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Who knew Michelle Rhee was such a lilly-livered apologist for failing schools? Who knew that Jay Mathews would join her in finding excuses to squirm out from under real accountability?

Mathews tells the story of DC's Shaw Middle School, whose test scores actually dropped after Rhee installed a new and well-regarded principal. He praises Rhee for her continued confidence in the principal. Rhee is willing to wait, because "the Shaw people are doing nearly everything that the most successful school turnaround artists have done." There was even a mitigating factor: "Only 17 percent of Shaw's 2009 students had attended the school in 2008, distorting the official test score comparisons." Excuses, excuses.

Even Mathews's title is just the kind of thing that earns groans from accountability hawks: "Measuring Progress At Shaw With More Than Numbers."

Of course, Rhee and Mathews are right. It would be foolish to expect dramatic gains a scant year after the turnaround process begins. Shaw needs time. Shaw needs understanding and support.

And I'll admit that I've indulged in caricature here. Rhee and Mathews aren't accountability ogres. Rhee is doing what any reasonable person would do under the circumstances.

What concerns me most about Mathews's article is the gulf between the rhetoric and the reality of reform. Liam Goldrick puts it best:

I would argue that, in addition to doing the right thing (as happened in this instance), reform advocates and school leaders like Rhee also have a responsibility to say and advocate for the right thing. They have a responsibility to be honest about the complexity of student learning and the inability of student assessments to accurately capture all of the nuance going on within schools and classrooms

As Goldrick notes, Rhee's enthusiasm for "year-to-year" gains in test scores defies logic. Scores fluctuate from one year to the next, and unexpected winds can blow even the most promising schools off course. (These fluctuations and errant winds present a huge problem for merit pay schemes that focus on year to year growth.) Sure, Rhee's patience should not be infinite. We can't celebrate Shaw as a succes if it gets dismal scores year after year.

But we do have to set reasonable expectations for the success of school turnaround efforts. Now that the Education Department is committing to aggressive goals for turning around schools, schools will be under very intense pressure to show swift gains. The Department's focus here is dead on. But we can't be encouraging schools to goose the numbers for a short-term bump in scores.

Mathews's article couldn't be better timed. He essentially endorses the crux of our recent Principles for Measuring the Performance of Turnaround Schools.  Three principles in particular stand out: We should measure the conditions for school and student success. We should track schools' progress over time, because a year or two likely won't give us the gains we want. And we should include experts' qualitative judgments when we measure schools' progress. Mathews and Rhee are trusting their judgment that Shaw is doing the right things, even if those things aren't bearing fruit yet.

You'd think the principles would go without saying. Unfortunately, debates about school reform have grown so heated that reasonable opinions on school accountability often get drowned out.

For Michelle Rhee, though, actions speak louder than words.

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