Susan Pendergrass speaks with Adam Tyner, national research director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, about his new report, “Equitable” Grading Through the Eyes of Teachers. They discuss what “equitable grading” means, how widespread policies like no zeros, unlimited retakes, and no late penalties have become, and what teachers really think of these reforms, and more.

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Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Equitable Grading
02:33 Understanding Equitable Grading Practices
05:25 Teacher Perspectives on Grading Policies
08:10 Survey Findings on Grading Policies
10:49 The Impact of Grading Policies on Student Engagement
13:43 Concerns Over Lowering Academic Standards
16:28 Recommendations for Grading Reform
19:16 The Future of Grading Policies in Education

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For my take on why equitable grading policies are illogical and misguided, see my previous post about San Francisco’s recent bid to introduce a sweeping Grading for Equity policy. It ultimately failed under intense public pressure once families understood what was happening, because most people do not support these ideas.

It turns out most teachers don’t support them either. That’s the main conclusion from a new report by David Griffith and Adam Tyner at the Fordham Institute. The report draws on a nationally representative survey of teachers to examine their views. Key findings include:

• Equitable grading practices are widespread: About half of teachers say their school or district has adopted at least one “equitable” grading practice, and a third report multiple such policies.
• Most teachers believe these practices are harmful to academic engagement.
• Most teachers want high standards for students but feel pressured to inflate grades.

I encourage interested readers to take a look at the full report. Among other things, it’s a good reminder that teachers aren’t so different from everyone else, and they’re also frustrated by policies that lower expectations.

(Note: In a previous post about the San Francisco policy, I indicated that I hadn’t heard of any “Grading for Equity” policies in Missouri, but a reader reached out to explain that many Missouri districts have adopted them. It is hard to know how many, but their widespread use nationally—as documented in the Fordham report—suggests it could be a lot.)

The post Most Teachers Don’t Like Equitable Grading Practices Either appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Chester (Checker) Finn, Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, about the recent federal executive order Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling. They discuss the balance between patriotic education and federal overreach, the limits on Washington’s role in curriculum, the latest NAEP scores, and more.

Read Checker’s piece here: “Trump should stay out of what students learn in school”

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Timestamps: 

03:00 The Current State of American Education
06:11 Federal Role in Education: Weaponization vs. Minimization
08:56 Reading Proficiency Crisis Among Students
11:57 Impact of Disbanding the Department of Education
15:03 The Need for Stronger Accountability in Education
17:59 School Choice and Funding Challenges
21:03 Optimism and Pessimism in Education’s Future
24:03 Addressing Chronic Absenteeism and Disconnected Youth

Download a transcript of this episode here. 

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In this episode, Susan Pendergrass speaks with Stephane Lavertu, Professor at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at Ohio State University and Senior Research Fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, about the so-called “fiscal cliff” in public education funding. They discuss the idea that returning to pre-pandemic funding levels constitutes a crisis, the implications of declining student enrollment, whether maintaining or increasing current funding levels is truly necessary, and more.

Stéphane Lavertu’s teaching and research focus on public administration, political economy, public policy analysis and evaluation, and education policy and governance.

He has a doctorate in political science from the University of Wisconsin, a master’s degree in education from Stanford University, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from The Ohio State University.

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Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, executive editor of Education Next, editor in chief of the Education Gadfly Weekly, and host of the Education Gadfly Show podcast. An award-winning writer, he is the author of The Diverse Schools Dilemma, editor of Education for Upward Mobility, and co-editor of How to Educate an American and Follow the Science to School. An expert on charter schools, school accountability, evidence-based practices, and trends in test scores and other student outcomes, Petrilli has published opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Slate, and appears frequently on television and radio. Petrilli helped to create the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement and the Policy Innovators in Education Network. He lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland.

