An e-mail: Hi Kate

Wanted to deal with the following sentence regarding your SLOW LEARNERS post.

The fundamental problem with the administration’s top-down reform? If state officials have the resolve to insist on tough reforms, they don’t need pressure from Washington and if they lack the will to take on formidable bureaucracies federal demands will be subverted. If state officials have the resolve to insist on tough reforms, they don’t need pressure from Washington

With all due respect, this is poppycock. If state officials do not want pressure from Washington, then state officials should do without funding from Washington. It’s like me funding a research project and the researcher saying don’t pressure me for results.

and if they lack the will to take on formidable bureaucracies federal demands will be subverted.

If they are begin subverted, then why did many of the public schools in the poor districts in my community just have to restaff all there teachers. I’ll tell you why, NCLB.

I am not saying that NCLB is perfect, e.g. vouchers would have been great, but IMO if my money is going to spent I want some accountability even if not perfect.

ME: Here’s my March 8, 2004 NRODT article on NCLB.

Washington provides about 7 percent of funding for elementary schools – so their financial clout is not the same as a federal research grant. Glad to hear that your schools enjoyed a teacher shake-up, but plenty of others haven’t and won’t. A quick example of the different responses that reflect the different levels of indispensable local commitment: States define what is a “persistently dangerous” school that students will be permitted to transfer out of. Based on self-defining and reporting, Philadelphia has more such schools than the rest of nation combined – 44 states (including the District of Columbia!?) have none. In N.Y. a school with 1,000 students must have 30 or more weapons incidents for two years in a row to get labeled.

Regarding overall scores for schools, comprehensive research concluded that the “staggering” differences in results among the states are the result of some states lowering “proficient” scores thereby making it much easier to show progress in later years. In other words – they are cheating.