"(The standardized test is) the collateralized debt obligation of the education 'reform' scam."

[Smarmie Doofus]

Whoa. I've never seen the real ed reformers use the language this well. That's a keeper.

From Charles Pierce, in ESQUIRE. I never heard of him. But I've heard of him now.

Regarding the Atlanta cheating scandal:

>>>The primary corrupting agent in the actual education process is the standardized test. It is the collateralized debt obligation of the education "reform" scam. Using standardized testing to measure anything, let alone using it as a basis for whether or not people can keep their jobs or not, is an open invitation to chicanery of all kinds, but especially that which involved massaging the numbers. Standardized testing is a Procrustean bed fitted with a Magic Fingers device. Once you've introduced the corrupting agent, then the corrupting agent forces on you a system of punishment and rewards that eventually guarantees that you and your whole system will look like jackasses.
During the decade she led the district of 52,000 children, many of them poor and African-American, Atlanta students often outperformed wealthier suburban districts on state tests. Those test scores brought her fame - in 2009, the American Association of School Administrators named her superintendent of the year and Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, hosted her at the White House. And fortune - she earned more than $500,000 in performance bonuses while superintendent.>>>>>


Read more: Atlanta School Reform Scam - Yet Another Education Reform Scam - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/atlanta-school-reform-scam-040113#ixzz2PKvuLeQl

[wryter2000]

1. Charlie Pierce is fabulous

He's on Stephanie Miller every Tuesday morning.

[HiPointDem]

2. kr

[chervilant]

3. I especially appreciate

THIS:

We really should all agree now that the American corporate class essentially is made up these days, high and low, entirely of grifting pieces of dickweed who don't have the moral sense possessed by spirochete, and that anything they touch will inevitably become in some way a thieves paradise, and that any education "reform" proposed, developed, and/or modeled for the nation by the members of its corporate class invariably will take on the ethical norms, not of the old American classroom, but of the new American boardroom. Those norms will infect everything. People are going to cheat. People are going to steal.

(Emphasis mine ...)