[Kevin]

Political spam?

I personally think (and all the teachers can be mad at me) that high stakes testing has been great for our school systems and students.

At least locally, this high stakes testing has caused a HUGE shakeup in our schools -- and that's a good thing.

I think it's been directly responsible for the rise of the KIP acadamies and other high quality charter schools in the urban areas where before, the alternative was out-of-district transfers and long bus (public transportation) rides to class.

While our traditional schools have continued to do poorly (and many will probably eventually be shut down due to their poor performance), charter schools have really moved in and taken over and the results have been great. It seems that contrary to the belief of many of our traditional public school administrators, people of lower socio-economic means can perform as well (or better) than their suburban counterparts. The aforementioned KIP Academy, located in, and primarily serving an almost exclusive minority population in probably the worst part of town (I believe the school is something on the order of 96% minority) actually tested higher than any other middle school in the state of Oklahoma -- that includes both OKC and Tulsa's magnet schools which are supposed to be where the best and brightest are supposed to go.

At any rate, I think that these high stakes tests and the extreme difference in pass/fail rates has finally given parents and students the ability to really see a tangible difference in the different options available to their kids. That may or may not have been the aim of that legislation, but that was the outcome.

These state tests, in my opinion, aren't a bad deal at all if they can produce the same sorts of results.