Eduwonk.com on Tough Choices

The moderate-liberal Democratic website on education issues writes: "The new Fordham Foundation report on high-achieving students is causing a lot of chatter. Punchline: They are not excelling under No Child Left Behind. Hard to miss what an asymmetric debate this is. On one hand you have Checker Finn saying that NCLB is dumbing things down and analogizing it to a 'three foot hurdle' while on the other you have Charles Murray and folks like Richard Rothstein agreeing and deriding it as a hopelessly utopian scheme because most kids can't get over such a hurdle anyway. One reason the debate still has a 'say anything' quality to it is that here is a still a great deal of misunderstanding about how the No Child law's mechanics actually work. But that's a basically technical problem and here's a primer on that. But there is also a belief that schools can do everything at once: That they can close achievement gaps, raise overall achievement, stretch high performing students and help struggling ones all at the same time. As Rick Hess and I wrote in PDK in 2007 all of these pressures create an untenable situation for educators. And increasingly there is a belief that if we just had the right way of measuring we'd be able to do it all."

The commentary continues: "Instead, choices do have to be made. It doesn't mean that we throw different groups of student under the bus, but any accountability system that holds people accountable for everything holds them accountable for nothing. So choices have to be made about emphasis. And considering the yawning achievement gaps, graduation rate gaps, and outcome gaps that separate poor and minority students from other students, that's where I'd argue the emphasis should be placed. And, within those groups of students on the wrong end of the achievement gap are plenty who with better schools would also be recognized as gifted. There are certainly steps that policymakers can take to help lessen the zero-sum nature of these choices. They can, for instance, also reward schools that do a great job with high achieving students as well as closing gaps (something they can do under No Child Left Behind now but few do in a meaningful way). Or, we can think about various non-regulatory accountability strategies, for instance giving parents more choices within the public system, to create some countervailing forces. And of course, states and localities should invest in programs for gifted kids and ways to stretch them. But ultimately you have to put the accountability 'load' somewhere."