Just a quick sidenote about the speech this morning. Obama complained pretty emphatically about state standards and the current system--50 different sets of standards, from the lowest-of-the-low to the highest-of-the-high. Nothing illustrates this mess more clearly (we believe!) than Fordham's latest study, The Accountability Illusion, which "moved" a set of 36 real schools from state to state to see how many of them would make "adequate yearly progress" under the different rules set by each state under the No Child Left Behind Act. It found great variation. In some states, nearly all of the sample elementary schools failed to make AYP, while in other states, nearly all of these same schools cleared the bar just fine. So, the way that schools are currently rated seems to be rather idiosyncratic, random and opaque. If you'd like to read more about this, Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli (who both happen to be out of the country at the moment!) just penned a related op-ed for Education Week's March 11 issue. You can check it out here.
