I doubt if there is much (or any) correlation between this DRI organization’s “school district readiness ratings”, and student performance, nor with the quality of the education that students receive. High ratings seem to be mostly related to teacher pay and benefits, and the objectives of the teachers’ unions. And also with the DRI organization’s stated aim of “educational justice”, whatever that means. It would be interesting to know who funded the DRI organization, founded in 2019.

My compliments to “C.R. Mudgeon” on his/her insight into the “[School] District Readiness Index.”

That dataset was “incubated at Pivot Learning” ( Web Link ), an Oakland outfit organized to “Pursue Educational Justice” ( Web Link ). School “readiness” necessarily focuses on inputs. What’s needed is more concern for school outputs.

Ever-increasing inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending has been the rule before and since 1983’s “Nation at Risk” report warned that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

But despite all the new trillions spent in the last 40 years, academic achievement continues precipitous declines.

The first link above shows that several foundations funded the “Readiness Index”— apparently after they were captured/co-opted by some of the usual suspects:

• California Collaborative for Educational Excellence
• Families in Schools
• Innovate Public Schools
• Labor Management Initiative
• National Council on Teacher Quality
• Opportunity Institute
• Parents for Public Schools
• Policy Analysis for California Education

In one sign of residual rationality, Pivot itself realizes that intensive phonics is needed to improve reading, thereby contradicting some of the teacher unionists in the “Labor Management Initiative” who still prefer the failed sight-reading approach.

Consider one other collaborator, so-called “Parents for Public Schools” — and for starters, their gender-ideology propaganda program in North Carolina ( Web Link ). And ya gotta see their twisted view of real-world parents and savvy political leaders who’ve been taking back some school boards from the radical left ( Web Link ).