Thirteen years ago, the Legislature – spurred by then-Gov.Gray Davis – made one of its periodic forays into educational reform, or so we were told.

The Public Schools Accountability Act purported to give us an objective measure of how well local schools were doing via a single number reflecting standardized test results.

By and by, the API numbers became factors in the buying and selling of homes, and eventually spawned efforts to evaluate teachers and principals by their students’ test scores, as well as parental campaigns to wrest control of low-API schools via charters.

via Dan Walters: California tries a new way to reform education.