I'm not being sarcastic! In today's New York Post, Ravitch blasts New York State for letting its own tests get ridiculously easier over time, compared to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). But she actually lauds Joel Klein for the progress that New York City has made (on NAEP) during his tenure:
The national scores show that the proportion of fourth-grade students who reached proficiency rose from 21 percent to 35 percent. That is solid, and Chancellor Joel Klein can certainly take pride in that improvement.
He can "take pride in that achievement"? Wow! After more than five years of unabated warfare between Ravitch and Klein, that's a veritable love letter.
To be sure, she still got some digs in on Klein and Company:
We also learned from the federal tests that New York City made no progress for the last two years, and there was no narrowing of the achievement gap between black and white students or between Hispanic and white students.But NAEP shows that over six years, the city made slow and steady gains in both the fourth and eighth grades. There is a lesson here for the city's Department of Education. If a school made no progress for two straight years, Tweed would give it an F and perhaps close it down. The department should learn from its own experience and recognize that it is unfair to measure progress based on only one or two years of scores.
And the Post did run??this caption under a picture of Klein: "Peddling inflated data on city school children's progress." Ouch! (Diane insists that she did not write that caption.)
However you might interpret New York's NAEP results, there's only one way to interpret today's Post article by Ravitch: she's not afraid to give credit where credit is due.
-Mike Petrilli
