High-Stakes Testing

My father lived and died in the service. My mother lived and died in the service. My grandparents lived and died in the service. All of them. All of my ancestors, as far up the tree as you care to flutter, were in the service. All I ever wanted was to follow them down that shaft. And now this.

I blame the state legislature. They are the ones who instituted the stupid testing that thwarts my ambition. Ma and Pa never had to go through anything like this. So, fledgling though I may be, I sought out my representative to have it out with him.

"Representative Yiffniff," huffed I, "what's all this about that, huh? Why all the testing, all of a sudden?"

"Why, it's the only way to evaluate performance objectively," intoned Rep. Yiffniff. "Measurable performance criteria are the Holy Grail of performance evaluation. How are we to know that our young are learning anything, if we don't evaluate them against measurable performance criteria? More importantly, how am I supposed to justify my job, based on my otherwise weak-ass performance?"

"Look," I said, "I just want to work in the mines, like my parents did. What does a music test have to do with that?"

"You have to be able to sing," said the Representative.

"But I'm tone deaf!" I protested.

"That's highly unusual for a canary," observed Rep. Yiffniff.

"Nevertheless," I replied. "And no one cares if a mine canary can sing."

"Nevertheless yourself," retorted the Rep. "Singing is what canaries do. It's the canariest item in the canary repertoire. If you are a canary, we are going to by-God test you on singing, because that's what it says to do in our Testing for Dummies playbook, and we don't have the imagination to do anything else!"

I didn't know how to answer that.