Fordham Gets Failing Grade for Its
September 11, 2006
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Teri Battaglieri,
(517) 203-2940 (e-mail) greatlakescenter@greatlakescenter.org
Kenneth Howe,
(303) 525-8548 (e-mail) ken.howe@colorado.edu
In a Think Twice review of
this report,
Howe criticized the report,
authored by Fordham’s President, Chester Finn and two of his colleagues for
hiding controversial, value-laden criteria behind the supposedly objective A-F
grades awarded. In fact, he points out that the grading criteria used by
Fordham are directly at odds with those of reputable professional organizations
such as the National Council of Teachers of English. Howe concluded that the
report’s grading practices were “selectively data-mined and were seriously
lacking in methodological rigor.”
According to Howe, “…no
evidence is offered that the grades are valid measures of the quality of state
content standards. Readers are asked simply to rely on the overall conclusions
reached by Fordham and its graders, supplemented by a few cursory statements in
the state documents regarding strengths and/or weaknesses.”
Howe concluded with an even
stronger criticism: “The post-hoc massaging of the data reaches the point of
absurdity, as the authors search for some approach to the data that might lend
support to Fordham’s conclusion that content standards of the kind it rates
highly do, in fact, result in improved student performance.”
The review recommends that
policymakers and educators avoid basing any decisions about policy or practice
on the grades assigned by the Fordham report.
Find Professor Howe’s review
and a link to the Fordham report containing your state’s report card at: http://www.greatlakescenter.org
The Think Twice project provides the public, policy makers
and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank
publications. It is a collaboration of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory
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