According to data from the Ohio Department of Education, 82% of Ohio public school students attend school districts that showed academic growth (as defined by the state) during the last school year which was significantly (statistically speaking — defined as one standard error) above expected (or average) growth.
Add in the students who attended districts within one standard error of the mean and the state can claim that 91% of students attended districts achieving at or above expected growth.
Amazing institutions, these government schools.
So you decide to question the results. Tough luck. The state’s value added calculation is protected by IP laws. That’s right. The state can make an outrageous claim without being challenged. Nice.
Note:
Here is the FAQ that has to calm the concerned — value added is just like the CPI. Too complicated for the masses, but valid and reliable, nonetheless. Trust them. They are your government, you know.
From the service that assists Ohio with its value added calculation:
The value-added methodology seems complicated. How can people understand the measure?
While the statistical methodology used for value-added analysis is complex, the data produced are valid, reliable and presented in easy-to-read charts and graphs. Understanding this methodology can be compared to understanding the statistics behind the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures the change in the cost of living between two periods of time. Few people understand how to calculate the CPI, but many people take advantage of the information and use it to make decisions in their daily lives. If educators understand the information derived from the value-added reports, they can use the information to make sound decisions about improving student achievement.
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This reminds me of the stories (not sure how true) about how the church didn’t want people to become literate because they’d be able to read the bible–and would no longer have to rely on the church itself to know what it says.
Whether that was ever the case or not, I don’t know. But given that this is “state owned IP”, technically it’s the public’s property. So the only conclusion you can come to is that they’re using it as a shield to hide behind, because they sure don’t own the rights to it–whatever rubbish equations they think they have.
I -thought- the rules were that the State couldn’t own intellectual monopolies. Guess that got changed too.
Or wait – they could have simply had a private company do the research, thus making it ‘owned’, and then give the State an unlimited license.
I don’t understand how the BCS Championship is determined either, but I’m quite sure it’s akin to the same thing as there appears to be no discernible logic or common sense involved in the process.
Whenever you’re dealing with government, there is always authoritarianism in the mix: Whatever propaganda put forth you are expected to accept without thought or question.
It’s the ultimate hucksterism!
“the data produced are valid, reliable and presented in easy-to-read charts and graphs.”
Oh, well, if it’s in easy-to-read charts and graphs, then it MUST be true!
Reminds me of GraphJam:
http://graphjam.com
There is nothing remarkable here. Given any set of test scores from a class, I can easily scale the scores, preserving order, so that 82% of the class score above average!
How? There is a Beta Distribution that is negatively skewed that has the property that 82% of the values are above average. (Beta has density ~ x^(a-1)*(1-x)^(b-1) and mean a/(a+b) ). Choose a and b so that
F(a/(a+b),a,b) = 0.18 , where F denotes the cumulative distribution.) Just map your scores so that they follow this distribution!
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics
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