Blowing smoke on school reform

This NYT editorial "Hold the line on school reform," harks back to the days when they were calling for the invasion of Iraq to get rid of those "weapons of mass destruction." In other words, the Times board has a history of blowing smoke out of their rear end.

In this morning's mail, Fair Test's Monty Neill offers a good critique:

This Times editorial is vitriolic and often bizarre. It blames states for mis-assigning teachers - is there a state in the country in charge of teacher assignment? It calls for testing in-service teachers, a program that has been tried briefly in a few states and failed abysmally. There is no evidence of any sort that a standardized test can sort out great from good from adequate from marginal from bad teachers.

It moans that the stimulus funds are being dispersed too quickly to enforce "reform" -- better, I guess, to lay off even more teachers than will be even with the stimulus - then the Times can complain that the wrong teachers were laid off.

We will leave aside the fact that the evidence is that test-and-punish "reform" lacks evidence of success beyond inflated state test scores.