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Recent Posts
- Comments on Hung-Hsi Wu’s “What is school mathematics?” 12/04/2026
- On Common Core and Educational Testing 24/11/2025
- Equitable Grading 04/09/2025
- Comparing states by only looking at overall NAEP average scores can provide incomplete analysis of performance 07/08/2025
- What does NAEP say about the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project? 07/08/2025
- Reading performance in the US is a serious problem 07/08/2025
- Grade 4 Reading – Is NAEP’s standard for proficiency set too high? 07/08/2025
Comments
- Noah on Comments on Zearn’s “Myth of the Math Kid”
- David D. Baskerville on Breaking the Spell of Math Reformists
- Albert B. Franklin on About Us / Comments
- Bryan on Comments on Zearn’s “Myth of the Math Kid”
Authors
Category Archives: Richard P. Phelps
More Common Core salespersons’ salaries
In a previous post, I summarized recent Form 990s—the financial reporting documents required of large US non-profits by the Internal Revenue Service—filed by three organizations. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the Alliance for Excellent Education, and the National Center on … Continue reading
101 Terms for Denigrating Others’ Research
In scholarly terms, a review of the literature or literature review is a summation of the previous research conducted on a particular topic. With a dismissive literature review, a researcher assures the public that no one has yet studied a … Continue reading
‘One size fits all’ national tests not deeper or more rigorous
http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/one-size-fits-all-national-tests-not-deeper-or-more-rigorous/ Some say that now is a wonderful time to be a psychometrician — a testing and measurement professional. There are jobs aplenty, with high pay and great benefits. Work is available in the private sector at test development firms; … Continue reading
Censorship at Education Next
In response to their recent misleading articles about a fall 2015 Mathematica report that claims to (but does not) find predictive validity for the PARCC test with Massachusetts college students, I wrote the text below and submitted it to EdNext … Continue reading
The Education Writers Association casts its narrowing gaze on Boston, May 1-3
https://pioneerinstitute.org/featured/the-education-writers-association-casts-its-narrowing-gaze-on-boston-may-1-3/ Billions have been spent, and continue to be spent, promoting the Common Core Standards and their associated consortium tests, PARCC and SBAC. Nonetheless, the “Initiative” has been stopped in its tracks largely by a loose coalition of unpaid grassroots … Continue reading
Fordham Institute’s pretend research
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute has released a report, Evaluating the Content and Quality of Next Generation Assessments,[i] ostensibly an evaluative comparison of four testing programs, the Common Core-derived SBAC and PARCC, ACT’s Aspire, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ MCAS.[ii] … Continue reading
Posted in College prep, Common Core, Education policy, Education Reform, Ethics, K-12, Mathematics, Reading & Writing, research ethics, Richard P. Phelps, Testing/Assessment, Uncategorized
Tagged CCSSO, CRESST, evaluation, Fordham Institute, Gates Foundation, guidelines, HumRRO, protocols, review, rigor, SCOPE, standards, Student Achievement Partners, testing
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Fordham report predictable, conflicted
On November 17, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) will decide the fate of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) and the Partnership for Assessment of College Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) in the Bay State. … Continue reading
Common Core’s Language Arts
It is often said that scientific writing is dull and boring to read. Writers choose words carefully; mean for them to be interpreted precisely and, so, employ vocabulary that may be precise, but is often obscure. Judgmental terms—particularly the many … Continue reading
David Coleman in Charge
Wayne Bishop recently made me aware of the unfortunately completely one-sided discussion of US mathematics education at the recent Aspen Ideas Festival. David Leonhardt is Washington Bureau Chief for the New York Times, won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting … Continue reading
Starting school already behind
Underprivileged students start first grade already two grade levels behind more privileged students. The obvious solution to this discrepancy is to give the underprivileged kids more time, as in another year at the beginning of primary school. That would appear … Continue reading
Posted in Education policy, K-12, Richard P. Phelps
3 Comments
Robert T. Oliphant, 1924-2014
Robert T. Oliphant 1924-2014 Bob Oliphant passed away in June, 2014. He was one of the most optimistic and generous people I’ve ever met, and one of my best friends. That despite the fact that we never met face-to-face—a typical … Continue reading
Beware of Test Scores Masquerading as Data
A semi-taboo area of insufficient discussion is the reliability of the test score data from the statewide, nationwide, and international standard tests; for example, our National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), but not nearly just the NAEP test scores. You … Continue reading
No Child Left Behind Renewal: Blinders on Education Policy
Two weeks ago, The Honorable Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) invited three allegedly independent education researchers to discuss possible revisions to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently … Continue reading
Using middle schoolers for anti-testing advocacy?
Superintendent Mark D. LaRoach Vestal School District, New York Dear Superintendent LaRoach: I conduct research on the effects of standardized testing on student achievement. I have read over 3 thousand studies dating back a century and spanning over thirty countries. … Continue reading
Overtesting or Overcounting?
Commenting on the Center for American Progress’s (CAP’s) report, Testing Overload in America’s Schools, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2014/10/16/99073/testing-overload-in-americas-schools/ …and the Education Writers’ Association coverage of it, https://www.ewa.org/blog-ed-beat/how-much-time-do-students-spend-taking-tests … Some testing opponents have always said there is overtesting, no matter how much there has … Continue reading
Posted in College prep, Education policy, K-12, Richard P. Phelps, Testing/Assessment
Tagged Center for, overtesting, standardized, testing
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Kamenetz, A. (2015). The Test: Why our schools are obsessed with standardized testing—but you don’t have to be. New York: Public Affairs. Book Review, by Richard P. Phelps
Perhaps it is because I avoid most tabloid journalism that I found journalist Anya Kamenetz’s loose cannon Introduction to The Test: Why our schools are obsessed with standardized testing—but you don’t have to be so jarring. In the space of … Continue reading
Posted in College prep, Education policy, K-12, Richard P. Phelps, Testing/Assessment
Tagged assessment, EWA, NPR, overtesting, schools, standardized testing
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The Gauntlet: How think tanks and federally-funded centers misrepresent and suppress other education research
New in the Nonpartisan Education Review: https://nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Essays/v10n1.htm The aggressive, career-strategic behavior of researchers in federally funded centers and think tanks creates many problems, including a loss of useful information and bad public policies based on skewed information. But, two adverse … Continue reading
Posted in Education policy, K-12, Richard P. Phelps, Testing/Assessment, Uncategorized
Tagged Brookings, censorship, Chingos, CRESST, GAO, Goertz, information suppression, NRC, research bias
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Large-scale educational testing in Chile: Some thoughts
Recently in the auditorium of Universidad Finis Terrae, I argued that Chile’s Prueba de Selección Universitaria (PSU) cannot be “fixed” and should be scrapped. I do not, however, advocate the elimination of university entrance examinations but, rather, the creation of … Continue reading
Posted in College prep, Education policy, Richard P. Phelps, Testing/Assessment
Tagged Agencia de Calidad de la Educacion, assessment, Chile, fairness in testing, MIDE UC, OECD, predictive validity, Prueba de Selección Universitaria, PSU, SIMCE, standardized testing, Universidad Finis Terrae, university admission, World Bank
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GAO Could Do More
U.S. GAO Could Do More in Examining Educator Cheating on Tests The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), a research agency of the U.S. Congress, continues its foray into the field of standardized testing. It started at least as far back … Continue reading
Try Trying
Educator testing scandals have lit up the news wires recently and some call the cheating unprecedented. It is not unprecedented; journalists simply paid little attention to the issue before now. To my mind, the most profound factoid revealed by the … Continue reading
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