Sacrificing all for Test Scores

The test score disaster of 2007 lasted one news day on all local media.  No more will be heard about the failures of Pedro Garcia's bluster since 2001 that if he can't get test scores up he should be fired.  But in a full page of editorials on August 8--without mentioning previous failures--the Tennessean's editor focused not on the most recent test scores; the subject was the arbitrary transfer policy.  She concluded that the only test of the unfair and illegal treatment was whether student performance was improved.  The conclusion would be valid, except judgment day never comes.  We are quickly rushed past the failures and then offered promises of wonderful outcomes in the future.  Another example locally of the George Bush-Fox News syndrome.

Update (14Aug07)

At the school board meeting on August 14, Erick Huth gave as good a speech as was possible to give.  He even had a respectable crowd of supportive teachers.  Following the thesis of Al Gore in his book, Assault on Reason, if it was not on TV, it didn't happen, Huth was butting his head against a brick wall. 

Starting with the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s, social activists learned to fill up a TV screen and the power structure responded.  In recent years, according to Al Gore, the media: corporation newspapers, talk radio, and network propaganda outlets, have taken over so completely that even a mass movement has no credibility if deprived of exposure.  Huth is left with the grievance process--which will work--but it is very slow.

The sad observation is that of the crowd of nearly one hundred supportive teachers, most were over the age of fifty.  Until something inspires, or frightens, the young teachers, the MNEA leaders will have a hard time showing dramatic results.