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The post How We’re Writing Off an Entire Generation with Michael Petrilli appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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A recent analysis by the Fordham Institute of state civics and U.S. history standards granted Missouri C’s in both. Once again, Missouri holds firm to its spot in the middle of the pack. Overly broad language and incoherent organization are two of the reasons cited for our mediocrity. The recommendations for improving the standards include:

• Reorganizing the American government course so that it is chronological rather than in “strands” or themes
• Including specific examples, such as Supreme Court cases or acts of Congress, wherever possible
• Providing deeper and more specific guidance for teachers

Making sure that our students leave school with a solid grasp of the history of this nation and what it means to be a citizen are two of the more important roles of our public education system. Missouri needs solid and coherent standards, along with assessments that are well aligned to those standards. We need a better framework for schools and districts to graduate students ready to join civil society as knowledgeable citizens.

The post A Rising Tide of Mediocrity appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A new study from the Fordham Institute found that a higher percentage of charter school enrollment (referred to as “charter market share”) among black and Hispanic students in large urban areas is associated with higher English language arts and math achievement. A similar result was found for Hispanic students in suburban and rural districts, and black students in rural districts. And these results are measuring overall achievement in an area—not just the students attending charter schools.

The study used data from the Stanford Education Data Archive containing student performance on NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam. The data contained scores from both charter and traditional public schools. Further analysis of the individual geographic areas in the study could help determine if the effect of competition from charters on traditional public schools varies across regions. But the study does contradict the argument that charter schools only have higher achievement because the best students transfer to charter schools. If that were the case, then overall achievement would not rise.

Charter schools in Missouri wouldn’t be a threat to traditional public schools. They could provide educational opportunity for many students who do enroll in a charter school and also boost overall achievement. Missouri shouldn’t be afraid to offer students who happen to live outside of Kansas City and St. Louis opportunities like charter schools.

The post Student Achievement Rises with More Charter Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While it may be true that Missouri’s 2-year and 4-year colleges have room for improvement, business leaders should not overlook the potential to shape high school education to better meet their needs. In particular, the flexibility of the charter school model and ability to focus on career and technical education (CTE) should appeal to businesses and students throughout the state.

Bucking the traditional high school model, Robert Schwartz with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute explains that charter schools could “be co-designed by charter leaders in collaboration with regional employers and community college leaders. This would ensure that its programs were focused on preparing young people for careers in high-growth, high-demand industry sectors like IT, health care, and public services.”

In Fresno, California, a career technical education charter school—the product of coordinated effort by community and business leaders and the Fresno County Superintendent—is opening this fall. Not only does the charter high school’s curriculum align with what industry leaders want, but students can also take college courses at a local community college. In Wisconsin, the Green Bay Area Public School District received a grant from the state department of education to open an innovation charter school that would prepare at-risk students for high-tech jobs.

There is no good reason why similar opportunities are not available to Missouri’s students. Even now, industry leaders could work with local school districts to open a CTE charter school. Better yet, Missouri could allow charter schools to expand throughout the state and authorize universities to sponsor charter schools anywhere, not just in Kansas City and St. Louis.

Instead of just concentrating on higher education or writing off charter schools as only for urban areas, business leaders should seriously consider the role charter schools could play in developing a more skilled workforce.

The post If Business Owners Want a More Skilled Workforce, They Shouldn’t Forget about Charter Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Sadly, these are easy to identify in Missouri. Just find the Census tracts where more than 20 percent of children live in poverty and circle them. The school choice spigot in Missouri is firmly turned off, with little hope that it will be turned on any time soon. The Missouri legislature has refused to transfer any power away from local school boards and into the hands of parents. As a result, students who live in areas of concentrated poverty around Springfield, in the southern part of the state, and in the bootheel have no options beyond their assigned public school. Going by the current laws governing charter schools, you would think that all the parents outside of St. Louis and Kansas City are perfectly satisfied with their children’s assigned public school.

In contrast, our two largest cities look more like charter school oases. Nearly half of all public school students in Kansas City and one-third of public school students in St. Louis attend a public charter school. Parents in these two cities aren’t unique in their desire for high-quality school options for their students—they’re just the only ones who can access them.

