In an interview with the Washington Post about his education agenda, Obama cited a controversial Chicago policy as an example of how his administration would raise standards.

In the 1990s, Chicago Public Schools stopped promoting students to the next grade — or graduating them from high school – just because they were a certain age. Obama said it is now ”obvious” that so-called social promotion is a “disservice to students” and their parents.

(You might recall that high-level Oakland school administrators have taken the opposite tack, as seen in the student retention memo that I posted the other month.) Read the rest of this entry »