Comments on State Superintendent Jack O’Connell looks back – and ahead
Jack lost alot of my respect in the past few years when he failed to take a leadership role in the State Budget battle. Instead of looking at all the units in his department and looking to see where he could make cuts, Jack wanted everything to remain. We all know that CDE is full of alot of personel and units that serve no purpose but to gather information that can then be twisted to the Departments desire. Such as the Field Transportation Unit, a worthless unit full of worthless folks that have nothing better to do than create dumb regulations for the folks working in the trenches. Get rid of the fat at DOE, then maybe the money that is saved can go to the schools instead of the DOE. - Dan Pires
Though Jack is a very nice and well-meaning guy, his prescriptions and data interpretation remain suspect. With respect to his assertion that "class size reduction works," take a look at the data from the big state-funded study (www.classize.org). The study found that "attribution of gains in [test] scores to CSR is not warranted" and that "analyses also failed to find meaningful differences" in student achievement related to class size reduction. Despite this data, and other findings related to the chaos caused by this costly and disruptive program, O'Connell and others continue to support this program. These findings are similar to most other studies on the topic. It's frightening to think that policymakers tout the concept of data-driven policymaking, but throw common sense and data analysis out the window. - Eric Premack
The Educated Guess is a forum on education policies in California and Silicon Valley. It is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and sponsored by the Silicon Valley E Read more
About John
John Fensterwald is a journalist at the Silicon Valley Education Foundation,
which he joined in September 2009. For 11 years before that, he wrote editorials at the Mercury News in San Jose, with a focus on education. Read more
The College Puzzle Stanford Professor Emeritus of Education and Business Administration Michael Kirst explores policy issues relating to the preparation for and success in college.
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- Dan Pires
- Eric Premack