To Bush and Spellings, "There's No Success Like Failure, And Failure's No Success At All."

This story seems to repeat itself over and over again. This week Michael Winerip writes in his education column in the New York Times the story of Public School 48 in the South Bronx. Winerip explains that the school serves some of the city's poorest minority children. And he explains that P.S. 48's test scores have soared in the last few years. In 2005, 86 per cent of fourth graders scored proficient in math, and 68.5 per cent in English, placing P.S. 48 near the top of the Bronx's 130 elementary schools.

Says Winerip, "The principal, John Hughes, has mixed feelings about all the testing that goes on these days, but professionally, he has put that all aside. 'The profit margin in this business is test scores,' he said. 'That's all they measure you by now.'"

New York School's Chancellor Joel I. Klein has applauded the school's efforts. Klein even attended the 2004 graduation wearing a t-shirt that read, "P.S. 48 -- The Best School in the Universe."

But in George Bush's world, the world of No Child Left Behind, the world of the federal Department of Education, in DOE Secretary, Margaret Spelling's world, P.S. 48 is a failure.

Says Winerip, "In the No Child world, state and federal officials plug test results from schools that few of them have ever seen into a series of complex formulas. The calculations are so technical that it took city officials many hours over several weeks to finally pinpoint why P.S. 48 was labeled failing."

Read the entire story.