Pity the poor data geeks at the National Center for Education Statistics. The Education Department has less than four months to roll out its controversial college rating system, and it isn't going to be easy, as the data experts at Thursday's technical symposium made clear.
Pretty much everyone presenting at the daylong event agreed that existing federal data on student outcomes are flawed, that a unit-record student-tracking system would solve almost every problem (if only Congress would allow it), and that it would be almost impossible to design a ratings system that would please everyone.
But they disagreed on pretty much everything else, including which metrics the department should use, how it should weight them, and how it should group institutions for peer comparisons.
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/live-blog-the-education-dept-s-technical-symposium-on-college-ratings/72377