holes regarding the report’s claims about charter school funding and performance. And yet another instance of fantasy numbers comes from the report’s recommended removal of funding for English language learners based on the contention that these children have already been counted as low-income children. There is no compelling evidence to this effect in the literature – nor is there any in the report.