to good writing skills. . A 2006 paper, concluding, "We also conclude that the National Center for Education Statistics needs to hold commissioned studies to a higher standard. It is well known in the scholarly community that one cannot infer school sector effects from observations made at a single point in time. When reviewing a commissioned study, NCES should have questioned the model construction undertaken by ETS. A government agency with a long and distinguished history in the collection and analysis of important educational data has fallen short. Next time, it needs to do better. It can begin by never again using NAEP data to estimate school sector effects." http://mail.google.com/mail/?fs=1&source\\... My public school kids felt a bit P/Oed that they made the Principal's List for last year, but some of the special needs type kids got Honors. I tried to explain to them that , yes,there is a difference between them and the other students but we should be happy for them.They did well for the subjects they took and they must have worked hard and did their best and they deserve recognition for that. But, in their minds, it just wasn't a real deal. My daughter didn't attend the event they had for recognizing the students. She said, "they just lower the bar." Out of the mouths of babes. I chose to go along with the feel good part of the event and chose to see kids in school, having fun and doing well. Sometimes, the rose-colored glasses do