Educators: lower expectations in response to challenges

  There's Arne Duncan, former chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools and now head of the Department of Education. When Duncan moved up to DC, he decided that if kids were having trouble passing tests for the No Child Left Behind Act, then we'll just exempt those kids from having to pass any kind of measurement.
  In Chicago, hundreds of students at Chicago State University have received state aid even though they had extremely low GPAs.
  How low?
  How about 0.0.
  American Thinker:

The students at CSU are almost entirely local kids and the products of the vaunted Chicago Public School system, which was led by Barack Obama's pal Arne Duncan from 2001 until he was elevated to the position of U.S. Secretary of Education.  Mr. Duncan has been applying his Chicago-style educational reforms to the nation at large and recently began a push to upgrade public education (retaining the loyalty of the teachers union) by issuing waivers to allow our schools to avoid meeting the educational standards set forth in Teddy Kennedy's No Child Left Behind bill. 

  Now we learn that New York State is contracting with a company that will change the way their tests are written. We don't want students to be confused when they're reading test questions by using words like not or images that are not positive.
  New York Times:

The department has advised the new company that catch-all answer choices known for tripping up students, like “none of the above” and “all of the above” and already rare in the state’s tests, are now banned. 

Mirroring a national trend toward clearer multiple-choice questions, the use of the word “not” to confuse students is also off the table; negatives can be used only when necessary, the contract states. That makes it far less likely that students will confront head-spinners like: “Which of the following words can not be used to describe the tone of this passage?”

  In light of concern over cheating scandals in Atlanta,  and Pennsylvania, and Newark, Los Angeles.
  In light of the miserable test scores in places like Detroit, where no school district has "ever registered such low numbers" with answers that were "barely above what one would expect simply by chance."
  In light of these circumstances, one would think we as a culture would want to increase expectations for our children.
  Do we think so little of them?
  Or do we think so little of ourselves as adults leading those children to believe that there will always be someone who will swoop in and say, "That's ok! Don't worry! We'll take care of it" rather than to expect them to meet the standards we know they need to be successful.
  Perhaps this is the most pernicious characteristic of the nanny state.
  And the most damaging in the long run of the future.