In a shocking display of hubris, U.S. Department of Education (USDE) Secretary Margaret Spellings (SecUSDE) is going to require all of the states to use the same formula to determine their graduation rates as part of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program. Why? Well, because some districts cheat. Shocking, isn’t it. And, why do they cheat, you ask? Because the administrators of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) will beat them over the head and pull federal funding away from them if they don’t meet the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) goals mandated by NCLB administrators NCLBAdmin).

Oh, SecUSDE and the governors of all fifty states agreed 3 years ago – THREE YEARS AGO – to create a single way of measuring on-time graduation rates (OTGR). Every governor signed on to the idea. And here we are – SecUSDE is finally getting around to creating the formula for OTGR.

She opined in her press statement April 1 (was this her April Fool’s Day joke?) that inner city schools have a dismal OTGR. That AYP in inner city schools is awful.

Madam SecUSDE somehow thinks NCLB is working. She said in Annapolis on March 26 “Instead of questioning whether or not all students can learn, thanks to this law, we're finally beginning to make sure that every child is learning.”

Huh? They’re learning how to take tests – not getting an education, Madam SecUSDE. Only the students who are also fully engaged in the academics are getting an education – the rest wade through their dreary weeks of test prep, doing dry runs of the Advance Placement (AP) tests. Learning by the numbers is not education – you’re dragging down our best and brightest, instead of lifting up the ones who need help – inside and outside of the classroom.

But maybe that’s the intent of NCLB, to create another generation or two of Sheeple, to keep the status quo alive and well. You folks in the Dems and Repubs love your straight-ticket voters – and are having a harder and harder time reaching us independents who happen to think for themselves.

Why did I use all of this alphabet soup? Because reading a report from a federal, state, regional or local school district is a massive display of acronyms. And if you attend a local, regional, or state school board meeting – you will hear these acronyms flying around like starlings flocking on stalled a grain truck. If you don’t live out in the boondocks, you aren’t going to get that metaphor at all – just like an uninitiated first-timer attending one of these meetings of educators trying to make sense of what’s going on.