Education Next – Chester E. Finn, Jr.
“No, I’m not referring to the Golden State’s rich palette of ethnic and other minority (and majority) groups, nor to its desire that they’ll live, work, and go to school in harmony, like Monet’s Water Lilies or Matisse’s Fauve masterpieces. I’m on the case of California’s nutty new color-coded approach to school accountability and school report cards. Not only is it manifestly discriminatory against color-blind people like me; it’s overall baffling and unhelpful to just about everyone who might ever want to make use of it. We all know that the Every Student Succeeds Act gives states much wider leeway than they had under NCLB to craft school accountability arrangements that suit them. Just about every state is frantically working to get its Title I plan to Washington by the March 2017 deadline, and battles are raging over the Education Department’s interpretation (via draft regulations) of several key pieces of the new law. One of those battles is about whether the feds should require states to issue a single “summative” rating, such as an A-to-F grade, for every public school. There are plenty of reasons why that’s a bad idea.”(more)