… if you don’t apply it in a thoughtful way. New York, case in point:

… New York public education is falling behind because the state has ignored chances to discover what educational practices really work, use that evidence to improve student outcomes, and make its leadership accountable for results.

While the state gathers troves of data, many of its most important programs are poorly measured or poorly evaluated.

For example, New York knows very little about its two fastest-growing programs: special education and school-based mental-health services. In New York, 21 percent of public school students are classified as having a disability, compared with the national average of 15 percent. The state has also opened more than 1,000 school-based mental-health clinics and hired counselors at a rate few other states can match. But it does not track if students are getting the services they need, if the programs are effective, or even if parents agreed to them.

Brilliant, just brilliant.

Similar problems dog New York’s tracking of individual students, teacher training programs, and the elimination of the infamous compulsory Regents exams of my youth. New York knows that charter schools are a good idea, but for political reasons they are very limited. And on and on and on.

It’s a choice to be mediocre, and to use money to fund Democrat constituencies in education rather than caring about education itself.