The astonishing thing about that comment is that it comes from former Assistant Secretary of Education (during the first Bush Administration) Diane Ravitch.
Ravitch is hardly an education apologist. She’s a tough-minded education critic, a former Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a person who has always led the fight for high standards.
As recently as 2005, Ravitch was still arguing that NCLB was effective. But today, she acknowledges what a growing–and bipartisan–group of legislators, administrators, teachers, parents, and students have all recognized.
“Congress should get rid of No Child Left Behind because it is a failed law. It is dumbing down our children by focusing solely on reading and mathematics. By ignoring everything but basic skills, it is not preparing students to compete with their peers in the high-performing nations of Asia and Europe, nor is it preparing them for citizenship in our complex society,” she concludes.
As well as undercutting Virginia’s SoL’s, which are actually tougher standards.
AND encouraging measurement of progress by performance on multiple-choice tests.
But when your teachers are not experts, what can you expect?
I’ve always said that there’s nothing wrong with teaching to the test if the test is worth teaching to. (AP and IB tests come to mind. SOL tests do not.)
But for Ravitch to switch on this is really fairly monumental.