Saturday, January 4, 2014

The elephant makes a proposal

If Pia Durkin really wants to eliminate teachers, the elephant has a proposal for a completely new type of standardized testing that could potentially eliminate the need for a public school system altogether.

A small group of evaluators would annually visit each student's home and calculate the household book to video game ratio. The higher the ratio, the higher the grade for that year. In order to offset the effect of those who rush out and buy a pile of cheap books at yard sales with no intention of reading them, points would be deducted for those who couldn't answer simple questions about the actual contents of their books. Additional points could also be deducted for the number of domestic disturbance calls and DSS visits.

Since the best students tend to grow up in homes where people are patient, mentally stable, and read a lot, this would be a statistically safe method of evaluating student performance without going through the painful annual ritual of lowering standards to create the illusion of rising performance.

Of course, Pia Durkin would be out of a job as well so I don't see my proposal being accepted in the near future. 

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