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Sunday, March 25, 2007

A Silver Lining

As much as I believe that the public education system, like any system, needs to be constantly assessed and improved, I have been very critical of NCLB. I do not believe that the plan was ever intended to improve our schools and have always felt that was meant as a purely superficial political maneuver. It has been underfunded and seriously lacking in logic from the get-go, and i have never heard of any positive results from it. Until now.

It seems that the testing industry is beginning to buckle under the strain of "accountability." The capitalist juggernaut that is the standardized testing business has made itself virtually indispensable for too long. I have never felt that these tests accurately predict anything other than one's ability to take that particular test, but I have never seen a way to weaken the beast. Yet it seems that we may be killing two birds with one stone on this one. NCLB cannot exist without constant testing, and the testing industry cannot survive NCLB. It's probably too much to ask that both would go the way of the dodo. Still, one can hope.

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