Eduwonk Andy Rotherham justifiably ripped Virginia in Sunday’s Washington Post for its “soft bigotry” of setting different goals for students based on race, ethnicity, and income as part of its No Child Left Behind waiver. While Gadfly is relieved that state and federal officials announced yesterday that they will rework the goals, the episode should serve as a reminder that increased federal flexibility, while welcome on many fronts, can also undo a decade’s worth of accountability reform.
What do principals at some of America’s best public schools do when their plans run into red tape? Many simply ignore the peskiest rules, Jay Mathews notes. Districts should heed the successes of such school leaders and remove inappropriate requirements so that dynamic principals don’t need to break them in the first place.
Bedeviled by a school-attendance-data scandal that seems to get worse by the day and has already begun to wreak havoc by delaying the release of school-report cards for 2011-2012, the Ohio Department of Education is likely to ask the legislature for greater authority to monitor schools. Centralization rarely pays dividends in education—ensuring accurate reporting of data that underpins all efforts at accountability is one of the exceptions.
