Dear USDOE, Testing Disaster Is Yours, and You Still Don’t Get It: A Reader
Let’s not miss that in the same week that vice president (and plagiarist) Joe Biden holds a press conference to announce what he plans not to do (o, the narcissism of the ruling class!), the U.S. Department of Education has come to some sort of Onion-esque realization that students are being subjected to an inordinate number of standardized tests (although it seems the USDOE is able only to worry about the redundancy and excessive number of tests).
The Ozymandias (I mean, Obama) administration has announced:
“Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.”
And let’s not fail to acknowledge that such vapid bureaucratic nonsense is inevitably the result of know-nothings being appointed to positions of power (think never-taught Arne Duncan serving as Secretary of Education in the wake of Margaret Dishonest-or-IncompetentSpellings turning her hollow SOE gig into becoming president of the University of North Carolina, resulting in her bragging about having none of the background experiences typical of leading higher education).
You see, U.S. education became a test-corrupted venture in the early decades of the twentieth century, which was documented and confronted by Raymond Callahan in 1962 as the cult of efficiency.
Yes, 1962.
But know-nothings in positions of power can only confirm the truism: those unaware of the past are doomed to repeat it.
Finally, let’s be very clear that the number of unnecessary standardized tests equals anything greater than zero.
And to confirm that we are over-testing students—and that it isn’t a problem of bad tests orDear USDOE, Testing Disaster Is Yours, and You Still Don’t Get It: A Reader | the becoming radical: