Like others I'm a big fan of education writer Dana Goldstein (and love the line in her latest piece about the current mood of "brutal optimism" about testing). But the piece in Slate - about how "a growing spate of evidence from around the country suggests that the most egregious practices in Atlanta... are part of a national, and indeed a historic trend... bolstered by No Child Left Behind's emphasis on pressuring educators to produce spectacular test results" -- seems overheated in its claims and makes several questionable connections. Goldstein presents no real evidence that there is a cheating crisis going on in America, greatly overstates NCLB's real-world threat to educators, and seems to presume that educators are both unable to resist everyday temptations and shouldn't be included among those who should be held accountable for their actions. To all of this and more, I protest.
No doubt, we've seen a slew of cheating scandals lately, the details of which -- test-fixing parties and high-level coverups in Atlanta, for example -- are infuriating. We should all be concerned about the integrity of the system and the ways in which we try and make schools and teachers more accountable for their results. I share her
