Paul Thomas chastises conservative leaders in South Carolina for doing the same thing over and over for thirty years and expecting to get different results.
Thirty years of testing, accountability, and choice have been expensive and have not solved the state’s education problems. The testing corporations have benefitted, but not students.
Meanwhile the root cause of poor academic performance is unaddressed: grinding poverty.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Regan proved that deficits don’t matter.” Dick Cheney
Since when have conservatives cared about deficits? Not in at least 30 years. Today’s “conservatives” are really radicals who care only about creating and supporting a new American plutocracy, and they don’t mind a bit if that includes looting the public treasuries and tax payers to divert money from socially useful projects to the coffers of the rich. In their Randian utopia, the ends of getting rich justify the means.
Don’t listen to the claims of “responsibility”, “efficiency”, and “market choice”. Follow the money. No lie is too big when there’s enough money to loot. And we now know that Obama is firmly in the “too big to jail” camp; so the bigger the haul, the bigger the lies and crimes.
Paul Thomas strikes again. Somebody put him in charge.
I agree. Yeah for Paul Thomas!
How is “grinding poverty” to be addressed? Just asking.
By strong middle class jobs. Jobs my grandfathers and their fathers did in order to supply my blood line with generational respect and respectable inheritance.
You know the jobs that we used to have until the 80’s when they were all sent away to China, Mexico, Guatemala, etc… for slave labor.