Enron-ing Education

Do we see a pattern?
No child left behind is the single greatest national experiment involving education, ever. It takes the business model of high-stakes testing (highly touted in Bush's home Texas and here in North Carolina) and applies it nationwide. The idea is this: demand that schools produce students that pass the standardized tests--if too many kids fail, the school fails; in which case the school will ultimately have to reorganize, new management, etc.

Nice concept. but it should be just that; a concept that is worked out in some various states so that we can see where it works and where it has flaws.

One flaw is predictable: as it is a business model, won't some schools feel compelled to cheat...and inflate some numbers so that they don't take the 'failing school' label?

The answer is yes, and it looks like U.S. Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige has some explaining to do.
The Houston Independent School District -- wherein Mr. Paige was superintendant before heading to D.C., and showcase of the "Texas educational miracle" that President Bush has touted as a model for the rest of the nation -- is fending off accusations that it inflated its achievements through fuzzy math
From the Post:

During his tenure, Paige formed a political alliance with Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who became an ardent advocate of accountability and high-stakes testing. After Bush was elected president, Paige's ideas became the inspiration for the administration's "No Child Left Behind" plan, aimed at raising educational standards nationwide. Schools now face penalties for failing to show improvement in such things as dropout rates and reading scores.

the present to-do is about drop-out rates.

Austin is one of more than a dozen Houston high schools caught up in a burgeoning scandal about the reliability of their dropout statistics. During a decade in which, routinely, as many as half of Austin students failed to graduate, the school's reported dropout rate fell from 14.4 percent to 0.3 percent. Even a Houston school board member calls the statistic "baloney."

go give a read for details.