This week National Charter Schools Week is being celebrated across the country, including in those districts with at least 10 percent of their students in charter schools. One in five public school students in the U.S. attends school in one of those districts. In fact, every day nearly 3.2 million public school students head out the door to a public charter school. These schools expand public school options for parents across the country. Unfortunately, in Missouri we’ve chosen to reserve them as punishment for failing school districts and to leave everyone else thirsty.

The post A Drought of Our Own Making appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In my remarks today, I hope to convince you of three things. First, the idea of the Common Core was noble, but misguided. Second, the Common Core State Standards will not significantly improve student achievement. And finally, the federal government created the controversy we have seen surrounding the Common Core over the past few years.

A Noble but Misguided Goal

The idea behind the Common Core is quite simple. Schools need standards because standards allow teachers to align the curriculum and allow teachers to see what they are to cover in each grade. I have been told many times that prior to schools adopting learning standards, it was not uncommon for students in the same grade in the same school to have radically different experiences depending on the teachers they had. Standards help alleviate that problem.

Following the infamous “A Nation at Risk Report” report of 1983, the standards movement was launched. This Reagan-administration report used alarming language to describe the nation’s education system. The authors of the report wrote:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. . . . We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.

The report fueled a desire to improve the quality of our education system. State officials wanted to keep a watchful eye on how schools were performing. To do that they needed tests, and to have tests, they needed standards on which to base them.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, states began creating their own standards-based accountability systems. By 2000, 39 states had accountability systems in place. After the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001, the remaining states were forced to follow suit. As a result, by the mid-2000s we had 50 different state standards and 50 different accountability systems.

These individual state standards created a problem. Students from families that moved from one state to another could miss entire topics if they were covered in one grade in one state and in a different grade in another. And, very importantly, the different tests did not allow us to compare one state to another because the accountability systems were different. In a state with very low standards a student might score “proficient,” but if he were in a state with very high standards he might score “basic.”

In reality, these were not problems created by having 50 state standards. They were problems that have always existed, and in many regards still exist. To be honest, these problems are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. I mean, would you go through all of the effort that the Common Core designers went through just to improve transparency across states? I wouldn’t, especially when we have the National Assessment of Educational progress, known as the nation’s report card, which already allows us to compare one state to another. The most valid reason to support the Common Core comes from the thought that these standards could improve student achievement for all students. This is where the supporters for Common Core were misguided. This is where the logic for Common Core falters, and this is what brings me to my second point: that Common Core will not improve educational outcomes for students.

Common Core Will Not Improve Educational Outcomes

Let me ask: How might a system of new standards improve educational outcomes for all students? As far as I can tell, there are three options:

• The standards could better align the curriculum.
• The standards could be more rigorous.
• Or, the standards could create a broader platform for collaboration.

Let’s examine each of these.

The standards could better align the curriculum

Remember, states have already developed standards and aligned curricula. We’d have to believe that the Common Core has somehow come up with a better way to do these things—that they have discovered the special sauce or that the designers have figured out the right progression of learning. Something tells me that is not the case. While the quality of education research is improving, there is simply not enough evidence to know if we should teach fractions in third grade or fourth, or whether we should introduce money in kindergarten or first grade. I recently sat on a committee to rewrite Missouri’s state standards. I can tell you, while the process is informed by research, it often comes down to educated guessing. The individuals making these guesses are indeed educated, but in the end, many of these decisions are completely subjective.

So what is the second option?

The standards could be simply be more rigorous

They could raise the level of expectations for students. After all, students rise to the level of expectation, don’t they? If this were true, we would expect students in states that previously had rigorous standards to perform better than students in states with weaker standards. In a study for the Brookings Institution, Tom Loveless examined this very issue. He found no relationship between the rigor of state standards and student performance on the NAEP. None. Another thing to consider is that ratings of the Common Core Standards by the Fordham Foundation, a group that has been very supportive of the effort, do not place Common Core at the top of the standards list. They are among the best according to Fordham, but in Math and Language arts, other standards were rated higher. If we believe that rigor or the quality of standards matter, then it puzzles me why supporters of national standards would be so willing to go to bat for Common Core. Why not simply adopt the superior Massachusetts standards?

