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11/13/2004: "Goodbye to Rod Paige"
Bush's educational savior, Rod Paige, is stepping down.
Since his years in Houston, Paige has shown time and time again that test scores and scary rhetoric are more than enough to get people to stop talking about improving schools.
In his own words:
"I think a lot of us will look back on this moment in time as the 'tipping point.' It is the time where we changed our mind-set. We stopped measuring educational success by inputs — like money spent — and instead started examining outputs, measuring whether students are indeed learning."
Therefore, attempts to equalize funding between urban (Black and Chicano) and suburban (White) districts are irrelevant. More importantly, let's use flawed test data as a way to show this improvement, as opposed to real data that shows that few, if any gains, have been made.
But our country is lost in test scores and statistics, viewing progress or failure in light of bumps within huge masses of numerical data.
Real assessments like---
How many kids went to college and succeeded there?
How many kids participated in a regional science fair, or National History Day, or Mock Trial, and performed well?
How many kids can write for a variety of purposes, in a clear and thoughtful fashion?
How many kids can watch a television show and connect it to something they've read about, and discern the biases in each?