Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Education News


The big story today in the NWI Times is about Indiana's former Supt. of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett, manipulating the grading scale used to rank Indiana's schools. Seems when a charter school run by a political donor came up a little bit short on the grading scale, Mr. Bennett's solution was to change the scale. Live Long and Prosper has a good take on the situation here.

In unrelated but never the less scary news, the Wall Street Journal had an op-ed piece the other day about day to day policing becoming more militaristic. Every police force and agency regardless of size it seems, now has a Swat team and military style weapons. According to the article, even the United States Department of Education now has a Swat team. Say what? Why in the hell would that be necessary?

So they create an education system that builds in "accountability" with big tests and then are surprised when people cheat or manipulate the data. As my dear old Pappy used to say: "Figures don't lie, but liars can figure." That explains Tony Bennett and all the rest of the cheaters that have come to light so far, but a Swat team? I don't think there can be a good explanation for that.

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