Edu Commentary

This letter to the San Francisco Chronicle should lay to rest any misconceptions about where George Miller is on No Child Left Behind:

Editor — The No Child Left Behind law did not set “federal standards” for education, as you asserted in the editorial, “Test confusion” (March 17). The law requires each state to set its own standards for ensuring that all children are able to read and do math at grade level by the 2013-14 school year.

California set its standard so low this year using the state discretion allowed under No Child Left Behind that only one-quarter of students would be required to perform reading and math at grade level.

California’s earlier standard, known as the Academic Performance Index, is even less ambitious, which is why it’s far easier for schools to meet the modest goals of that state standard. I doubt many parents would be satisfied with a school where 75 percent of students cannot do basic reading and math at their grade level.

If parents are confused by two systems, the solution is simple: They should reject the old system, the Academic Performance Index, which allows schools to be considered as doing their job successfully even when most students never learn to read or do math at grade level.

That’s why we needed No Child Left Behind in the first place, and why it’s time for proponents of the state standard to shift their time and resources away from fighting for the status quo and toward raising achievement for all of California’s children.

Rep. GEORGE MILLER
D-Martinez
House Committee on
Education and the Workforce
Washington, D.C.

Thanks to reader AF for the heads-up.

Hmmm…why do we have so many ridiculous education policies? This Chicago Trib editorial gives a good illustration of several reasons…Via Teach and Learn.

The pushback on Dave Bing’s efforts on behalf of charter schools in Detroit is starting. Via A Constrained Vision.

In Sunday’s LAT, two California Teachers debate breaking from the single-salary schedule there. One, Hailly Korman, is a former fellow at the 21st Century Schools Project.

Also, more here from the LAT Ed Board.

In NYC, the UFT has become a supplemental services provider under No Child Left Behind. Interesting development…and probably a good bet that they’ll do a good job. Sort of a paradox for foes of the program…

Keep hearing how charter schools are going to tear communities apart. But if our society can withstand this sort of diversity in general, can’t we stand a little more diversity in our public schooling?

Though everyone in Delaware today is focused on this there is some news on charter schools, new study, mixed but moderately encouraging findings. Makes then Governor, now U.S. Senator Tom Carper look like he was on to something when he championed charters in DE. But enough of that, like Mark McGwire, this blog is not about the past…

Quite a fight brewing in CA…reports that the CTA plans to raise dues and take a mortgage out on their headquarters to build a $54 million war chest to take on the Governator.

David Broder makes some observations on that scene in today’s Post. Amazing how some of the politics there have changed…

Joanne Jacobs makes a good point about a strange write up of CA’s API index. The article also implies that Preuss school skims, that’s not exactly the case though there are requirements.

The larger point illustrated by the API (and one principal of a public school out there once quipped to Edu Commentary that anything on the API below a six is just intolerable and that he could get a five “on heroin” — and his school does a lot better than a five with really challenging kids) is that different schools achieve different results with similar students. In a rational world this sort of evidence would be used to bolster the case for public education and great public schools in all communities. In today’s through the looking glass edupolitics such schools are ripped apart by an eager band of debunking researchers because we can’t tolerate any success that might call into question any of the basic operating norms or assumptions about schools today.