The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a study of Florida’s accountability system–the one that Jeb Bush brags about–and concludes that the system promotes behavior to game the system. Schools are assigning children to categories where they will not lower the school’s letter grade.

Here is a succinct summary of the paper:, from the Wall Street Journal blog:

“The way some schools are being held to account for student performance can corrupt how these institutions seek to achieve the standards, a new paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York warns.

“The bank’s researchers took at look at what happened among some schools in Florida around the turn of the millennium. What they found was alarming.

“Analysts Rajashri Chakrabarti and Noah Schwartz found evidence some Sunshine State schools deliberately moved underperforming students into exempt categories in order to have those students not drag down the performance of the school as a whole.”

This, of course, has nothing to do with improving education or addressing the needs of the children. It is all about meeting a target.