WSJ, Dec. 31, 2003:  Usual Elitist View:  Less-Privileged Impeded by Rigidity of 'Standards'

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Here is the usual warped view of the "professional educators" who have so long held our students hostage to poor teaching technology and union bribes to politicians.  Each being IS responsible for his own condition -- no collective group can steal that responsibility from any person.  Yet that is exactly the theme of the elitist educators -- that the "school" is totally responsible for the child's learning, while the child has no responsibility. This is the socialist state in the making.

 
The Wall Street Journal  

December 31, 2003

 

Less-Privileged Impeded by Rigidity of 'Standards'

John HuppenthalChester Finn and Bill Bennett get it half-right on education ("No Standards Without Freedom1," editorial page, Dec. 23). They go astray in saying, "Standards enhance freedom." Here in Arizona, the nation's leader in education freedom, the passing score for a student on our high-stakes graduation test is 500. Which schools in Arizona do the best job of improving student scores on that test? Guess what -- no one on the face of the earth knows the answer to that question.

Messrs. Finn and Bennett's notion incorrectly assumes that the test scores of a school are correlated with test score improvement for students who attend the school. To truly understand the implications of this is to understand that standards are the enemy of education freedom and advancement for the less-privileged. Totalitarian states hold students accountable through standards, free states hold schools accountable through measures of academic gain and rated excellence by parents, students and teachers.

John Huppenthal
Arizona State Representative
(The author successfully supported unlimited charter schools, private school tuition tax credits and district school open enrollment as Arizona Senate Education Committee chairman from 1995 to 2000.)

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Updated December 31, 2003
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