The Common Core will not improve student achievement by better aligning curriculum, nor can we improve student learning simply by being more rigorous. What’s left?

A system of national standards could create a broader platform for collaboration

Before Common Core, textbook companies often designed curricula for more populous states like California and Texas. As a result, states found it difficult to get textbooks that aligned with their individual standards. Common Core helps alleviate this problem. Moreover, it allows teachers throughout the country to collaborate on lessons related to the standards. While this sounds great, planning on a substantial benefit from collaboration is misguided. If it were true that more opportunities for collaboration led to success, then we would expect to see more populous states—those that drive textbook production—to have an advantage. Not only would they have textbooks tailored to their curricula, but with a larger number of teachers, they would have greater opportunities for collaboration. Yet, we don’t see a California or Texas advantage.

In the face of the evidence, there is simply no logical model that can explain how a set of standards that simply tells teachers what to teach will improve student learning. At least not today.

To be clear: Standards are important, and evidence does show that the standards-based accountability movement has led to modest learning gains for students. It seems, however, that the low-hanging fruit has been picked. Schools have already aligned curricula, and we have already begun focusing on student outcomes. New standards may have some impact on the margins, but by themselves they cannot substantially improve student achievement.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive indictment of Common Core. I don’t believe Common Core will ruin our education system. I don’t believe it is some grand conspiracy to dumb down America. I simply believe it is bad policy.

But if Common Core is innocuous, then why are we devoting so much time to it? We are having this conversation today because promoters of Common Core oversold, and because the federal government overstepped. As is often the case, the actions of the federal government came with unintended consequences.

The Federal Government Created the Common Core Controversy

Common Core did not begin as a federal initiative. I hesitate to call this a “state-led” initiative, and it certainly wasn’t a grass roots initiative. It was instigated by the National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. These two trade organizations began the process late in George W. Bush’s administration, but the idea of national standards goes back even further, to his father’s administration. Early on in the development of the Common Core standards, some thought that the standards would be adopted by a handful of states; it was hoped that other states would adopt them voluntarily over time. That changed with federal involvement.

In 2009, President Obama launched his Race to the Top initiative, a competitive grant program that was part of the stimulus plan. States could compete for $4.35 billion dollars in prize money by proposing a series of reforms. This came at a time when states were feeling the pressure of the recession and could ill afford to pass up an opportunity for additional federal funding. One of the reforms supported in Race to the Top was the adoption of learning standards that were common to a majority of states—what would become Common Core.

As part of the first round of the Race to the Top process, states had to submit their applications (including a commitment to the Common Core standards) by January 19, 2010. The second round was June 1. But the final draft of the standards was not even released until June of 2010. In other words, the federal government encouraged states to commit to common standards before those standards were even finalized. Still, states jumped at the opportunity. By 2013, 45 states had adopted the standards. President Obama took credit for this in his State of the Union address.

At the same time, the Obama administration doubled down on support of Common Core by offering to waive certain No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements to states that adopted Common Core. Schools and states were finding it increasingly difficult to comply with various aspects of NCLB; that is, they had failed to meet the mandated 100 percent proficiency marks. States could avoid penalties by promoting education reform policies championed by the administration, one of which was common standards.

Whether you support federal involvement or not, it is difficult to deny that the actions of the U.S. Department of Education caused or at least contributed to the controversy surrounding Common Core. What might have been a coalition of states that grew and developed over time was catapulted into the national stage as a new and radical reform that many states adopted, if not against their will, then at least under duress.

Conclusion

While the motivation behind the Common Core standards was good, the outcomes—at least in terms of liberty—are not. Common Core moves control of one of the most important aspects of education—what students learn—further from students and parents, and it concentrates power at the federal level. As Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman once said, “Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.” The Common Core standards reduce individual liberty and academic freedom for states, teachers, and students. They nullify the great advantage of individual states—the ability to act as laboratories that allow us to evaluate different systems to see what works best—in favor of a monolithic approach that stifles innovation. Ultimately, the Common Core movement is an expression of the flawed mindset that we can mandate and orchestrate improved student achievement through centralized control. 

