{"id":26985,"date":"2009-08-28T16:39:02","date_gmt":"2009-08-28T16:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2009\/08\/28\/should-stim-bucks-be-linked-to\/"},"modified":"2009-08-28T16:39:02","modified_gmt":"2009-08-28T16:39:02","slug":"should-stim-bucks-be-linked-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/28\/should-stim-bucks-be-linked-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Should stim-bucks be linked to school test scores?"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>DURHAM, N.C. &#8212; Two Duke University education experts have serious concerns about the Obama administration&#8217;s proposal to link teacher evaluations to student tests scores as a criterion for how much federal stimulus money states will receive for K-12 education.<\/p>\n<p>Friday (Aug. 28) is the deadline to submit public comments on the proposal that will disperse more than $4 billion in grants. The U.S. Department of Education has said it will issue its final rules sometime after the deadline.<\/p>\n<p>Helen F. Ladd, the Edgar Thompson Professor of Public Policy at Duke, says that while student test scores play a role in the overall effort to improve schools, the proposed regulations &#8220;give them a pride of place that will lead to little good and is likely to do much harm.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The main problem with the heavy focus of the proposed test-based approach is that it ratchets up the pernicious narrow test-based approach to education represented by No Child Left Behind,&#8221; Ladd says in comments she has submitted on the proposal.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The approach is narrow in part because the requirement that all students be tested every year means that students can be tested in only a limited number of subjects. The result is a heavy emphasis on the basic skills of math and reading, to the detriment of other skills and orientations that young people need to become effective participants in the global society.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Further, the emphasis on test results for individual teachers will exacerbate the well-documented incentives for teachers to focus on narrow test-taking skills and drilling. It is time to move beyond this misplaced emphasis on test scores in a few subjects to return to the broader goals of education that have been such an important part of our history.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.duke.edu\/2009\/08\/tip_schoolmoney.html\"><br \/>\nRest of the story is here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DURHAM, N.C. &#8212; Two Duke University education experts have serious concerns about the Obama administration&#8217;s proposal to link teacher evaluations to student tests scores as a criterion for how much federal stimulus money states will receive for K-12 education. Friday (Aug. 28) is the deadline to submit public comments on the proposal that will disperse &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/28\/should-stim-bucks-be-linked-to\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Should stim-bucks be linked to school test scores?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-71f","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26985"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}