(Guest post by Greg Forster)
Andrew Coulson’s got the skinny on a shocking story of education officials in the UK arbitrarily revising students’ test scores to shape the political narrative they would create.
It’s the latest in a long line of cautionary tales about the kind of thing that happens when anyone other than parents is ultimately in charge of the system. Fans of Common Core, take note.
I am shocked – shocked! – to discover that political manipulation of education is going on in here!
Your federal grant for participating in Common Core Standards, monsieur.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Brilliant captions!
If you actually read the article, the UK officials didn’t change any student scores. They raised the score cut points for attaining an A, B, C, etc., because they feared that they had made the test too easy. In other words, they applied higher standards to their national exam. That’s still not fair to the kids or helpful to those who would like to track achievement longitudinally, but it isn’t as serious of a violation as Coulson made it out to be.
Well, I’ll agree that the phrase “revised their scores” wasn’t as fully descriptive as it could have been. But whether it’s any less serious to revise letters than it is to revise numbers is another question. Both the “scores” and the “levels” exist solely for the purpose of communicating aggregated information about what each student put for all the answers on the test. The letter is just a little more highly aggregated than the number is.
Ditto. Best. Captions. Ever.