Pass Rates

A lot of hand-wringing and whining about this WaPo story, basically schools focusing on kids more likely to pass state tests. Two thoughts: First, this is why No Child requires states to raise passing rates over time, so that picking off low-hanging fruit isn’t a perpetual option (though those provisions in the policy raise other problems). Second, reading this, I can’t help but wonder where we’d be if the same effort were applied to using data to inform instruction in the first place…

Update: Sherman Dorn reads this post as minimizing the problem. That’s not how it was intended, it’s an issue but my point is that it’s not inherent in the policy. Update II: In case it wasn’t obvious, which for some it apparently was not, hand-wringing and whining refers to the reaction to the article, not the article itself. The word “about” was the tip-off…