Morning Announcements: August 2, 2011

As a vote nears in Congress to lift the federal debt ceiling and stave off a financial default, education advocates are just beginning to take stock of what this will mean for K-12 education, reports Education Week.

A recent Washington Post blog post includes Stanford University Education Professor Linda Darling-Hammond’s speech from last Saturday’s Save Our Schools march in Washington, DC, in which she explains the extent of the trouble public education is in.

According to the New York Times, New York State education officials announced yesterday that they had begun to review the way they detect and prevent cheating on standardized tests, taking a step to avoid the cheating scandals that have engulfed school systems in other states.

A recent Education Week blog post talks about the struggle states are having with linking teacher-student data.

Lessons From Atlanta

The cheating scandal that has engulfed the Atlanta public schools (and similar scandals that are bubbling up in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and elsewhere) ought to serve as a "teachable moment" to point to a path forward in how we think about holding schools and educators accountable for student performance. Unfortunately, the incident has provoked a predictable response: those who object to high-stakes testing have used the case to renew calls to ease up on accountability, while those who favor strong accountability say that all that needs to happen is to tighten up on test security.

Neither of these responses addresses the real issue. Accountability is necessary, and easing up on it will not provide children or schools the help they need. At the same time, simply improving test security is not enough.