http://www.greatlakescenter.org
http://www.greatlakescenter.org
L.A. Times Mischaracterizes and Jumps the Gun on Study to be Released Tomorrow Contact: EAST LANSING, MI, (February 7, 2011) – A new study to be published tomorrow was announced prematurely by the Los Angeles Times in today's edition of that newspaper. The Times received (from a third party) a copy of the report marked as ‘embargoed until Tuesday morning' but apparently did not feel bound to comply with the embargo. The study, Due Diligence and the Evaluation of Teachers, by Derek Briggs and Ben Domingue of the University of Colorado at Boulder, was produced by the National Education Policy Center with funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. Briggs and Domingue's study concerns the research underlying the Times' August 2010 stories about teacher effectiveness in the L.A. Unified School District (LAUSD). They used the same dataset and methods as the Times' researcher but then probed deeper and found the earlier research to have serious weaknesses. The Times story today was written by Jason Felch, the reporter who also wrote the August Times story that relied on the troubling research. As will be seen when the new study is released tomorrow, Mr. Felch is incorrect in characterizing the re-analysis as "confirm[ing] the broad conclusions of a Times' analysis." Due Dilligence and the Evaluation of Teachers will be posted tomorrow at 7 a.m. EST on www.greatlakescenter.org. --###-- |
The mission of the Great Lakes Center is to improve public education for all students in the Great Lakes region through the support and dissemination of high quality, academically sound research on education policy and practices. Visit the Great Lakes Center Web Site at: http://www.greatlakescenter.org |