The Echo

Together, I, Gov. Markell, and the Delaware Department of ,who bow to my every whim and whimper, have decreased academic expectations.  With the new DCAS, individual students must perform better because the test is harder in order to achieve their same scores as under the old DSTP.   However, together, we duped my appointed State Board of Education in agreeing to allow the DOE to drop the proficiency rate - so culmulatively-speaking fewer actual students had score at the assigned profiency rate in order for a school to be ranked Superior or Commendable. With these changes, I have rendered the Delaware Diploma system useless. 
While the DOE embarks on the implementation of common core standards, which admittedly are an over-stretch of federal intrustion (and have been interpretted by many to be flat out illegal), it's important to note that potential employers of this generation will have wade through data, coached and manipulated, to find real value in the diploma itself.  If a school's reputation is known to be Superior and a student comes to an employer bearing a diploma from a reputable school, one might assume that the student actually mastered the common core standards and therefore would be a logical and attractive employee.  But, if that same school achieved the Superior or Commendable rating based squarely on "growth" that diploma may simply be useless as it is not a marker of profiency, but an indicator of growth.