061005-0810 I feel like a disgruntled boy. I’m sitting in an early morning staff meeting listening to stats about failing student achievement. I’m not in the mood for this. Small group discussion about our part in the equation, but we are instructed to throw out the “family history,” “societal problem” part of the problem, as far as looking for solutions. Right. And in a few years we’re mandated to have 100% of the school population reading at graded level, every student in every school. Human populations do not do 100% anything (except that we all eventually die….).

And what every administrator and teacher knows is that this stupidity will persist until the “A-list” schools fail to meet their goals. Then someone “brilliant” will figure out that there is something flawed with the plan. A darker interpretation is that this “planned failure” is meant to dislodge the typically “left-leaning” teacher power-block and hand public education over to enterpreneurial private sector old-school education run like “business.” Until that, of course, fails. In the meantime we wasted billions of dollars and treated a whole population of highly trained professionals like idiots because we can get blood from a turnip. Our society is or has already fallen apart and it seems to be riding on the backs of educators to make it look all pretty, at least until the end. God knows parents are overwhelmed and the politicans have now idea what the hell they are talking about. All I can say is thank God I don’t teach math, english or science. This is all one giant joke. JBB