Subject: SOB Flash 
Date:  Fri, 9 Dec 2005 17:35:00 -0800 
From:  "Ross A. Smith" <rosssmith@charter.net> 
                                                                          
Today's Oregonian sub-head regarding State School Superintendant on testing for subject mastery:  "Benchmarks - Susan Castillo says she wants better ways to gauge high school students' achievement."

        What she is speaking of no doubt is something along the line of doctoring SAT scores to make it look like college-bound Oregon students are leading the nation, when in fact their scores are mediocre -- a technique the public schools have been using for years now, with the willing
cooperation of newspapers such as the Oregonian. 

        Public school educators do not like objective measurements such as tests, because they can make schools look like they are not doing a very good job of educating our kids. Better to make up subjective measurement of their own, which can reflect any results the educators want. This is all very subjective stuff -- I mean the idea of testing to learn what students know is unreliable, degrading to the educators and the students, and it makes poor performers feel inferior and unwanted, don't you know. Test scores can affect self esteem adversely, and cause heartache, pain, and withdrawal from society by low achievers -- both students and teachers.

OMED:  Public school educators do not like objective measurements such as tests is probably a reference by Ross to the G.W. Bush No Child Left Behind tests, which are despised by most American "educators" because they require the teachers to teach the children something which is useful to know.  If the children fail those actual tests, the "educators" lose their liplock on the federal cash teat (have their federal funding cut back).