...And a giant step backward

The Aspen Institute's Commission on No Child Left Behind issued its report yesterday. We watched the webcast. We were disheartened. It is as if these "commissioners" have not talked to anyone working in the trenches in real public schools over the last six years.

We can sum up their recommendations this way: More of the same, waaaaay more.

Not surprisingly, the commission recommends that we all use Sanders' methods to evaluate teacher effectiveness on the basis of scores on one annual test. So, we would keep all the "HQT" rigamarole and paperwork and add to that "value-added" analysis of test scores. Yeehaw.

Speaking of one test, the commission recommended national standards and a national test.

They recommended that we reduce the percentage of children with disabilities who can take out-of-level tests, from 2% to 1%. Apparently, these commissioners don't see the cruelty in asking children with cognitive disabilities to take tests that we know are too hard for them. They apparently don't believe the incidence data for mental retardation, either.