Joe Nick, et al.,
Don’t get me started on education. But very briefly, what Bush has done there is this: He had the state write a pretty good curriculum that says exactly what we expect kids to learn at each grade level. The tests are over that curriculum. They measure which kids are learning and—the other side of the coin—which schools are teaching. Both the kids and the schools are held accountable. This system is open to complaints such as yours, but I think they are mistaken because the tests test exactly what the schools are supposed to be teaching. If individual schools are consistently failing their students, the administrators at the schools can lose their jobs. And each year the scores have been going up across the board. Your kids know more because of the tests, and Texas kids as a whole know more, too.
