The leading elite Racers to the Top of the nation’s school
reform movement suffered a minor setback last semester when an unfortunate word
problem slipped somehow through the quality control cracks at one of the
country’s top for-profit high-stakes testing corporations.
According to 10th grader Zach Little, who has a
self-reported photographic memory, the problem in question read,
If a society’s schools are reformed
according to the same principles that led to a society where some kids go
hungry to schools with a fraction of the resources found at schools where well
fed kids go, what are the odds that the products of this society’s reformed
schools will go on to fix the glaring inequities in this society?
Responding to high schoolers’ 100% correct answer rate on
this word problem, Arne Duncan, US Secretary of Education, told reporters, “One
obvious problem with this problem is that it inflates the performance ratings
of these students’ teachers. What is the point of using high-stakes testing to
achieve teacher accountability if give-me problems like this one are going to
wind up on the tests?
“Another problem, of course, is that solving this word
problem involves higher-order, imaginative-type global thinking. That’s really
not what we’re high-stakes testing for.”
Said Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of Washington, D.C.
public schools now in the third or fourth different lap of her personal Race to
the Top of the school reform movement, “I’ve got a word problem for you: ‘How
many teachers are now not going to be fired and how many schools are not going
to be shuttered and how much stronger did the teachers’ unions just get because
the wrong word problem showed up on a high-stakes test?’”
Added California’s first lady, “As a first step toward
correcting this situation, we’re challenging the answer key for the tests with
this problem on it. We’re not sure what the right answer is, but whatever
answer 100% of the students in this nation’s failing schools came up with can’t
be it.
“I also think the sentence is a run-on.”
Said Bill Gates, winner of the Race to the Top spot among
accumulators of the most unequal share of the American wealth pie and now odds
on favorite to win the Race to the Top of the school reform movement, “It’s
called a Race to the Top. We owe it to these kids to run them through a battery
of tests rigorous enough for the best of them to separate themselves from the
rest.
“We also can’t afford to let an inflated test performance on
their part raise their estimation of their teachers. If America is going to
keep winning the Race to the Top of the world order, we can’t very well have
large numbers of our young generation aspiring to nothing more than a career in
public education at the teaching level.”
In related news, the Sacramento chapter of the Elementary
School Teachers Union has reportedly called Michelle Rhee’s parents in to talk
to them about their daughter.
According to sources, the teachers are very concerned about
Ms. Rhee’s citizenship. It seems Ms. Rhee has stopped caring altogether about
how her actions are hurting others who don’t deserve it. The teachers believe
this might have something to do with the clique of bullies she now belongs to.
Ms. Rhee also apparently needs to work on her numbers and/or
her honesty. She has had a chronic problem with giving an inaccurate accounting
of her performance as a teacher and administrator and crusader. She’s also had
a big problem with cheating.
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