Here's the deal. I had dinner with a friend this weekend. Fascinating conversation. Then I get the announcement from the pulpit at church, stating the injustice of standardized testing.

So on two separate occasions, just this weekend, I've heard from people opposing the MCAS and how it's unfair to the students, creates a burden on the students. And isn't a good judge of what a student knows.

And doesn't reflect what students need to know for a high school diploma.

It distracts teachers from actually teaching the subject material. And just teaching what's on the test

Personally I'm ethically against standardized testing. Because I think it's degrading to the individual. And a lot of it is a waste of time, and the source of a whole lot of unnecessary stress and trauma.

Although I've taken the SAT, the Achievement Tests (now called the SAT II), the GRE, the CBEST (California Basic Education Skills Test), and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. I agree that it's a waste of time. In fact some of my friends got in trouble for cheating on the the CBEST, their reasoning. We already took the same test last year (and the year before), scored at the 99th percentile, and we know they don't change the questions. So we wrote down all the answers from last year, and are filling them in the bubbles this year. It should give us some more time to play cards.

I also know some people who got caught cheating on the SAT, knowing full well that the College Board, was more interested in protecting the integrity of their testing procedure than correcting the problem. Even though the perpetrators were punished.

Indeed I do not think the system is immune from corruption, or profiteering.

I think it's wrong that property values are determined by the scores of the kids on standardized testing. I applaud the students who intentionally failed the tests, as an act of defiance against the injustices in the system.

However I recognize it as a necessary measure.

There's got to be standards, and there's got to be a way of coming up with a quantitative way of measuring student performance. About half the kids in the school should be below average.

As you have to have standards. And inevitably if you want to raise standards, more kids are going to fail.

But we have to set higher expectations, I believe you have to set high expectations. I'm not sure if it's true, but even if they fall short, they'll come further than you had no expectations at all.

We do live in a cruel world.