The biggest beef I hear from school administrators, teachers, and Walz, is that the pass rate is the same for all kids. A kid like yours, Bobby, probably whizzes through the tests. Comparing him to a kid in special ed or ESL is silly and doesn’t measure the quality of the teacher or the school.

And, yeah, most of my kids’ teachers seem to really want to teach the kids about the complexities of Iran and the unfairness to the poor if we don’t have higher taxation and how wind farms are better than burning coal, but the testing now being done makes them spend more time than they would like to waste on things like state capitals, and where to find Somolia on a map, and how to do long division . . . Frankly, it’s sort of been a nice change, because the kids are now getting more of those basics that they were simply missing before (”they’ll have calculators, they don’t need to do that . . “) and fewer “business is evil and pollutes” ignorant diatribes (from people who, in the face of the toughness of math and science and even sociology majors, opted instead for “education.”) What Waltz calls “nuance”, I call “stuff that’s more fun to spend your paid time on than what you’re supposed to teach.” I’d rather the kids learned the basics first.

And, the testing takes up too much time? Middle son recently had a few days of that testing. He asked if I could pick up some pop for him for school the next day, for the free time. “Free time?” I said. “Yeah, we take two hours of tests, and then the rest of the day is set up as a free day with movies, fun activities, and the like” he said. “No classes?”, I said. “Nope”, he replied, “not on those testing days.”

So screw that whole argument. If “testing takes too much time away from teaching”, then the parties do too, as do the surprisingly frequent teachers’ workshop days and half-days.

I think if I went out and peed on the sidewalk the wet-spot I leave would defeat any Repub in the next election.

Plus I could sell the pix on e-bay.