Director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, UCLA
Director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at the University of California-Los Angeles, and author of Tracking Your School's Success: A Guide to Sensible Evaluation
Evaluating Our Teachers, Part 2 Last night we heard about the Los Angeles Times blockbuster education report , the release of records on 6000 3rd through 5th grade elementary teachers and what's called a "value added" analysis of their success or failure based on student performance on standardized English and Math tests. We also heard A.J. Duffy, the President of the United Teachers of LA, call the process a " disgrace " and ask union members to boycott the paper. But the Times plans to put all 6000 names and their on line, and today President Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan said parents have a right to know if their children's teachers are effective. California Education Secretary Bonnie Reiss said school districts should do the same thing on their own. The Times says those endorsements prove that the issue of teacher accountability is now bipartisan.
Trump's 'America First' goes missing abroad In the Middle East, President Trump is changing some policies of the Obama Administration—and reversing his own campaign attacks on Islam as a religion that "hates us." We hear about his visit to Saudi Arabia and what's at stake for the rest of his foreign excursion.
Who's to blame for the opioid crisis? Some of the lawyers who took on Big Tobacco are now going after Big Pharma. It’s all about the deadly epidemic of opioid use. Are the drug companies to blame? What about the users? Later, on today’s Talking Point: making sense of Britain’s upset election.
Ex-FBI Director Comey tells his side of the story Today, former FBI Director James Comey came close to calling the President who fired him a liar. The White House denied the claim and called it insulting, but Republican Senators did not challenge Comey’s truthfulness. Many questions remain: did the President try to obstruct a federal investigation? Later, we’ll go behind the “velvet rope” for a look at 5-Star health care for the richest Americans.