{"title":"The Council of Chief State School Officers and National Governors Association: Whom do they serve?","authors":"Richard P. Phelps","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3331689","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3331689","url":null,"abstract":"The standards were developed by the National Governors Association (NGA) in collaboration with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). These are private, non-governmental bodies—in effect, education trade organizations. The National Governors Association, despite its name, isn’t just a group of sitting governors. It includes many ex-governors and current or former gubernatorial staff members. The deliberations of the NGA and the CCSSO are not open to the public and the work that these","PeriodicalId":218202,"journal":{"name":"Nonpartisan Education Review","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123731807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does College Board Deserve Public Subsidies","authors":"Richard P. Phelps","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3331692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3331692","url":null,"abstract":"The century-old College Entrance Examination Board (College Board) sponsors, develops, and administers standardized testing programs, most famously the “SAT suite of tests,” which includes the SAT college admission test and the “pre-SAT,” or PSAT, and the more than thirty Advanced-Placement (AP) courses and exams that high-school students take for college credit. Legally, College Board is a nonprofit, charitable organization (a 501(c)(3)) and pays no taxes on revenues derived from activities aligned with its public mission. But College Board activities also affect public policy, even while it remains a private organization governed only by its own board of trustees. Moreover, College Board peripatetically pursues public funds, with much success, which either directly or indirectly support its programs. Which prompts the question: Should taxpayers and foundations subsidize College Board activities (and its revenues)?","PeriodicalId":218202,"journal":{"name":"Nonpartisan Education Review","volume":"118 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124152555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Real Clear Propaganda: Bellwether's Education News Bias","authors":"Richard P. Phelps","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3331685","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3331685","url":null,"abstract":"Education news aggregation at the RealClearEducation (RCE) website purports to be journalistic, independent, thorough and somewhat representative of the whole. During a period from 2014 to 2016, however, it was run directly by leaders of the DC consulting group Bellwether Education Partners (BEP). During that period, RCE’s selection of source material was lopsidedly skewed toward those issues and perspectives favored by those allied with BEP. Except for some occasional instances of pandering to the more politically well connected among the opposition, RealClearEducation was about as biased a news source as was humanly possible to construct. Its coverage of the Common Core Standards Initiative (CCSI), in particular, ranged from blatant promotion to a variety of disingenuously framed news and opinion pieces featuring individuals and organizations receiving funds from Common Core’s donor groups, without revealing their conflict of interest. Bellwether’s behavior in managing a news outlet raises larger questions about the trustworthiness of information provided by education policy funders and recipients, the incestuous nature of the interlocking interests at both ends of the funding, and the almost total absence of the vast majority of the US population from some education policy discussions.","PeriodicalId":218202,"journal":{"name":"Nonpartisan Education Review","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131954413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Forty Years of Public Opinion on Standardized Testing","authors":"Richard P. Phelps","doi":"10.4324/9781410612595-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410612595-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":218202,"journal":{"name":"Nonpartisan Education Review","volume":"384 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124773293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"DC Education Reform Ten Years After, Part 2: Test Cheats","authors":"Richard P. Phelps","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3720700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3720700","url":null,"abstract":"Ten years ago, I worked as the Director of Assessments for the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). For temporal context, I arrived after the first of the infamous test cheating scandals and left just before the incident that spawned a second. Indeed, I filled a new position created to both manage test security and design an expanded testing program. I departed shortly after Vincent Gray, who opposed an expanded testing program, defeated Adrian Fenty in the September 2010 DC mayoral primary. My tenure coincided with Michelle Rhee’s last nine months as Chancellor.","PeriodicalId":218202,"journal":{"name":"Nonpartisan Education Review","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133078971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Institute: Influence for Hire","authors":"Richard P. Phelps","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3331694","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3331694","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction According to a recent publicly available filing with the Internal Revenue Service, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation is “the nation’s leader in advancing educational excellence for every child through quality research, analysis, and commentary, as well as on-the-ground action and advocacy in Ohio.” The mission statement for the legally separate but commonly owned Thomas B. Fordham Institute uses exactly the same words. Moreover, the two organizations share the same board of trustees. All of which would lead one to believe that the two entities—foundation and institute—should be considered two parts of the same whole.","PeriodicalId":218202,"journal":{"name":"Nonpartisan Education Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129982751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}