Standardized Suckiness

This won't take long...

Has anyone else noticed that the local Department of Education has not released any figures about this past academic year's standardized tests?

The reason is stunningly obvious: The results suck, like a hyper-powered Hoover with nitrofuel in the enhanced turbo engine bolted to the ramjet booster.

Now, We need to assign blame here. That's S.O.P. and The Jenius is an S.O.P. fiend when it suits His mood. And this, My Friends, suits My mood:

1) The (maladroit)educational system's focus: You can say--and many have--that the educational system is a wasteland of freeloaders, freaks and freebasing felons, and you'd be right. But no system is designed that way (except for the legislature) and by lacking a coherent focus, the system ends up being a lurching wreck instead of a rolling wagon.

2) The teachers' union: Yes, I know there were two and now there's one, but they were all essentially the same "union," each pretty much divided along political lines. Not focused on educating, but on pushing propaganda, pay raises and more downtime for lazy, stupid people. Plenty of independent studies have shown that the stronger the teacher unions, the lower the quality of education. And We have a teacher's union that has the indomitable strength of a moronic autistic donkey on downers.

3) Parents: Let's face it: We are doing a sucky job as parents. We preach good grades, but Mammon forbid We actually read anything or watch educational TV, or better yet, dump TV for doing something creative and constructive. We preach applying yourself in school, but make heroes of those who excel at anything except school. We dump Our kids in school and expect the school to do the job We refuse to do and We also expect the school to reward Our little bundle of parent-induced neuroses with good grades just for breathing. We act as if learning were limited to school and meander about in a shopping/beery/ostrich-like haze that makes even the idea of learning a non-happening.

Here's what We can expect from the results: Major--and I mean major-- massaging of the report, to the extent it breaks almost entirely from past formats and measurements, in a lame smoky mirror attempt to divert attention from the core conclusion: Our kids are failing worse than before because We are failing them worse than before.

Let's see some freebasing felon in the Department of (Mis)Education stick that in his crack pipe and smoke it.

The Jenius Has Spoken.