The post A Well Intentioned Disaster: A Presentation on the Merits of Common Core State Standards appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

They say those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. To better understand the seemingly intractable problems in the Normandy Schools Collaborative, I decided to head to the St. Louis Public Library newspaper archives to see what folks had written about Normandy in the past. I found this:

Hire more minority teachers, revamp the high school curriculum, improve discipline.

Sound familiar? These suggestions are quite similar to the comments Normandy’s most recent superintendent, Ty McNichols, made in 2013. In fact, what I found in the archives was written by former Normandy Superintendent Bruce A. Smith in a 35-page report about the status of the school district in 1988.

“Everything here is fixable,” McNichols had said. “It takes time. It can’t happen overnight. But it can be fixed.”

Nearly 30 years after Smith’s report, we seem to be no closer to improving the Normandy School District. The same old tactics will not lead to a better result.

A recent report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute points toward a more stark strategy—closing low-performing schools.

In School Closures and Student Achievement: An Analysis of Ohio’s Urban District and Charter Schools, researchers found that school closures have positive impacts on student achievement. Three years after schools closed, displaced students from urban districts, on average, gained 49 cumulative days of learning in reading and 34 cumulative days in math, relative to the comparison group.

The authors of the study also found that students who were displaced after a closure typically ended up in a higher-quality school. Fifty-nine percent of traditional public school students and 68 percent of charter school students transferred to higher-quality schools.

The evidence presented suggests that if policymakers are concerned about student achievement in low-performing schools, they should shut down those schools, instead of wasting more time, money, and patience trying to fix them. Resources then could be redirected toward starting new schools or expanding the capacity of existing higher-performing schools.

After decades of proposed “fixes,” are further attempts to improve Normandy Schools Collaborative misguided? Is closing down the district and allowing the students to be absorbed by neighboring districts the solution policymakers should really be thinking about?

These tough questions need answers. But one thing is certain, if we want to get serious about saving Normandy students, perhaps it’s time we stop trying to save Normandy schools.

The post Can Normandy Be Saved? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Sparkly, purple, and lined with a shiny metal band, my retainer was wrapped in a napkin while I ate my school lunch throughout elementary school. “Don’t you lose that retainer,” I can still hear my mother saying. Inevitably, I lost it at lunch, and I knew there was only one place it could be.

Inside the trash can, remnants of sloppy joes and sour milk splattered the edges of the bag. A cafeteria worker, realizing what had happened, pulled the trash out and began to dig. “Here you go,” he said and returned the retainer to me.

I recalled the cafeteria worker who helped me find my retainer after I read Fordham Institute Research Analyst Matt Richmond’s report, The Hidden Half: School Employees Who Don’t Teach.

The report’s findings are startling. Over the past 60 years, schools have increased non-teaching personnel positions by 702 percent. It also found the U.S. spends more than double what Korea, Mexico, Finland, Portugal, Ireland, Luxembourg, Austria, and Spain spend on non-teaching staff salaries and benefits.

As the study’s title, and my own personal vignette, suggests, these workers are both seemingly underappreciated and overlooked. We know little about the non-teaching part of the education industry, except that it has grown at a much faster rate than students. One study showed that if non-teaching personnel grew at the same rate as the student population, American public schools would have an additional $24.3 billion annually.

This is not to say that schools would be better off with less non-teaching personnel, but if Missouri schools want to get serious about spending efficiently, then collecting specific data on non-teaching staff is a good place to start.

The post New Study Looks at Growth of Non-Teaching Personnel appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In my testimony, I noted that the state could expect to incur between $67.8 million and $281 million in Common Core-related expenses. These were not my estimates; they came from proponents of Common Core at the Fordham Institute. I noted that the increased costs would come from upgrading our schools’ technological infrastructure, purchasing Common Core-aligned curriculum, and providing Common Core-specific professional development.

Proponents of Common Core disagreed with this assessment. They argued that we are already spending money on professional development and purchasing curriculum. It’s just “business as usual.” Therefore, Common Core simply shifts money that we are already spending and does not require additional spending.

