These superintendents are sweating bullets over the possibility that tests will prove this assumption. For years, school officials have been gulling parents into believing that most of our kids are doing fine. Sure, there are a few bad kids who pull things down, but they can be isolated so they only hurt each other. We bought that. The superintendents need us to continue buying it, and their false front is easier to maintain if there is no test to show how bad things really are.
Public schools are an arm of government.
Teachers and administrators, regardless of their professional pretensions, are government employees. In Delaware, these government employees have a headlock on the legislature because it is a roost for a lot of former and current colleagues. Knorr warned of political reprisals against legislators by disgruntled parents if they pass school reform. He must not be talking to the same disgruntled parents I'm hearing from. They are talking, with rising anger, about Delaware schools being academically substandard, about how they spend extra money to make sure their kids are properly educated, and about the nerve of teachers and administrators who are dug in against drastic steps to eliminate mediocrity.