Opting out of bad tests is the only way, apparently, to get the attention required to bring about change. (editorial, “Opting out a poor way to push for change in testing,” March 2)

There is no attention played by any of the political actors, including MaineToday, to the discrepancy between quality control for inanimate objects and finding out what each individual in a population as diverse as ours can do at any given age.

Even within the schools, can you find one superintendent (let alone one newspaper editor) who said about No Child Left Behind, “That’s stupid; we can’t bring every child up to the average level”? Fifty percent of our students at any age level will be below the median for that age, because that’s the definition of the word “median.”

Where are the school leaders pushing back against the bad politics from both sides of the aisle? Where are the journalists doing anything but pump the Common Core?

For that matter, why would we think that every single student needs exactly the same thing? There are some skills all students do need — understanding debt, for one, but does everyone need to understand the many applications of complex numbers?

Oh, my bad; that was the previous mandate that worked out so well we dropped it without any acknowledgment. Does every single functional human in the nation need to understand the graph of y equals the cube root of x, as tested by the modern, Common Core variation?

Maybe just saying no to the tests will inspire some editors and politicians to take note and take a closer look. Maybe they’ll even read the standards before they decide to support them.

Jim Perkins

Wayne

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