The belief that our schools are failing our students is not new. In his 1995 NY Times article, Peter Applebome wrote, "But, in an escalating debate clouded by a blizzard of conflicting statistics and the currents of politics, a vocal core of scholars and educational revisionists has created a stir by arguing that there has been no broad decline in American education and that the notion that schools are failing miserably has as much to do with politics as reality." His entire article is worth a read, not only because it is thought provoking and well written, but because it was written 18 YEARS AGO and is spot-on for the current environment.

So where are we now? The public and the legislature believe we are failing; and it seems that they have been thinking so for quite some time. To be fair, there are some schools that are failing, but certainly not all. Our politicians are demanding metrics for accountability. They think we are failing the students, they think the institutions in which we work are failing, and they think the remedy is spending millions of dollars to for-profit companies to test the students on the standards and curriculum being taught in our schools.

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