When Test Scores No Longer Matter
A slightly different version of this op-ed was posted Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet earlier today:
When Test Scores No Longer Matter
Jim Horn
When standardized test scores these days don’t conform to the demands of the official political playbook written by the bold reformers (as they like to be known), such test scores may be summarily denounced in the press as meaningless. On May 9, for example, New Jersey’s Education Commissioner Bret Schundler, who is leading a charge with Governor Christie to remake the state’s public schools in the corporate education reform image, denounced New Jersey Public Schools as a “wretched system” and the state’s #1 national rankings on the NAEP in both 4th and 8th grade reading and math as “irrelevant.” As Star Ledger columnist Bob Braun quipped in response to Schundler’s outrageous conclusions, “Good news is always bad news to those who see themselves as "reformers" — no sense reforming what works.”
A couple of other prominent examples of dissing-the-facts phenomenon are worth noting. After years of increasingly caustic applications of the same test and punish measures and market solutions favored by the perpetual education reform machine, the latest research findings show little to no reason to continue advancing either vouchers or charters as national policy solutions to