Friday, August 08, 2008

It carries the seeds of its own destruction

There has been a run on sackcloth and ashes here in Cakeville this past week when it was learned that Edina High School, yes Edina freakin' High School, did not meet the AYP standard for No Child Left Behind this year:

Several high schools hailed as among the best in Minnesota and the nation, including Edina, Wayzata and Eastview in Apple Valley, also were labeled as "underperforming."

Newsweek magazine had ranked Edina as one of the nation's top 100 high schools earlier this year.

How could that be? Spot could have predicted that it would happen; eventually all schools will fail:

The list is growing, officials say, because slight test score gains didn't keep pace with annually increasing benchmarks.

The increase frustrates some educators, who say the system is designed to eventually label all schools as failing. But others say the law forces schools to devote resources to students they overlooked before.

This is, of course, precisely the agenda of people like Sticks, Katie, John Brandl and John LaPlante. But perhaps they didn't count on the fact that the jig would be up on their Franz Kafka scheme when public schools universally recognized as excellent are held up a failures:

With those schools on the list, "It's not 'those kids,' it becomes 'our kids,'" said Tom Dooher, president of Education Minnesota, the statewide teachers' union. "And when people with influence see that it's happening to them, they're going to put some influence and pressure on the political system to change it."

Yes, they will.

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