Today brought a bumper crop of excellent posts and articles about school reform issues:

* Here are some new additions to The Best Posts & Articles Raising Concerns About Teach For America:

Marie Levey-Pabst: Will the Teach For America Elite Save the Poor? is a guest post in Anthony Cody’s Ed Week blog.

Poise & Ivy: Judging Teachers by their Credentials is from Nancy Flanagan.

* Jim Horn wrote a good post on the PISA international test scores. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Getting Some Perspective On International Test Comparison Demagoguery.

* There’s a fascinating article about the battle between researchers questioning the validity of the study used by the Los Angeles Times to rank teachers and make those assessments public. Included in the article is a comment by well-known and respected education professor Mike Rose:

I cringed at the cheap insinuation that the Colorado study is influenced by the source of some of its funding. Shall we consider the vested interest of Mr. Lauter, Mr. Felch, etc. in this project? Or the fact that Thomas Kane, who Mr. Lauter approvingly quotes, is a high-level official at the Gates Foundation, overseeing a project which has invested heavily in Value-Added methods? The point is that there are all kinds of personal, professional, and institutional investments in this debate, so if you’re going to lay them out, lay them all out. And if you suspect a biasing influence, do the reporter’s job of demonstrating it.

But the big, big question for me is how is it that this newspaper moved so strongly toward advocating a particular technology in school reform? The Times is not just editorializing that we need reform, but within its news department is taking a side on a technique. The paper is no longer reporting the news, but creating it and spinning it.

Thanks to David B. Cohen for the tip.

I’m adding this info to The Best Posts About The LA Times Article On “Value-Added” Teacher Ratings.