[Zeppo]

To correct for these problems, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has developed a “Context and Performance” (CAP) report card that takes high school MME and ACT scores and adjusts for student poverty level. When that happens, Covert moves from near the bottom to the very top.

I suspect that rather than being "all sciency and stuff" (a.k.a. true), the "adjustments" were made with the goal of getting this specific result.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Schools are then ranked by how well they actually did relative to their predicted performance.

Can't wait to apply this during annual performance reviews at work.

Manager: "You were predicted to really, REALLY suck at work this year."

Employee: "Yeah, but I merely sucked."

Manager: "You're right -- you get an A+ and a 15% raise."

[ConservativeInPA]

Sounds like these liberal, so-called, educators like to sit around and pity to poor. It must make them feel superior.

[NativeSon]

Well would you look at THAT! Those little scamps are actually geniuses!

And good thing we found this out, we need them to get into college & grad school to become the next generation of doctors, engineers, pilots, teachers, scientists...

[Sherman Logan]

Sounds eminently reasonable to me.

Take business results. A CEO who “catches a wave” may generate a huge profit for his company with little effort or input. He then gets an enormous bonus for doing such a great job, when the truth is almost anybody could have done the same.

Another CEO, through great skill and determination, brings his company through a crisis which without his efforts would have destroyed it. He gets fired for losing the company money.

Schools that do even reasonably well with very poor material deserve enormous credit.

This doesn’t mean the students from these schools shouldn’t be judged on a flat scale relative to those from other schools when judging their performance, only that the school should reasonably be judged on an adjusted scale.

[Sherman Logan]

To look at this another way.

Let’s give two teachers each 15 students.

Teacher A gets 15 students each with an IQ of 115, teacher B’s students each have an IQ of 85.

All students would be, I believed, considered to fall into the “average intelligence” range.

At the end of the year the A class greatly outperforms the B class, so we reward teacher A and fire teacher B.

Whereas the fact of the matter is that teacher A would have been almost unable to keep the students from learning no matter how hard she tried, and if teacher B taught them much at all she has achieved above and beyond.

[taxcontrol]

One of my dad’s frequent sayings comes to mind:

Figures lie, and lairs figure.