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NEPC Announces the Bunkum Awards for 2013

Find out who gets the Grand Prize for shoddy research
 

Contact: 
William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net

URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/kxvfsuo
 

BOULDER, CO (January 14, 2014) – As this year’s award season gets underway, the National Education Policy Center is pleased to unveil the winners of the 8th annual Bunkum Awards for exceptionally ghastly educational research.

The Bunkums recognize the tirelessly toiling think tankers who breathe life into the endless possibilities of shameless research design, analysis and reporting. The Bunkums are reserved for those who have elevated the art of façade-building, using the pretense of research to delightfully disguise advocacy.

“This year’s deserving awardees join a pantheon of purveyors of weak data, shoddy analyses, and overblown recommendations from years past,” said the judges in handing out this year’s awards.

The awards announcement, available on the NEPC website, is hosted by Dr. David Berliner, the Regents’ Professor Emeritus and former dean of the College of Education at Arizona State University. Berliner is a member of the National Academy of Education and the International Academy of Education, a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a past president of the American Educational Research Association, and a widely recognized scholar of educational psychology and policy.

The prizes are:

  • The “Do you believe in miracles?” Award
  • The “We’re pretty sure we could have done more with $45 million” Award
  • The “It’s just not fair to expect PowerPoints to be based on evidence” Award and
  • The “Look Mom! I gave myself an ‘A’ on my report card!” Award.

To find out who won, see the 2013 Bunkums Awards video presentation, read the award descriptions, see the reports that are the award winners, and read the reviews of those reports for National Education Policy Center’s Think Twice think tank review project, go to
http://nepc.colorado.edu/think-tank/bunkum-awards/2013.

 

The Think Twice think tank review project (http://thinktankreview.org) of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) provides the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC is housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. The Think Twice think tank review project is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence.  or more information on the NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/.