How stupid items get onto standardized tests
Many people have wondered how the New York State Education Department permitted the nonsensical story about the pineapple and the hare to get onto the state test.
This is not the first time a really bad reading passage got onto the test and it won’t be the last.
State Commissioner John King was quick to issue a defensive statement saying that people were reading the story “out of context,” as if the full story made sense (it didn’t). And he was quick to pin the blame on teachers, who supposedly had reviewed all the test items. It was the teachers’ fault, not his. In an era where Accountability is the hallmark of education policy, King was quick to refuse any accountability for what happened on his watch. These days, the ones at the top never accept accountability for what goes wrong, that’s for the “little people” like
