The ABCs of Failure

1. Well, Kevin Welner, a professor who heads the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, has an interesting thought: “People want to read into these test scores lessons about what the schools are doing.
2. Also, last Spring, D.C. high school students took a national standardized test called PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers).
3. Last week, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, with city education officialdom in tow, announced some small improvement in standardized test schools city-wide.
4. The biggest breakthrough came at Ballou High School, which, despite a particularly high-percentage of students living in poverty, managed not only to graduate every high school senior but also to get every single grad accepted to college.
5. The lapse was understandable, for the Post refers to a fantastic success story back in 2017 — much ballyhooed by D.C. politicians, educators, and experts at the time — whereby the city’s high schools dramatically improved graduation rates.
6. Keep these two vital precepts in mind when considering the long-term failure of our nation’s capital’s public schools to equip their graduates with the skills necessary for a decent future.
7. Once upon a time, public education was proclaimed to be the great equalizer, allowing the disadvantaged to climb the economic ladder, and, if not wipe out poverty completely, to certainly dramatically reduce it.

https://townhall.com/columnists/pauljacob/2018/08/19/the-abcs-of-failure-n2511071