Jill Barshay

Some in the Trump administration are pushing to rebuild IES After DOGE gutted IES, the education and statistics agency inside the Education Department, some in the Trump administration are trying to rebuild it. A new report of ideas on how to do that was relea...

“not one of the recommendations was a new idea to NCES,” said Peggy Carr. “Many had already been implemented or we were working on when the center was dismantled."

Great reporting by @jillbarshay.bsky.social hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

Q: Which teaching specialty is the lowest paid?
A: Math.

Learn why and 3 more surprising facts from an education finance course I took in today's newsletter.

hechingerreport.bluelena.io/index.php?ac...

*Correction: The $160,000 lifetime loss is not per student, but for all the students who were taught by that teacher that year. Per student, the income loss ranges between $42 and $133 per year.

Correction: The $160,000 lifetime loss is not per student, but for all the students who were taught by that teacher that year. Per student, the income loss ranges between $42 and $133 per year. h/t @dynarski.bsky.social

oh my goodness. thank you for that correction! i misunderstood during the presentation. I will correct that right now.

Easy A's, lower pay: Grade inflation’s hidden damage Analysis of more than a million high schoolers

$160,000 -- That’s the effect of a single teacher, in a single year. If a student encounters several grade-inflating teachers, the income losses add up. Read more in my story, "Easy A's, lower pay: Grade inflation's hidden damage" (3/3) hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

.@jeffdenning.com estimates when a teacher doles out grades that are inflated (0.2 or more points on a 4-point scale, the difference between a B and almost a B-plus), a student in that class loses about $160,000 in lifetime earnings, measured in present dollars. (2/3)

Grade inflation has real costs. Researchers documented a chain of harm to students, from lower test scores to higher failure rates in the future. Lower high school graduation rates, lower college going. And ultimately lower earnings in the workforce (1/3)

When the Spanish flu upended universities, students paid the price Higher education leader Arthur Levine analyzes the history of a lost generation

Fascinating anecdotes... sobering lessons. Similar (perhaps worse) upheaval and trauma compared w/Covid. But colleges were unable to help students recover academically or psychologically. Instead they "aged out of it" and waited for replacement students. (2/2) hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

History buffs: @brandeisuniversity.bsky.social U president Arthur Levine did a deep dive into how universities weathered the Spanish Flu a century ago in his forthcoming book, “From Upheaval to Action: What Works in Changing Higher Ed." 🧵(1/2)

Trump's admissions data collection strains college administrators Universities must report student demographics, grades and test scores by March 18

Bottom line: This is a high stakes data collection that could trigger investigations and law suits and the early going is very messy. (10/10) hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

One tiny indication that this was a rush job is in the Federal Register notice. Both enforce and admissions are misspelled in a proposal that’s all about admissions enforcement. Those words are spelled “admssions” and “enforece.” (9/10)

Federal education data collections typically take years to design, with multiple rounds of analysis, technical review panels, and revisions. This one moved from announcement to launch in a matter of months. (8/10)

6. College need to submit 7 years worth of data, going back to 2019. But prudent data retention policy is sometimes to purge unneeded sensitive student data. Some colleges delete data for students who never enrolled after 1-3 years and so years of data may not exist. (7/10)

5. Even tiny, not very selective colleges must do this OMB estimates the admistrative burden will be 200 hours per college -- and 2,200 colleges must comply. That adds up to 440,000 hours -- or 50 years worth of additional federal regulatory compliance. (6/10)

4. Male or female are the only choices for sex. Colleges, however, may collect sex or gender information using additional categories, such as nonbinary. But there's no "unknown" or "other" option on the spreadsheet they need to upload. (5/10)

3. Family income is missing for students who don't complete financial aid forms -- about 45 percent of all students. (4/10)

2. Many students don't report test scores with test optional admissions. That's more missing data. (3/10)

1. They have to "unweight" inflated GPAs onto a 4.0 scale, which is difficult or impossible. So they'll have to type in "unknown" for many, if not most students. (2/10)

The Trump administration is demanding colleges hand over their admissions data to enforce the ban on affirmative action. Due date: March 18. Just a few problems that colleges are dealing with as they dig through the numbers and try to comply. (1/10) 🧵

Trump's admissions data collection strains college administrators Universities must report student demographics, grades and test scores by March 18

Over 2,000 universities, incl those that have never practiced affirmative action, are scrambling to meet a March deadline to submit data on admissions to the Trump administration. Everything from sex and race to GPA and SAT is problematic to answer. Details here: hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

Conservatives see married parents as a solution to low student achievement. It's not that simple NAEP data suggests that family structure affects student performance mostly in wealthier households

“Two-parent households do not confer … academic advantage [for low-income kids]…. Those who live w/ both parents scored a 199. Those who live w/ just mom scored 200.” Money matters far more than family structure. @jillbarshay.bsky.social for @hechingerreport.org hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

Thank you. I didn't know about this book.

I expected low-income children to be most affected by having only one parent at home. But the data show the opposite. High-income children suffer the largest academic penalty for living in a single-parent household. Not much difference in test scores for low-income kids. (2/2)

Conservatives see married parents as a solution to low student achievement. It's not that simple NAEP data suggests that family structure affects student performance mostly in wealthier households

Project 2025 claimed that data on achievement by student family structure isn't publicly available. That’s not true, though you need expertise to extract it. I did. And the results surprised me. (1/2) hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

The lesson here isn't that teachers should use more math terms in their lessons. But that if you're a principal and you want a leading indicator or a sort of biomarker of a good math teacher, you should pick one who regularly uses math words and understands them. (4/4)

If a teacher with weak conceptual understanding of mathematics suddenly started using more math terms, or handed out worksheets of math vocab, I wouldn't expect her (or his) students to improve on the annual math assessments. (3/4)

The researchers were unable to prove that mathematical vocabulary is causing student achievement to rise. It may be all the other good things that math-talking teachers are doing that's the active ingredient. (2/4)

Talk nerdy to me: Teachers who use math vocabulary help students do better in math Using words like ‘factors,’ ‘denominators’ and ‘multiples’ may be part of a constellation of good math teaching practices

I'd like to address an important misunderstanding about my piece hechingerreport.org/proof-points... that I'm seeing on social media. (1/4)

Chilling. I used to work on Portland Ave, where this reported ICE shooting took place.