World's Smallest Violin Dept.

"Hopes are dashed by state exit exam" from the San Jose Mercury News.

A complaint on the unfairness and trauma of forcing students to actually know something in order to graduate from high school.

Sandra's quotes, collected into one, long whine:

"I'm thinking of dropping out instead."

"I feel, what am I going to do? I don't want to spend my last year of high school afraid of this test, afraid of panicking. I feel embarrassed. Maybe I'm dumb."

"Everybody was in the gym, where it was really loud, sitting at crowded tables. People started laughing and yelling and throwing things. You couldn't concentrate.''

"To me, the exit exam is a measure of the intelligence of a student. It's made us lose our confidence. I've lost my confidence."

"I once wanted to go to a university, but you can't get into college without a diploma. Even if I do pass the test, I'm still going to feel bad. It won't give me my confidence back. I'll probably have to go to a community college."

"I'm studying hard to pass, but if I fail it again after I've worked so hard, I'm really not going to try anymore."

Naturally, the author of the column sympathizes, and is indignant about modern education:

The question is, what happens to her in the meantime and to the thousands of California students who fail on their first attempts and possibly never pass at all?

...This is not what the state Board of Education and Gov. Gray Davis had in mind when they dreamed up the exit exam. It is not an IQ test. Its purpose, they keep telling us, is to jump-start quality teaching at failing schools, not to punish individual students. But punishment is what this cruel and unnecessary test delivers best.

...A promising young lady, the daughter of hard-working Mexican immigrants, who dreams of becoming a social worker*, who would normally graduate on time and qualify for admission to a state university -- is already beaten down at age 17.

Why? Whatever happened to the idea of building character and confidence in high school? What happened to the high school as agent of social progress? When did we turn them into testing mills, where the losers are ground into dust and the winners get to take the SAT?

Faced with stigmatizing thousands of students forever, the state Board of Education is close to delaying the diploma penalty. But it continues to push the false promise that a state that ranks 37th in school spending can deliver a quality and equal education for every child three short years from now.

Character and confidence? Agent of social progress? What a steaming load of horseshit. When I'm flying at 35,000 feet, do I want the guy who designed the airplane wing to have a lot of self esteem, or do I want him to have passed his goddam math test?

The only thing that can be gathered from this column is that they want Sandra to be able to go to college regardless of whether or not she actually knows anything. Hopefully, she will get more sympathetic treatment at the university. She's probably going to be okay, since the curriculum for a social worker could probably be aced by a potted chrysanthemum.

I know why the educational establishment hates this testing idea. The last thing they want spotlighted is how bad the public school system sucks. Objective standards are anathema to them.

Notice the quick jab at the funding situation.

Remember this little graph?

We put men on the Moon and built the world's most advanced technical civilization with people who were educated before the Department of Education ever existed. It ain't the money, folks.

My daughter (who blew through this test in her sleep) and I had a knock-down, drag-out over who would get to write the letter to the editor. She won. I'm posting here instead.

*imagine my surprise.