Brown Vetoes Bill that Would have Altered API

Governor Jerry Brown is apparently no fan of standardized testing. He railed against the idea of teaching to the tests and the weight put on scores on Tuesday in Irvine, I'm told.

Here's a report on that.

But earlier he vetoed a bill that would amended the Academic Performance Index. His reason: Adding another speedometer to a broken car doesn't fix it, he said.

Here's more:

A sign hung in Albert Einstein’s office read “Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.”

SB547 nowhere mentions good character or love of learning. It does allude to student excitement and creativity, but does not take these qualities seriously because they can’t be placed in a data stream. Lost in the bill’s turgid mandates is any recognition that quality is fundamentally different from quantity.

There are other ways to improve our schools — to indeed focus on quality. What about a system that relies on locally convened panels to visit schools, observe teachers, interview students, and examine student work? Such a system wouldn’t produce an API number, but it could improve the quality of our schools.

See the entire post here.

Here's another link to a story on the issue, from EdSource