Owensboro’s Messenger-Inquirer gets it

The Messenger-Inquirer writes in “Schools need reliable accountability” (subscription) about the editorial staff’s frustration with a proposal from the Kentucky Department of Education to ask for a waiver from No Child Left Behind (NCLB) accountability so the state can lower accountability standards, again. The paper correctly points out that we have already done this twice, first scrapping the KIRIS assessments, and then dumping the CATS assessments. In the process, the firm promise from our educators to provide dramatic improvement by 2014 has vanished into thin air.

Except for NCLB, no-one is talking a 2014 target date anymore.

Says the Messenger-Inquirer:

“But it's time to determine what the standards will be, set goals with firm deadlines, and then continue on that path long enough to determine which schools are succeeding, which are broken, and what needs to be done to fix them. Otherwise, we're just left with a bunch of test scores, but no real accountability.”

All I can add to that is “Amen!”