Diigo In Education

Good. Devil in the detail, as always, of course.

Interestingly, KY is looking to get rid of their sophisticated examinations because of political pressure, lack of comparibility, and $. In the 90s KY was a leader in attempting to change assessment and accountability, but for a plethora of reasons has fallen back in line. Not trying to be negative, but recognize the difficulty in the challenge and hope he's up to it.

Ed, great example of how not to structure the change. Open more charter schools, make them have a 5 year evaluation plan, have an accountability plan in place that allows the school to stay true to their ideal, make changes that they feel will help them achieve their goals, even allow them additional time if results warrant, and then HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE. If they can't show they haven't at least held their own, then close them, but make that part of the evaluation plan from the beginning. The rub of that plan is that you can't hold them accountable at a level that you aren't going to hold everybody else to. What about traditional schools that aren't working, what do you do with those schools? Isn't that one of the big knocks on NCLB that they are 'being taken over' because of some testing system?

Why reauthorize? Why not tear it up and write something better?

I disagree with tearing it up and starting over, isn't that what we do in education? Try something it doesn't work (for lots of reasons, including lack of implementation), and move on to the next shiny thing. Why not analyze the program, identify the aspects that have shown efficacy, identify the aspects that haven't achieved their goals, make changes that are informed and researchable, put them in place and hold people accountable for implementing. I think NCLB was well intentioned and represented the best thinking of a group of people (in education as in many areas i don't think you can say it represents the best thinking of everyone). I just don't like the idea of letting everyone off the hook by starting over. I believe it reinforces the concept that I don't have to worry about this project because it too will pass.