Depends on Who You Ask
More fallout from last week’s DOE and CEP reports.
A Fort-Wayne News-Sentinel editorial says Indiana was getting a handle on testing students until NCLB derailed the state’s efforts — and shudders that the dawn of national standards is upon us.
The Des Moines Register’s editorial page charts Iowa’s pre-NCLB efforts and says, “Iowa’s best course is to aim much higher than the federal law in setting challenging expectations for all youngsters.”
UC Berkeley Prof Bruce Fuller, quoted in some of the CEP coverage last week, argues in the San Francisco Chronicle that NCLB lowers the bar.
The Virginian-Pilot editorial staff asks, “So far as NCLB goes, why mess with success?”, while the WaPo glows, “Has student achievement increased under the No Child Left Behind Act? The answer, according to an objective new report [from CEP], is a resounding yes.”
The last Word belongs to Stephen Colbert.
One Comment on “Depends on Who You Ask”
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June 15, 2007 at 11:37 pm
Arizona’s Super of Public Ed stated that increased scores can be attributed to increased tutoring being offered. Well….. if you focus the efforts of the whole school, the whole district, the whole state on raising test scores, surely scores will go up. It’s called “Teaching To The Test”. Duh.
And so what if students pass the tests? What does that prove about what they know? Asian countries are studying us to see how to get out of the exam mentality where education is all about passing a test and then resting on your laurels. Not exactly a recipe for dynamic innovation.