When a politician announces a number of new initiatives, the stories that follow often end up looking like a laundry list. However,journalists have to do more than allow politicians to spew rhetoric without demanding a full explanation. One good example comes from the speech Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley made this week to the State Board of Education, where he announced a new program for tracking student performance from pre-kindergarten through the end of college.

Early Stories is curious to know how a pre-kindergarten student might be tracked and what exactly the governor meant. For one thing, many states and school systems first enroll students in kindergarten or first grade. And not all have developed evaluation systems for pre-kindergarten that measure such things as cognitive and language abilities, reading and mathematics achievement, health or behavior problems, for example.

How will school systems measure the achievement of pre-kindergarten students and what sorts of tests will they get? Will they be assessed on their ability to recite letters and numbers?

To get a few more answers, Early Stories checked out the text of his speech which implies said that he wants the Board of Education to "develop a comprehensive performance measurement system that tracks student achievement and development from Kindergarten through higher education.''

So, now the questions can begin about what such a system might look like in Maryland, which was ranked number one for having the best schools nationally by Education Week. Who will do the "tracking,'' and what will be tracked? How much will it cost? Will all publicly funded pre-kindergartens be required to track their students?