Brickbat: Testing Our Patience
(Dennis Van De Hoef/Dreamstime)
A lawsuit by Success Academy, New York City's largest charter-school network, alleges that the state Education Department improperly withheld advanced lacement test data, causing it to plunge nearly 200 spots in a state ranking. Education Department officials say they withheld the test results to protect student privacy and prevent the release of information that could identify individual students, but critics argue that the privacy explanation is a cover for hiding how poorly many public schools are performing. Success Academy and its supporters say parents need access to reliable test data so they can judge how well schools are preparing students for college and hold educators accountable.