I'll bet that these Bush sponsored tests do more to set back our country's educational achievement than anything has before this. I predict millions of American kids who hate school and see no joy in learning, ever. I'm especially appalled by the fact that they now are going to required "standardized tests" for HeadStart kids so they can start out hating school before they even get into kindergarten.

Was there someone in the Bush cabal that decided if people hated their schools, they could destroy public education in this country and then, everyone would go to private schools or just not get an education?

Nathan, you may want to check this piece - ties together the Title I testing regime and the Head Start testing proposal. And Mary, yes, there are folks in the Bush cabal who have made those decisions. And they are acting on them.

See http://www.blackcommentator.com/30/30_marble_jungle.html

Its wrong to say that the committment to having kids meet basic standards didn't have some positive affect. It also had negative affects. The Texas system that was in place during the Bush governorship was called TAAS. It was a basic skills test. The research Nathan cites does find that it had the sort of effects that he points to, visa vis retention, teaching to the test, schools having TAAS day, TAAS week, TAASapalooza and a ratcheting down of curriculum to basic standards. Schools that didn't meet the standards for each of their subgroups would be subject to sanction. It was and is high stress. There are major costs for staff, pressures for organizational cheating, and it isn't a lot of fun. But research also shows that Texas made substantial progress on national exams during the same period. Their score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress isn't that different from New York's. They've had some other reforms in addition to the standards - including investments that led to smaller classes. Ross Perot, of all people, was a champion of this effort. There were some other pieces to this, including a ban on participation in football for failing students. SO you can't say success is either unmitigated or solely because of the accountability system. But you simply can't say there is no success.

Bush's NCLBA is in many ways an effort to repeat the benefits of the TAAS experience on a national scale. The problem is that the TAAS experience is geared to very low standards. It isn't that hard for a school to meet them if it focuses on just that bar. Most states have much higher standards. I'd submit that it reflects a different academic approach -- potentially but not necessarily a better one. Applying Texas TAAS style accountability to those higher standards is where we get the train wreck of every school in some big cities failing to meet the bar. If states were free to set their standards like Texas' were, it would be a much less daunting proposition. But since there was no way BUsh could preach for a national standards system (how anti Republican is that?) he was forced to layer his plan on top of the existing standards. Thats why New York or Michigan will have hundreds of failing schools and some states will have almost none. What's ironic is that Texas, tired of the sort of criticisms that are being leveled here, has upped its standards substantially and is now going to have the same troubles as other high standards states. Which is a shame, because ratcheting up of the standards is the obvious next step for their education reform.

The NCLBA accountability piece is, in my opinion, a train wreck. As dangerous, however, is the idea that in the aftermath we'd throw out the concept of higher standards for schools and accountability to meet those standards. A recent report by Marty Carnoy and Susannah Loeb found just the opposite of what the study Nathan found. Higher standards and accountability to meet those standards can have a positive affect on public schools.

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