Posted by
John R. LaPlante on Thursday, September 28, 2006 9:02:00 AM
Remember the joke about all children being above average? The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA) says that overstating school achievement is a serious matter.
Under No Child Left Behind, states set targets for the percentages of students who score
proficient or better on standardized tests. If a school fails to meet targets, certain steps kick in, steps that don’t sit well with the education establishment. Meanwhile, few politicians find it useful to criticize school performance—criticism of schools being seen as a criticism of education itself—so it’s natural for them to overstate the condition of school performance.
The OCPA says that “Oklahoma has, on the whole, set unusually low educational standards for its students, teachers, and schools. While objective measures put Oklahoma in the lower half of states in terms of educational performance, measures reported by the Oklahoma State Department of Education consistently paint a far rosier picture.”
Kevin Carey, author of Hot Air: How Oklahoma Inflates Its Educational Progress Under No Child Left Behind [PDF], calls for the state to set higher expectations for its schools.