Couple of quick takeaways from Sam Dillon’s NYT Bush on Bush piece about school accountability this week. First, there is a lot to recommend FL’s system but if you’re concerned about getting kids to standards as a school accountability system it still leaves open the possibility for kids to move through the system without getting there. Second, most states still can’t do what Florida does, the article should have engaged with that issue because implicitly it feeds this simplistic notion that the changes to the law are so obvious and people like Rep. George Miller so out of touch. Third, great new attack on NCLB from Jeb Bush with an appeal to religion:
“I mean perfection is not going to happen,” Mr. Bush said Sept. 12 at a news conference in Orlando, arguing that achievement targets are important but that unrealistic ones discourage educators. “We’re all imperfect under God’s watchful eye, and it’s impossible to achieve it.”
Read the Peterson-West analysis that the article is pegged to here.
The angry man always thinks he can do more than he can.