There is a very smart new Member of Congress from California who gets it.
is tired of jumping on rickety legislative bandwagons of blame and shame and name the bad guys and all will be magically right with all of our schools.
She’s an educator. So she knows it’s complicated. So she knows as we start down that road to reauthorizing (read that: getting rid of the Stupid Stuff in) No Child Left, what we need to leave behind are those gimmicks of abusing high-stakes tests and pretending they mean something they don’t.
She’s put together a compelling case for rethinking what real.
Today she (pdf). There’s a little tear-stain of hope on my copy. Because she calls for exactly what President Obama promised we would do first in reauthorizing a law that was supposed to give a leg up to children who face life’s greatest challenges and live in our most disadvantaged communities.
The President said, “We are going to stop doing things that don’t work.”