-- "[Statewide tests] may be crude, and they should never be the sole means of measuring students' academic abilities and progress. But the accountability they have brought to schools and the statistical guideposts they've established are undeniable benefits. Take, for instance, the reading and math achievement gap between minority and white students. It has existed for years, but it became the focus of attention and concern only after testing showed how widespread it was and made it too obvious to ignore." See "Statewide school examinations are crude but useful" in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on June 19, 2008.
-- "It is no exaggeration to say the health and welfare of Ohio depend heavily on how successfully its young people are educated." See "Ohio's education debate at crucial stage," by Terry Ryan in the Columbus Dispatch on June 21, 2008.
-- "Strickland has said he supports the concept of holding schools accountable through student assessments. And he should be held to that statement, because only through standardized assessments can schools know whether students are learning what they need to succeed in careers or college. Moreover, decades of educational decline, followed by the modest but steady gains of recent years, suggest that schools will make the effort to change only with incentives for improvement and consequences for failure." See "Accountable and Flexible," in theColumbus Dispatch on June 27, 2008.
-- "[Governor Strickland] asks the right question about the effectiveness of current spending on public schools. Are the resources deployed to reap the largest dividend in the classroom? Hard to read a credible examination of the Ohio system without concluding that the answer is no." See "Letting Ted be Ted," in the Akron Beacon Journal on June 27, 2008.
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