Steve Perry’s Dissertation: Heavy on Lit Review, Slight on Scholarship

As a classroom teacher, a real teacher– real in the sense of both my credentials and my experience– I am tired of those outside of the classroom catapulting themselves into positions of quick fame in order to comment on the state of the classroom– a place either completely unfamiliar to them firsthand or of only token familiarity. Such is the motivation for my writing many of my posts, and it is my motivation here as I write about Steve Perry.

Steve Perry is not a teacher. Yet he is one of many would-be reformers who has stepped up to claim his moment in the spotlight as an education expert– and one whose contempt for teachers is obvious.

Though not a teacher, Perry was a CNN education commentator, and he opened and leads his own school in Connecticut, Capitol Preparatory Magnet School, a year-round school that advertises sending ”100% of its graduates to 4 year colleges.” The big question is one of student attrition prior to that senior year.

Perry quotes the rapper JZ and says that “Men lie and women lie but numbers don’t.”

I’m not a rapper. I’m a classroom teacher who is also a statistician and researcher, and I know full well that Perry has positioned his numbers to lie.

Of course, hiding the full story behind that sparkling “100%” is Perry’s lie. And it is Perry’s number. So perhaps JZ and I have tied on this one.

more . . . http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/steve-perrys-dissertation-heavy-on-lit-review-slight-on-scholarship/