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The Clinton Administration has proposed voluntary standard national tests in reading and math for America's schoolchildren. Naturally, this has inspired opposition, primarily on the grounds that it would lead to decreased local control of schools.
Of all the myths circulating in the Republic, from
black helicopters are even now leading a U.N. invasion
force from Canada
to the stock market will keep
going up forever,
local control of education
is
one of the most widespread.
If you want to see whether there really is such a thing,
just attend your local school board meeting, and ask a few
questions. You will get answers like the state certifies
these halfwits, so it's out of our hands,
or the
feds said we'd lose $431 in Title I funding if we didn't
accommodate the disability of that dear child who suffers
from sociopathologic pyromania, and so we had to provide
him a building to burn down, and it was just happenstance
that your daughter happened to be inside.
But such fears are still legitimate. You don't need a
crystal ball or Tarot deck to foresee that, although the
tests are supposed to be voluntary,
school districts
will get letters like Unless you bring your mean
fourth-grade reading scores up to with one standard
deviation of the normalized norm, your district's
assistance for lunch programs will be reduced by 9.38
percent of the last fiscal year allotment of Civil
War-surplus tinned beef.
Many teachers also seem dubious about such tests, and argue that if the tests were in place, teachers would teach to the test, not to the student. Well, it would be nice if they taught to something, and if that something were measurable, but then again, if I were a teacher, I'd prefer to work with the kids on self-esteem enhancement and holistic problem-solving skills. Nobody can measure those, and so my paycheck would be secure, no matter what I did.
Who knows, though? The proposal could slide through Congress, and then someone would have to write the tests, presumably to gauge how well students could handle real-world reading and math questions. Some possibilities:
1. In the first case, a special prosecutor spends $8,700,000 and three years to indict a former cabinet official for accepting $35,458 worth of gifts during the two years he was in office.
In the second case, a welfare investigator paid $31,000 a year spends six weeks investigating a welfare violation amounting to $41. Which one represents a better use of governmental resources, and why? Explain your answer.
2. If a $50,000 contribution to the Democratic National Committee will get one night in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House, how many nights will a $275,000 contribution purchase, assuming the first $25,000 is hard money and the remainder can be allocated in any way approved by a controlling legal authority, but there is no controlling legal authority.
3. Assume that a company donates $175,000 over a four-year period to the Republican party. How many weekends of golf at the Breakers Hotel in Florida with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott should the company's CEO expect in return? Does this represent a better return on investment than contributing the same $175,000 to the Democratic National Committee?
4. If a governor arranges a $1.4-million-a-year tax break for a railroad in order to keep 400 jobs in the state, and the railroad later moves 2,300 jobs out of the state, how much does the governor owe the state treasury?
5. (This question combines reading comprehension and math skills. Answer carefully, because the wrong answer could send you to prison after your house, car and bank account are seized. To answer, provide a number and your documented justification for it.)
If you were self-employed and had a net profit for
the year, or if you received wages from an S corporation in
which you were a more than 2% shareholder, you may be able
to deduct part of the amount paid for health insurance on
behalf of yourself, your spouse, and dependents. But if you
were also eligible to participate in any subsidized health
plan maintained by your or your spouse's employer for any
month or parts of a month, amounts paid for health
insurance coverage for that month cannot be used to figure
the deduction.
I doubt any national standardized tests will follow these suggestions, but if they did, the kids that scored well would probably do well in the real world; so well, perhaps, that they could afford to buy their own representatives, senators, governors and presidents, and get the tax code revised to fit their needs.
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