NY Times Actually Published an OPED *Critical* of ED Reform Yesterday

Took me 24 hrs to wait for my palpitations to settle. Author is a former Times reporter who wrote a book. So i guess that it was his "in". I don't think I've ever seen an opinion piece on that page on that topic that wasn't penned by someone who stood to gain via $$$ connections to Gates or Bloomberg or Murdoch or Koch ,etc. .

So... keep the digitalis at the ready. Free ( i.e. unbought) speech lives at the NYT. Sort of.

When 'Grading' is Degrading.
By Michael Brick



>>For the past three decades, one administration after another has sought to fix America’s troubled schools by making them compete with one another. Mr. Obama has put up billions of dollars for his Race to the Top program, a federal sweepstakes where state educational systems are judged head-to-head largely on the basis of test scores. Even here in Texas, nobody’s model for educational excellence, the state has long used complex algorithms to assign grades of Exemplary, Recognized, Acceptable or Unacceptable to its schools.

So far, such competition has achieved little more than re-segregation, long charter school waiting lists and the same anemic international rankings in science, math and literacy we’ve had for years.

And yet now, policy makers in both parties propose ratcheting it up further — this time, by “grading” teachers as well.

It’s a mistake. In the year I spent reporting on John H. Reagan High School in Austin, I came to understand the dangers of judging teachers primarily on standardized test scores. Raw numbers don’t begin to capture what happens in the classroom. And when we reward and punish teachers based on such artificial measures, there is too often an unintended consequence for our kids.>>>

Ze rest: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/opinion/grading-schools-isnt-the-answer-its-the-problem.html