My Response to a Standardized Testing Article by Noted Popular Columnist

I respect your intellect and your thinking ability. However intelligence is of little value when moral and philosophical judgments get in the way.

While it may be true that standardized tests have problems, the problems are minor in relation to the test's value; that is they measure the relative performance against some established standards of performance, enabling evaluation by college admission boards, and others.

You might consider that you, as a spokesperson for the intelligentsia, have a real obligation to offer solutions instead of opinions. Perhaps the limitations of short comments in the publication prevented you from offering more.

One could even go further and offer that you, of all people, have an obligation to use your considerable intellectual resources to offer the solutions that logic dictates, even if they are philosophically and socially unpopular.

In the case of standardized tests, your failure to state the obvious, that cultural and parental failure is responsible for the desire to somehow provide other ways for under performing students to get a chance at a societal "A."

The inclination of commentators and pundits like you to offer "pity me" commentary in the absence of postulating real solutions just extends the time it takes to realize that solutions require real societal "tough love." Ignoring or excusing circumstance only prolongs a lack of recognition of assigning responsibility.

A Maryland college president, Freeman Hrabowski III, a black educator of some repute and accomplishment, recently noted "We have to admit to ourselves that large numbers of parents are not as involved... as they need to be."

His comments were part of a Baltimore Sun article on September 23 called "a hard look at the achievement gap." My feeling also is that the failure to achieve can be laid directly at the feet of parents, and further at community and religious leaders. Educators can only work with the materials (the students) they receive; if children are unmotivated and unprepared because of a lifetime of neglect, and misplaced values, it is way too late in the process for us to be expected to correct parental and societal failure.

Blaming the objectivity of testing is a poor substitute for demanding a solution of parental involvement and perhaps consequences for those who do not provide parental motivation.

If I have somehow misinterpreted your comment, or unwittingly extrapolated from your comment, I apologize.

But my opinions haven't changed.