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The new results of the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) seem at first blush very encouraging. U.S. 4th and 8th graders improved in mathematics, though their science performance remained essentially flat. In fact, improvement in U.S. 8th-graders' mathematics scores outpaced that of students in most other participating countries.

In 8th-grade science, apparently only Singapore and Taiwan outperformed Massachusetts.

Cause for celebration? Not so fast, says Mark Schneider from the American Institutes for Research. He points to yawning achievement gaps laid bare by the TIMSS results. He also notes that some high-performing OECD countries that bested the U.S. in the 2007 Programme for International Assessment did not participate in TIMSS, possibly skewing the results. ...

Like others in the media, David Brooks is composing an epic about a battle for Barack Obama's soul. It's the education "reformers" against the education "establishment." The good guys against the bad guys.

This may make for good copy, but it certainly doesn't help his readers come to grips with the complexity of challenges facing public education. (Indeed, Brooks himself doesn't always know what side he's on.)

Take, for example, the question of "merit pay for good teachers," which Brooks characterizes as a major weapon in the reformers' arsenal. The Quick and the Ed, a blog that has been nothing if not supportive of performance pay for teachers, just posted a long piece on the unreliability of the "value added" student performance measures central to most proposed performance pay systems. In other words, current measures of teacher quality offer an unstable foundation for teacher compensation decisions.

Should we therefore abandon the question? Of course not. But we should at least acknowledge that this reform, like most others, involves difficult tradeoffs and real risks. It is possible to have principled ...

Time Magazine's cover story about Michelle Rhee is lighting up the blogosphere. One particular passage from the story is attracting special attention:

“The thing that kills me about education is that it’s so touchy-feely,” she tells me one afternoon in her office. Then she raises her chin and does what I come to recognize as her standard imitation of people she doesn’t respect.... “People say, ‘Well, you know, test scores don’t take into account creativity and the love of learning,’” she says with a drippy, grating voice, lowering her eyelids halfway. Then she snaps back to herself. “I’m like, ‘You know what? I don’t give a crap.’ Don’t get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don’t know how to read, I don’t care how creative you are. You’re not doing your job.”

This quotation clearly unsettles Core Knowledge blogger Robert Pondiscio, who counts himself a supporter of many reforms Rhee champions. He worries that her bare-knuckles manner will backfire, and he objects that good teachers are by definition "touchy-feely."

I share his concern, and I'll add another. Are we so sure champions of standardized test data are NOT touchy-feely? Do current standardized assessment systems really offer reliable, objective ...

Larry Cuban's thoughtful op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post has received remarkably little attention in the education blogosphere.  That's surprising, because he assesses the performance of DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, whose name is usually catnip to education bloggers everywhere.

Cuban argues that Rhee is a sprinter in a world where marathon runners are most likely to succeed.  He faults her and other sprinters for attempting to tackle the unions far too early while paying little attention to other critical ingredients of long-term school reform:

[Sprinters] suffer from ideological myopia. They believe low test scores and achievement gaps between whites and minorities result in large part from knuckle-dragging union leaders defending seniority and tenure rights that protect lousy teachers. Such beliefs reflect a serious misreading of why urban students fail to reach proficiency levels and graduate from high school.

As important as it is to get rid of incompetent teachers, doing so will not turn around the D.C. school system or any other broken district. The failure of urban schools has more to do with turnstile superintendencies, partially implemented standards and other ...