When personal gain and political agendas are involved, the temptation to take “shortcuts” and to declare assertions to be facts is very strong. Here are three examples.
The National Education Policy Center at University of Colorado in Boulder has three nominees for the “I Gave Myself an “A” Bunkum Award. They are StudentsFirst, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Brookings Institute.
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“Second Runner-up goes to StudentsFirst, which came up with 24 measures based on the organization’s advocacy for school choice, test-based accountability and governance changes. Unfortunately, the think tank’s “State Policy Report Card” never quite gets around to justifying these measures with research evidence linking them to desired student outcomes.”
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“First Runner-up goes to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which almost took the top honors as the most shameful of a bad lot. What makes the ALEC report card particularly laughable is the Emperor’s-clothes claim that its grades are “research-based.” Yes, evidence-based or research-based report card grades would be most welcome, but all ALEC offers is a compilation of cherry-picked contentions from other advocacy think tanks.”
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-report-card-ALEC-2013
“This year’s Grand Prize Winner is the Brookings Institution and its Brown Center on Education Policy. Brookings has worked hard over the years to build a reputation for sound policy work. But, at least in terms of its education work, it is well on its way to trashing that standing with an onslaught of publications such as their breathtakingly fatuous choice and competition rating scale that can best be described as political drivel. It is based on 13 indicators that favor a deregulated, scaled-up school choice system, and the indicators are devoid of any empirical foundation suggesting these attributes might produce better education.”
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-brookings-ecci