I’m starting to believe that there is no such thing as “large-scale” education reform unless the government steps in and mandates it. Quite frankly, I don’t think large scale reform should exist anyway (especially by bureaucrats). Right now, the educational world has thousands of people who all have the answers to the question of what [...]

Recently Diane Ravitch, former United States Assistant Secretary for Education under the Bush administration, has come under fire for an “about face” of her standpoint on NCLB. The whole situation is a shame for a number of reasons and yet no one is willing to look them in the face. I applaud her for finally [...]

I bought a brand new car yesterday (Prius), and in “Aaron Eyler” fashion, I sat there arguing the price for a good three-four hours (as I am sure everyone does). When all was said and done, I was at the dealership from 3:30-8:45, but left with a brand new car that was well within my [...]

I want to start the conversation off with a question: if we are working diligently to create lifelong learners, does an emphasis on exclusive teacher accountability denigrate the efforts of the system to cultivate this trait in kids? By the way, I am NOT talking exclusively about standardized testing. In my mind, I am ALWAYS [...]

A lot of politicians and business elitists seem to think that there is some severe crisis in American education as a result of scores on international tests like the NAEP and the TIMMS. There are a number of reasons why we should be wary of this kind of assertion in doing a statistical analysis, but [...]

Call me cynical, but there is something unbelievably funny to me about the fact that people scream about celebrating individual differences among kids yet we want every one of them to be in a specific grade by a specific year and pass the same test at the exact same time. Doesn’t this make you laugh [...]

I support standardized testing and so do you even if you don’t know it or want to admit it. What you don’t support is standardized testing in its current form or for that use that has become synonymous with the term. Imagine if standardized testing was not mentioned in the same sentence as the “No [...]

This is the first in a series of posts over how to judge teacher effectiveness using input and output data. In this first post, I discuss the conversation that education circles should be having over how to properly utilize quantitative data to assess teachers. Much of the discussion in education circles today revolves around performance pay and [...]