NCTQ Gets Raked Over the Coals Again

This time another person examines this charade of an organization, its goal which is the LOWERING of teaching standards to make it a low-paid, hourly position with no benefits.

I have written that I felt this outfit was bullshit many, many years ago. Ed Week would have its reports which were always slanted and totally ignorant of teaching and education.

I’ve reviewed two reports previously published by the Thomas Fordham Institute. You read my reviews of these reports here:

Framework of K-12 Science Education
State of the State Standards
In each report I found the methodology weak, the results misleading, and both reports were published as non-peer reviewed research. The NCGQ study on assessment in teacher education uses the same methodology as the Fordham studies. Even with such a poorly designed and unreliable data, think tanks get away with publishing their works in this fashion, and because of the financial resources, and the identities of their funding agencies, they carry a good deal of clout. The Fordham Foundation and the NCTQ are two such foundations.

Is teacher education going to take hit? Probably so. The NCTQ organization has the resources and the connections to make trouble for university teacher education programs. There is a movement to hold teacher education institutions accountable for the achievement test scores and gains that their graduates produce in their students once they begin teaching. As absurd as this sounds, the U.S. Secretary of Education is supportive of such an idea. Organizations such as NCTQ are on the accountability bandwagon, and carry weight at the the policy level in education.

What these outfits do is they twist information to fit their preconceived ideas. They are complete and total propaganda outlets disguised as legitimate think tanks.

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Yes, it should be called to task because it is an organization that peddles lies but has a lot of big money behind it and idiots like Obama and Duncan supporting it.

It and the billionaire foundations are working in tandem with right-wing politicians in both political parties to kill public education, probably because it DOES work, as this study noted last year.

These "reformers" keep moving the goal posts in order to kill public education simply because it is a public good.