Don't kill it right away: gut it first and then eliminate as redundant
There is some method to the ongoing education massacre madness
In our Sep 15, 2022 post we reported that the 2022 modification of the high school graduation exam rules made the monkeys who chose “C” for any exam question eligible for high school diploma in the state of New York. We also said that
[m]aybe the Social Justice Warriors… decided for a new strategy: reduce the tests to a parody of the former selves and abolish them later.
To our horror, on June 10, 2024, our fool’s prophecy came true: New York State did abolish the exams as a graduation requirement.
It is worth mentioning that after the fall of New York, only eight states will continue requiring passing a standardized test to graduate high school. Chances are, this number may soon become seven. Our very own Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) (yes, THAT one) has been working incessantly to bring to the state ballot the bigotry of low expectations, i.e. a law that will require to
replace the MCAS requirement with certification by local districts showing that a student has mastered a set of competencies, skills and knowledge aligned with the state’s academic standards,
On June 27, 2024, MTA rallied at the State House for a final push for support signatures. They don’t need the rally: 32,500 signatures have been collected already against 12,000 required. When you see the MCAS question in your November 2024 ballot, you, our reader, will know which box to check.
Back to our very own fine institution, the one that used to be the only public research university in Boston. Seeing that our prophecies of doom and gloom have a strange tendency to come true, we now regret saying in our 2022 New York state exam post that
[i]n the UMB context, the proctored ALEKS transmogrification to an un-proctored comes to mind.
It took New York two years of parody to kill the parodied. With our ALEKS placement test, it has been more than a decade of circus and still ongoing. From now on, we vow not to make any negative predictions, not even jokingly, not even as a parable. For
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.
—Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar (1897).