Testiness Over Test Scores
May 25, 2008
The furor over the abysmal scores of Georgia students is misdirected. Most blame the test (thereby blaming the messenger), then blame the system. Yet even the “improved” test is woefully unchallenging, and Georgia students perform badly on more objective tests like the NAEP.
Teachers and administrators join the chorus since doing so takes them off the hook. Yet they either actively support, or passively acquiesce in, the system. They should not be taken off the hook. Indeed, many should be given the hook.
Worst are the parents who complain because their children who have earned As and Bs have failed the test. They rather should complain that their children have been given As and Bs that they did not deserve in the first place.
This circle of recriminations simply allows the status quo to proceed unchecked except for calls to make modifications that will eviscerate our educational system even more.
Unhappy (Election) Returns
May 7, 2008
The furor of outrage against Lake County, Indiana, for turning in its election results slowly is another example of the misplaced priorities that so pervade our political and journalistic scenes. The mania for early returns puts undue pressure on local election boards. We have become a society that is incapable of delayed gratification, even where that is appropriate and desirable.
Television networks so greedy for a “scoop”—in an electronic age in which the very notion of “scoop” is anachronistic and atavistic—still rush to predict winners even if their doing so could skew results in places whose polls are still open when the predictions are made.
It is past time for us to eschew this kind of insidious narcissistic self-aggrandizement at the cost of reasoned political discourse.
If I had my way—I will worry, or let the Supreme Court worry, about the legality later—I would enact legislation prohibiting any state or television network from releasing any results or predictions on a given election day until the last precinct of the last state to vote on that day is closed.