As for upgrading broadband access and our technological infrastructure, well, Commissioner of Education Chris Nicastro testified that “broadband should be a Civil Right.” In other words, we ought to do these things, so increased expenditures for technology shouldn’t be blamed on Common Core.

It seemed there was an excuse for almost every expenditure. Now, however, there is no excuse. The increased costs for new student achievement tests is a direct result of Missouri dumping our standards and tests in favor of the new national curriculum standards. This was a decision that DESE, the State Board of Education, and the governor made.

Make no mistake. The Common Core State Standards will cost Missourians millions of dollars. And what will we get for all this money? An unproven, untested set of standards and a loss of local control. What a bargain!

The post More Money Needed For Common Core…I’m Not Surprised appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Let’s start with Finn and Petrilli’s argument that [Missourians] should embrace Common Core in part because the state “has already invested time and money to implement the new standards.” Basically, Washington successfully coerced [Missouri] into sinking money into Common Core, so we had better stick with it.

McCluskey and Banfield note that the Fordham piece mischaracterized the nature of Common Core’s development.

Common Core was created by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers, associations that neither represent states nor the people of [Missouri]. Legislators represent you, and the NGA doesn’t speak for states just because governors are elected. NGA decisions have no binding ramifications for states, and it’s doubtful anyone has ever voted for a gubernatorial candidate based on what they thought he or she would do in the NGA. Governors simply have very little incentive to care what the NGA does.

Next, the Obama administration didn’t just “promote” the standards, it coerced their adoption with real ramifications. At the nadir of the “Great Recession,” it told states that to fully compete in the $4.35 billion Race to the Top program they had to promise to adopt Common Core. That is exactly what most did, before the final standards were even published. Adoption was cemented by making it one of only two ways states could meet requirements for waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act.

Finn and Petrilli claim that the Common Core doesn’t dictate curriculum and is good for school choice.

That’s like saying that government requiring you to ride a bike, but letting you pick the color and a banana seat, doesn’t constrain your transportation options. Similarly, they suggested that because lots of people are scrambling to produce Core-aligned materials, it’s fostering innovation. That’s basically proclaiming that with all car and airplane manufacturers suddenly making bikes, travel innovation will explode.

Readers shouldn’t be fooled by the folks at Fordham; the Common Core is definitely not a “victory for everyone,” as they would have you believe.

(Hat tip to John Combest for pointing out all the places the Fordham piece was published.)

The post Is Common Core A ‘Victory For Everyone’? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Crouch summarized my position on content standards like this: “Shuls of the Show-Me Institute would prefer parents and schools to set their own standards, rather than states.” She also quoted me as saying, “Ultimately, there’s absolutely no evidence that content standards improve education.” Both of these are true, but they deserve a little more explanation. In this post, I will address the evidence on content standards.

Proponents of national standards often point to some of the top-performing countries and note that they have national standards. These proponents often fail to point out that some countries that perform better than us do not have national standards and many who perform worse than us do have national standards. We could just as easily point to those countries at the bottom and say, “look, national standards don’t work.”

Even at the state level, the evidence that rigorous standards improve student achievement is very weak. The Fordham Institute, one of the biggest supporters of the Common Core, has issued grades for state standards for some time now. Using these grades, the Brookings Institution examined the correlation between the rigor of each state’s standards and performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The authors concluded that there is no relationship between standards and performance. Moreover, they predict that the Common Core will have very little impact on student achievement:

What effect will the Common Core have on national achievement? The analysis presented here suggests very little impact. The quality of the Common Core standards is currently being hotly debated, but the quality of past curriculum standards has been unrelated to achievement. The rigor of performance standards — how high the bar is set for proficiency — has also been unrelated to achievement.

Believing that rigorous standards will increase student achievement may be a fine theory, but it simply has not panned out in practice. There are several reasons for this, which I will address in my next post. I will also explain why I think parents and schools could do a better job of setting standards than the government.

The post Standards-Based Reform Lacks Evidence appeared first on Show-Me Institute.