It still comes down to you just saying that if part of what you look at is test scores, then you aren't looking at other metrics. This isn't true. Near where I live, where many of my friends live, there were a lot of articles about the Gates foundation who sort of commandeered a district to experiment with. They look at scores. They also have extensive teacher performance evaluations that go well beyond what the district would be able to do w/ out the money they brought with them. Really at it's core they are studying teaching, giving real feedback to each teacher and understanding what it is that makes the best ones good and finding ways to share those skills with others. B/c part of their program looks at test scores and draws what conclusions they think are appropriate from them...that does not mean that their program somehow ignore the best practices they identify regardless of the test scores coming from that group (which seems to be the focus of their approach).
Also anyone who says this is a product of "democratic/big government" thinking and not just a product of the plan Florida adopted doesn't understand state politics in Florida. There is only 1 party. It isn't the Dems and nobody would be caught dead doing anything that smells of big gov't in Tally. Trying to put this on a party or make this partisan is ... quite partisan and quite wrong.