No Child Left Behind, to Embarassment of Education Lobby

Another indicator of improved education since President Bush began the push for standards (hat tip: Drudge). The Edu-Bolsheviks, of course, have concerns quite different from trifling matters of teaching children:

To avoid inflating state performance, the College Board counted students once regardless of how many AP subject tests they passed. But that obscures the point that students in wealthy areas often have access to multiple AP courses while other students do not, said Bob Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, which monitors standardized testing.

"Unfortunately, despite the value of AP courses, they end up reinforcing huge gaps between haves and have-nots because of differences in where courses are offered," he said.

For many students, an AP course is often their first exposure to challenging material, said Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, which advocates for minority children. In that sense, she said, the growing participation rates are clearly good news.

But the AP popularity raises questions, too, Haycock said, such as whether the program takes the best teachers and leaves less experienced ones for struggling students. Among students who go on to college, about 40 percent take at least one remedial course.

"It's not the total answer," Haycock said of the AP. "If we think this is the way to improve academics in high schools, we need to think a little harder than that."

Here's an idea---why not put together a special Blue Ribbon committee of the kids who aced the AP tests and ask them how to educate kids? It's got to be a better solution than letting the mental mediocrities of the educational establishment have another crack.