An Interesting Few Days
Dear Deborah,
I had planned to write about an important new report from the National Research Council that shows the risks and ineffectiveness of high-stakes testing, but I have to put that off until next week. Events intervened that require me to address another, though related, subject.
On June 1, The New York Times published my critique of politicians who single out "miracle schools." These schools allegedly made such amazing progress in such a short time that they prove that poverty is no barrier to high academic achievement. Bill Bennett often referred to such schools as "existence proofs": If one school can do it, then all schools can do it. I have come to believe that such existence proofs are akin to saying that if one person can run a four-minute mile, then everyone should be able to do so. If one student can score a perfect 800 on her SAT in mathematics, then all should.
My goal in the article was to make five points: 1.) our political leaders are selling a false narrative (dramatic