Creating More Failing Schools

The La State Dept. of Education has been releasing its list of schools rated as failing based on school performance scores for the past school year. See the Advocate story. The list of failing schools has increased over last year solely because the state has raised the passing score from 65 to 75. Purely arbitrary! No reason given except that BESE wanted to raise the bar. Why not simply decree that all students must score above average or their school would be rated as failing?

Jindal claims to be trying to attract industry and jobs to Louisiana. What will this arbitrary grading system for our public schools do to the attractiveness of our state? These people on BESE are not experts in determining the success of a school (and neither are the TFA'ers and other non-educators occupying our Department of Education).

What will this increased threat to the survival of public schools accomplish?? In my opinion it will encourage more teaching to the the test, outright cheating, (see Campbell's law) and much less real education.