Next Stop, High School; Plus Too Much Bill Conti?

Two from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

An editorial calls for adding high school graduation rates to NCLB’s assessments. Yes, the dropout crisis needs our attention, but…you thought defining “highly qualified” was hard? Try “graduation rate.”
Just for fun, the news from the NEA RA that you really wanted to know — a rundown of the candidates’ musical selections (scroll to [...]

Wrapping Up in Philly, Looking to 2008

The NEA Representative Assembly wrapped up in Philadelphia last night, with lots of talk about how to improve NCLB from the 9,000 educators who attended and the eight Presidential candidates — Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Huckabee, Kucinich, Obama, and Richardson — who addressed the crowd. 
NEA.org has extensive coverage of the RA, including video of the candidates’ speeches. 

Disconnect at the Post

An editorial in yesterday’s Washington Post credits NCLB with raising test scores — by citing the very study (from CEP) that warned not to attribute test score gains to NCLB … a finding that was reported in the Post’s news pages a month before. Did the editorial writers only scan the headline?
Nods to Media Matters and Too Sense for detailed critiques.  

‘Race to the Bottom’

Last week former Deputy Secretary of Education Gene Hickok told the Washington Post about his case of buyer’s remorse for NCLB.
Hickok explains further on the Heritage Foundation’s site how “federal requirements have led to a race to the bottom in state testing that threatens to destroy transparency of results in American education. Congress can solve this problem by ending [...]