“Don’t bother me with facts, son. I’ve already made up my mind,” said Foghorn Leghorn, the animated chicken who appeared in numerous Warner Brothers cartoons.

I wonder if he’s now working for the United States Department of Education.

Days after the most intensive study on teacher incentive ever done was released and showed it had no effect on student achievement, today the United States Department of Education announced grants of $442 million to….support teacher incentive pay.

Here are some links to read more about the Vanderbilt University study:

Study: Teacher Bonuses Don’t Improve Test Scores, NPR

Nashville Incentive Pay Experiment, Thoughts On Education Policy

I’ve already written my thoughts about Michelle Rhee’s probable upcoming departure from the Washington, D.C.’s schools and potential move to Sacramento (see The Gracelessness Of Michelle Rhee).

For the best analysis I’ve seen about her downfall, read “Why Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty Lost” by Diane Ravitch at Education Week.

Oprah Winfrey had an awful show on schools Monday. I can add nothing to two exceptional posts written by others:

Oprah and her warrior woman, Michelle Rhee by Valerie Strauss at The Washington Post

Dear Ms. Winfrey at Change Agency

Jonah Lehrer is a very talented writer who creatively applies research from the human sciences to real-life problems. I’ve often linked to his columns from this blog.

Today, though, he wrote an odd column about the somewhat odd column that appeared in the New York Times earlier this week about testing (which I wrote about in “Scientifically Tested Tests”).

My summary of what he wrote is that the standardized tests we use now don’t really measure knowledge. Instead, what it really measures — less than perfectly — is grit, self control, and perseverance. Those are the qualities schools should really be focusing on, and we should develop tests to more accurately measure those kinds of qualities, particularly because those are what are most valued by employers (let me know if you think that’s an inaccurate representation).

I’m certainly in agreement that the standardized tests we use today do not accurately measure knowledge. And I’m also in agreement that we should help students develop grit, self-control and perseverance. In fact, as regular readers know, I’ve written a lot about how do just that in the classroom, and will be writing more in my upcoming book.

But I get frustrated whenever I see people (who tend to either be school “reformers” or columnists who have little background in education — like Lehrer and David Brooks (though I wouldn’t put Lehrer in the same category — Brooks becomes almost incoherent whenever he writes about schools) portray needed school changes in a black/white view.

Yes, we need to help students develop those what I call “life skills” qualities. And, yes, we need to develop useful assessments for them (though I wouldn’t look to KIPP Schools as a model like Lehrer does in his article).

But we also need to help our students, particularly those in many of our schools with limited background knowledge, learn facts and, despite Mr. Lehrer’s criticism of helping our students develop the skills of “critical thinking, or the “ability to think about a situation in several different ways,” we need to teach those, too.

And I think both can be done in a lot more creative, useful, and effective ways than Lehrer’s anecdotes of cramming facts down students throat. I also don’t agree with Lehrer’s definition that this kind of cramming is “learning to learn.” And, despite what many of my colleagues are saying, I’m not entirely dismissive of the potential of a new generation of tests being helpful in that effort.

It doesn’t have to be either/or. How about both/and?