"America's most potent advocate of limited government,"

Wow, check out what Conservative columnist George Will had to say about the Goldwater Institute.

In 2006, long before there was an Obama administration determined to impose a command-and-control federal health-care system, a young orthopedic surgeon walked into the Goldwater Institute here with an idea. The institute, America's most potent advocate of limited government, embraced Eric Novack's idea for protecting Arizonans from health-care coercion. In 2008, Arizonans voted on Novack's proposed amendment to the state's Constitution:

Comments

[conservative]

"America's most potent advocate of limited government" has had some damning things to say about the performance of Arizona's Department of Education.

According to the Goldwater Institute: "The Nation's Report Card released 2009 results on its 4th- and 8th- grade math test...The news is not good. Arizona has stalled out with bad scores...With a score nine points below the national average, Arizona 4th graders know almost a grade level less math than the average American student. Florida and Texas--states with similar levels of spending and student demographics--both scored above the national average." (See http://goldwaterinstitute.org/article/4060 )

The current administration of the Department of Education has not delivered good results. It has performed mediocre at best. We need a change in administration and a change in direction!

[DGN]

What the Goldwater Institute (which, BTW, I respect) will not say (or perhaps they do not know) is that the NAEP is an easily gamed system rife with abuse. It is not reliable for any state. NAEP is supposed to use a random sample of schools, but I know of states in which the same schools are used for NAEP over and over again. I find it ironic that a libertarian-leaning think tank that is inherently and rightly distrustful of government intrusion puts so much stock in a system conceived and designed by Congress

[Matthewladner]

DGN-

No system of testing is perfect, but both the incentive and the ability of anyone to cheat on NAEP is much more limited than state tests like AIMS. Test items are much better guarded, and no one's school evaluation is based upon them.

We at GI are hardly the only admirers of NAEP. Education Week surveyed education experts from around the country and found NAEP to be the most influential study and information source, scoring 100 out of a possible 100 points.

http://www.edweek.org/rc/articles/2006/12/13/influentials.html