Education reform, again.

• Author: Fritz, Randy
• Position: LETTERS - Letter to the editor

The education package ("Special Report: The Next Big Test," May/June) was just another series of articles touting the "next wave" of high-stakes standardized testing. This the same old trap I've read too many times in my thirty years as a high school teacher.

Your original premise is faulty. The idea that, somehow, a single test, designed from the outside, given in Rhode Island and Mississippi, can actually tell us anything about what's going on in America's schools is wrong. This effort is no more than an attempt to quantify so you can compare the success of one school to another. In a multicultural, multiregional public education system, the very idea stretches credulity past the breaking point.

Randy Fritz

Williamsfield, Ill.

Robert Rothman's article ("Transcontinental Education," May/June) seems to outline another Five-Year Plan for American...