Not passing, Lower standards....the governments way of improving test scores

This story caught my attention.  What do you do when schools are failing?  What do you do when you pump billions of dollars into the public education machine and you get bad results?   What do you do when test results are still meager at best?  

First, you blame the testing.  Then you lower standards so it looks like more kids are passing.  That is apparently the path the current administration is going to follow.  This is the headline and first paragraph of an article from today’s Laredo Morning Times. 

Education secretary: States to get waivers on No Child tests

By DORIE TURNER

Associated Press

Published: Monday, August 8, 2011 7:17 PM CDT

The Obama administration effectively gutted the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law Monday, giving states a way out of a decade-long policy that focused on holding schools accountable but labeled many of them failures even if they made progress.

Of course what the article fails to tell you that the “even if they made progress” they were still failing the test after three years.

This is how government manufacturing would work: 

a.      Set a widget standard

b.      Build the widget

c.       Test the widget

d.      When the widget fails, blame the test

a.       change the test

e.      Re-test the widget

f.        When the widget fails again,
g.       Blame the test and issue waiver to widget

h.      Send widget on to consumer blaming the widget buyers that they did not invest enough money in widget production

i.        Raise price of widget

j.        At the same time lower the standard for future widgets

k.       New, lower standard widget passes test

l.        Tell public you are doing a great job increasing widget passing rates

If this process was used in the private sector, what would happen?  In the case of the consumer in the private sector, they would dump your widget and buy a better, cheaper widget.  In the private sector that is called “choice.”  We do not allow that word in our public education system discussions, except when talking about abortion or homosexuality.