John King still loves those tests: Editorial
U.S. Secretary of Education John King is an educator who never learns.
As New York state's education commissioner from 2011 to 2015, King imposed an ill-conceived "reform" agenda on our schools that focused on tougher tests and teacher evaluations. Smug and impervious to criticism, King alienated parents and teachers to such a degree that education policy, once the domain of jargon-dazed wonks, became the subject of daily supermarket chatter. King helped birth the testing "opt out" movement, the opposite of what he intended.
Now, as the nation's top education official, King is almost single-handedly trying to preserve the federal government's power to boss around states and schools. If he succeeds, and he probably will, dozens of schools in the Lower Hudson Valley could be punished if parents decide to have their kids skip state tests. It's nonsense.
In December, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act, a federal law to replace the much-scorned No Child Left Behind Act. The new law, years in the making, updated federal requirements for states and schools receiving billions in federal aid. But it was written to loosen federal rules for holding schools accountable, giving states more leeway to make their own decisions, even as it continues to require annual testing of students.
New laws, though, require the writing of regulations — rules that explain how laws are to be implemented. King has been in charge of writing the regulations for Every Student Succeeds, and has been reprimanded far and wide for producing rules that maintain too much federal power and go against the spirit of the new law.
Among other things, the draft regulations require that every public school receive a grade based on test scores and other factors, starting in 2017-18. If more than 5 John King still loves those tests: Editorial:
