Garrison Keillor, call your office
Monday, July 28th, 2008 By Mike Maurer
Dublin Schools will soon be rated “continuous improvement“.
Of course that means nothing whatever, so you have to know that one of the alternative ratings is “excellent,” which Dublin is accustomed to receiving.
At the same time, the state has 30 benchmarks that it scores, and Dublin hit all 30 of them. So what gives?
Two things. The state has a different scale than the feds, and the feds require that the schools measure various subgroups to see how they are performing. This is all well and good, since schools will be quick to tout their excellent performance while forgetting to mention untold numbers of individual students who simply aren’t receiving an education. Shame on the state for not doing a better job emphasizing that. No Child Left Behind, indeed.
But the federal law has a bit of silliness in it concocted by Ted Kennedy and George Bush: by 2014, 100 percent of students in each group must meet benchmarks, which is another way of saying there can be no failing students.
This is silly. People are going to fail all the time. My wife can set the benchmark that I’ll look like Tom Cruise, but it isn’t going to happen.
On the other hand, the schools shouldn’t be allowed to ignore those failing students, and assuredly if you leave it up to them to tell you about those failing students, you’re not going to hear about them.
There might be a role here for the federal government to require truth in advertising, and require schools to disclose certain information, such as failure rates. But that’s about the extent of it. There’s no role for federal funding, and there’s no role for federal mandates beyond disclosure, including requirements to close schools or take other remedial action.
Tags: Education, no child left behind
