Zócalo's Connecting California
School dazed and confused
California's new education accountability framework was designed to help the state's neediest students. But Zocalo's Joe Mathews says the plan is made of up of disparate parts that don't fit together, and the result in an incoherent mess.
California education officials have rolled out a new accountability system for evaluating public schools. The goal is to give a fuller picture of how schools are doing beyond just test scores. And this, combined with the state's new school funding formula, is supposed to increase local control; give parents and communities more say in how education funding is spent; and most of all, help poor kids. But Zócalo Public Square columnist Joe Mathews isn't buying it. The father of three boys calls it bureaucratic "gobbledygook" – and a system that appears as if it was intentionally designed to fail.