I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009

Friday, October 28, 2011

"Experts"

Acting Commissioner Cerf assembles another stellar panel:
Cerf said yesterday that he has enlisted a team of nearly a dozen academics, researchers, and others to look at the effectiveness of the current School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) formula and help him come up with changes.
The court-ordered review of SFRA is already a year late. Cerf said it would come this winter. 
[...] 
He stressed the final recommendations will be his, but he has enlisted help from a mix of school funding experts from across the country, most from academia. They are:
  • Sean Corcoran – New York University
  • Eric Hanushek -- Stanford University
  • Brian Jacob – University of Michigan
  • Susanna Loeb – Stanford University
  • Mona Mourshed – McKinsey & Co.
  • Steve Rivkin – Amherst College
  • Marguerite Roza -- University of Washington
  • Cecilia Rouse – Princeton University
  • Jason Willis -- Stockton (CA) Unified School District [emphasis mine]
Hanushek, Rouse, Loeb, Willis and Corcoran will be paid consultants, providing research for the ultimate report, said department spokesman Justin Barra.

Here are some of Roza's greatest reformy hits, courtesy of a man who should be at the top of this list, Bruce Baker. My personal favorite:
But this new graph, sent to me from a colleague who had to suffer through this presentation, really takes the cake. This new graph comes to us from Marguerite Roza, from a presentation to the New York Board of Regents in September. And this one rises above all of these previous graphs because IT IS ENTIRELY FABRICATED. IT IS BASED ON NOTHING.
Perhaps even worse than that, the fabricated information on this illustrative graph suggests that its author does not have even the slightest grip on a) statistics, b) graphing, c) how one might measure effects of school reforms (and how large or small they might be) or d) basic economics.
Here’s the graph:
[...]
But most importantly, even if there was a clear definition of either, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE TO BACK THIS UP. IT IS ENTIRELY FABRICATED.  Now, I’ve previously picked on Marguerite Roza for here work with Mike Petrilli on the Stretching the School Dollar policy brief. Specifically, I raised significant concern that Petrilli and Roza provide all sorts of recommendations for how to stretch the school dollar but PROVIDE NO ACTUAL COST/EFFECTIVENESS ANALYSIS. 
In this graph, it would appear that Marguerite Roza has tried to make up for that by COMPLETELY FABRICATING RATE OF RETURN ANALYSIS for her preferred reforms.
An "expert" who makes stuff up. She sounds perfect for Cerf and Christie, don't you think?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's more like acting all powerful czar of school privatization in NJ. Czar Chris can impose as many charter schools on a given district as he feels comfortable with and the district, the voters have nothing to say about it. Governator Chris has a radical agenda of charter schools everywhere, even for-profit ones and school vouchers. Christie is hell bent on eliminating the unions, gutting bargaining rights, killing off tenure, seniority, health benefits and pensions. Collective bargaining rights for health benefits have been suspended for 4 years. The pension COLA has been eliminated, even for current retirees. It's an all out war against public schools, public school teachers, especially their unions and all the benefits that teachers fought for over many decades.

Anonymous said...

I must admit that I am really getting sick and tired of this oft repeated and stale comparison between the private sector and public sector. It's called divide and conquer and Christie has played this card to the hilt with lots of support from that toad on NJ101.5, Jim Gearhart. All this whining and boo hoo, people in the private sector don't have tenure, seniority, pensions or health benefits, so why should teachers have these things. Well, because they fought for these things over many decades. Destroying all these hard fought benefits is not going to improve the lot of private sector workers one whit. It will just accelerate the race to the bottom for all US workers, private or public. When do people get a clue that they are being manipulated by corporate America and corporate lackeys like Christie? The right wing corporatists are also busy trying to destroy Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and what's left of unions in this country.