Political Quotes

“This unfortunate amendment, which enjoys the opposition of both the Chamber of Commerce as well as the civil rights and disability community, would effectively gut the transparency and accountability that we currently have around performance and growth in public schools. It is absolutely critical to have a common measuring stick to understand how all students are doing. Allowing districts to create and measure their success by their own standards effectively encourages dumbing down of standards and disguises the persistence of learning gaps across our communities. Accountability provides important information to help educators benchmark student performance relevant to students statewide, not just students in their school or district. The learning that we have for making sure that we can compare students from across the State is absolutely critical in creating a high performance, quality public education system. Mr. Chairman, this amendment proposes to give additional flexibility. It actually provides additional disguises and subterfuge, which is why it is opposed by both the business community and the civil rights community. It is really important that we maintain our commitment to transparency and accountability and that we know what performance standards we are measuring our students against. I would encourage my colleagues to oppose this amendment.”