I just came back from Florida after watching Monday's shuttle launch. At Kennedy Space Center they pointed out the mobile launcher built for the now cancelled Constellation project. The joke was they're going to turn it into the NASA bungee jumping tower.
This Florida mess is why I'm such a proponent of growth assessments. If schools are measured on individual student growth, there is incentive to teach to the zone of proximal development aka "learning around the edges of what you already know." I'd love to know how the MAP growth results were affected for the gifted students in the counties that pulled the plug.
