Kate Walsh of NCTQ Responds

Kate Walsh wrote me last night in response to my blog. I wanted to thus share the relevant parts of her response (with her permission).

I read your blog piece this morning and had a few points I'd like to make in response.

1. I am not affiliated with the Fordham Foundation--unless your definition of an affiliation is something that is formed any time any one gives you a contract. While I do have a lot of respect for the work of the Fordham Foundation (Checker in on my board), I do not agree with them on everything that they espouse.
2. NCTQ is nonpartisan, meaning we do not identify ourselves with the Political Left or the Political Right. Our board is mostly Democrats. Personally, I am a Democrat, as evident from having just been appointed to the Maryland School Board by a Democratic governor. I will never understand how being a critic of certification makes me a right winger.
3. You were right to call attention to the AERA link--the wrong AERA link was put in to the story. We were in fact referring to that mammoth 1000-page study put out by AERA, Studying Teacher Education. The right link is now up on our site. Sorry for the error. I'd appreciate it if you would convey this error to your readers.
4. I did not selectively pull only the data I wanted from the Washpost story. That finding did not seem relevant since we are talking about course requirements in education. I will concede that students might elect to take a diversity class, so perhaps I should have noted that scenario and included the more positive finding. However, the AERA meta-analysis wasn't looking at courses that were required or not required and still found no evidence of a positive, long term change in students.

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I emailed her back with some additional thoughts and points. At this point, though, the only thing I will add (and which I also wrote to her) is that while aspects of these points may be legitimate, it doesn’t change the overarching point of my original blog: that Jay Greene’s article was poor research looking for media attention rather than serious consideration.