The Choice Channel

“Which is better: The school whose kids start the year with As and end the year with As? Or the one whose kids start with Ds but end up with Cs or even Bs? It’s far from an academic question. And city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein was up on Capitol Hill yesterday urging Congress to recognize that, when it comes to identifying the schools doing the best job of rescuing kids from educational poverty, the answer is clearly the latter. It’s called value-added testing, and Klein is bringing it to New York. Without it, our public-school system has been flying all-but-blind for decades. With it, we’ll at least finally be able to see the results of our policies. The broad, squishy ideas of ’standards’ and ‘accountability’ have been all the rage in education reform for some time.” (07/28/06)