MCAStaway...

Why does a hopeless piece of junk legislation like the M.C.A.S. need it's own personal laudatory commercial on 96.9 WTKK??
Damned if I know...
Some group called "The Alliance for Better Schools" bought time on that inestimable station to praise the MCAS in terms that would make a pro sycophant like Galeazzo Ciano blush.
The advert insists that thanks to the MCAS our students are "ready for good jobs" and are "prepared for college".
What rubbish!
Our students have sussed out how to pass a dipsh*t exam that is all. Passing the MCAS is proof and nothing more that you are not a moron in the eyes of the pedagogues on Beacon Hill.
Bad ideas always need to hyped, hence this commercial shilling for exam that does little more than certify our students as non-cretins.
For those of you just joining me, the M.C.A.S. is a bloated standardized test Massachusetts high school students must pass in order to graduate. It was dreamed up by that vast aggregation of geniuses we have in the Great and General Court as a means to assess school and student performance in the Bay State.
In practical terms it means that a collection of repo-men, lawyers, real estate swindlers, and hapless losers are now writing a good chunk of the curriculum in your local high school.
Why? Because thanks to the property tax cap the state is now a prime underwriter of local education...and inevitably the legislature wants to know if the money is being spent wisely.
I don't blame them one whit...prop 2 1/2 deprived the localities of the necessary revenue to run the schools in a decent fashion so it was only a matter of time before the State got in on the deal.
I do fault them for falling for the usual education demagoguery that equates the harassment of frequent standardized testing with intelligence and ability.
Frankly I think kids today take too many standardized tests, I myself fell victim to something akin to five of them between the eighth grade and my high school graduation in 1980.
No doubt it's gotten worse since then.
Think of the books we could've read but for my english teacher taking the point on SAT preparation....I know for a fact we never got to For Whom the Bell Tolls our senior year for this reason.
Maybe that was a blessing in disguise...
:)
Nope now we've got another standardized test thanks to Barbara Anderson and her corrupt political machine at Citizens for Limited Taxation. Were it not for her and prop 2 1/2 towns and cities might have still have some control over local schools.
All gone now so we can enjoy a low property tax...
But one consolation, all is not well in Barbara Andersonland-apparently there is an amendment before the state senate to raise the number of signatures needed to get an initiative on the ballot from 66,000 to 99,000.
Babs is screaming like a stuck pig about this, I for one could not be happier.
Anderson has enjoyed quasi-gubernatorial authority in this state as a tax demagogue for decades now, it's well worth to see her hamstrung and deprived of her ill-gotten power.
I can't get a ballot initiative going to abolish the MCAS, but I can call up my state senator and tell him to back this amendment to the hilt.
Does it raise the bar for ballot initiatives?
Yes!
But Babs will catch hell and that is a bit of all right.
I used to worry about setting malign consequences and the like.
But the GOP stole the 2000 election and since they aren't worried about consequences why the hell should I?
:)