In today’s Washington Post Jay Mathews lays out some interesting questions about testing. Essentially, if a state’s standard are good, what’s so bad about “teaching to” them? It reminds me of a great article a few years ago in the Washington Monthly by Georgia Alexakis about the MCAS resistance in Massachusetts. Many of these perceived ills take on a life of their own and few journos take the time to really think them through and/or debunk them. Hawken notes that there are problems with testing implementation which is certainly the case, but that’s a different point than the one it seems Mathews is making here.
PS–This blogger accuses Mathews of altering his class size story without alerting readers. That’s either complete BS or it’s serious since corrections should clearly be noted (I’d strongly bet on the former, BTW). Still, send along any relevant info/evidence… Also, sneak preview, if you think I’m completely in the tank for Jay, the WaPo, etc…, please hold off on sending the nasty gram for 24-48 hours, you’ll save us both some time…