Peter Greene writes here about the latest setback to Florida parents challenging the state’s law requiring that students take and pass the third grade test or be flunked.

Peter explains why this law is useless, although it does have the result of inflating fourth grade scores.

We’ve been following this story for a while. Florida has a third grade reading test requirement– Florida’s third graders must show they can score high enough on the state Big Standardized Test, no matter what else they’ve done. Florida’s “Just Read, Florida” (because the way to get students to read is to just insist they do it) is like many versions of this bad idea, and last May, a handful of families put it to the test (with the stubborn assistance of their county school systems– not all Florida counties chose to be part of this exercise in idiocy).

Some children opted out of the Big Standardized Test, so their school district declared that despite the fact that some of those children had exemplary report cards, they would be denied advancement to fourth grade. By the end of the summer, the whole sorry mess as in court. That case was gobsmacking in its wrongheadedness, including the moment in which the state argued that teacher-issued grades were meaningless.

So parents cannot opt out of the testing, even though the federal law says they can.

When it comes to education policy, Florida is one of the worst states in the nation.