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In the
Huffington Post yesterday, Fordham’s Mike Petrilli throws his support behind adding a UK-esque school inspectorate system into school accountability – a topic Craig Jerald explored in Education Sector’s
On Her Majesty’s School Inspection Service and in
subsequent chatter on this blog. Petrilli writes:
To the extent that school grades (and consequences linked to them) drive policy and behavior, we ought to make sure that those grades are informed by more than just numbers.
I completely agree that numbers – specifically test scores alone – cannot paint a complete picture of school quality. There are numerous
other pieces of information – whether they are quantitative measures like AP success, postsecondary enrollment, and college remediation rates, or qualitative observations made by professional inspectors – that could inform our perceptions of school performance. And I am a firm believer in the