Great Piece on the SRA, But...

James Ahearn takes on the Special Review Assessment in The Record, reviewing how students would take the SRA after failing the traditional high school proficiency exam several times and then be coached through the alternative sham. It’s a good piece and makes the salient point that the SRA has allowed students (mostly poor and urban) to receive high school diplomas while effectively cheating them out of a thorough and efficient education while artificially inflating our high school graduation rate. Here’s a couple of quibbles:
"The SRA has served New Jersey's students well. It is based upon educationally sound practices and offers students who cannot pass standardized tests a legitimate alternative to receive a diploma. Unfortunately, many in the media and business community have mislabeled the SRA as a back-door to graduation. On the contrary, the SRA has provided students with a viable path to a diploma."
Always thought-provoking to ponder the ways in which one organization truly devoted to kids (ELC) and another truly devoted to grown-ups (NJEA) find common cause. (We’re not being snarky. Just pondering.)

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