on so-called 'pandemic recovery' in education

 I honestly find the way this is discussed most of the time exceedingly irritating, as much of the time, it's essentially adults saying, "but I thought we'd be over THERE" about a road that no longer exists. I did, though, want to note two things from recently circulated items:

• This piece in The Hechinger Report, which, yes, is on how testing companies are noting that sixth graders aren't where sixth graders were pre-pandemic and such, has this little telling quote buried in it: 
  
  “The word that was going around was ‘acceleration not remediation’,” the teacher said.
  
  OH HEY!
  Anyone else remember the Massachusetts Acceleration Roadmap from former Commissioner Riley?
  Remember the loooong presentation from TNTP at a Board of Ed meeting?
  Remember how they said this: 
  
  "Typically, systems and schools have address unfinished learning with remediation...the common strategy of focusing instructional time on content from previous grades with the intention of meeting students where they are to catch them up. In contrast, accelerated learning readies students for new grade-level learning by strategically marrying critical concepts, content, and skills from prior grades within the content, instruction, and materials of the students' current grade level."
  
  
  
  
  
  Yeah, that was a swell idea. Clearly, that's panned right out.
  
  
• I've mentioned before that I do not understand why Marguerite Roza at the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown gets taken seriously, but her latest "Massachusetts hired 12,000 additional K-12 staff; why haven't the test scores gone up?"* is a new low. K-12 Dive has a piece on it here. 
  One should note:
  1. Massachusetts schools, particularly URBAN schools, have been understaffed by the state's own measures by literally HUNDREDS of teachers and other staff; that's why we have the Student Opportunity Act.
  2. The staff--by Roza's own reported measures!--are only about a quarter teachers.
  3. Mental health is a good thing on its own, even if--gasp!--you cannot find its impact in attendance.
  4. The staffing numbers were through last school year, and uh, we had major layoffs last spring? How many of those staff do we even still have?
  Anyway, I'm annoyed. 

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* my title