Musical underway . . . next novel on hold . . . insanity in Saint Paul

The first performance of "Annie" went well by Triton standards, which is to say, by other high school standards, exemplary. The cast should be pleased and ready for the Thurs - Saturday run.

As for the "Heartstone" sequel . . . it's been put on the back burner; however, I still think it will be out by late fall.

Too bad things don't look as good in Saint Paul. I think that we should step aside and let the "reformers" have a go at their educational solutions, but let's have them go farther. Instead of using test scores to evaluate teachers at 50% (whatever that means), make it 100%. That will help you see the strength of their logic.

Now the fun begins. Think about their dream future. My job and salary is now dependent on test scores. In order for this to be fair, the school will need to develop a test for every course. Okay, that can be done at great tax-payer expense; after the five years to develop those tests (are they gender-fair? racially-neutral?), my class sizes must now be identical to anyone else I'm going to be compared to, otherwise you know I'm going to find a lawyer and sue because my working conditions are discriminatory. (Or will the all-wise state develop some formula to adjust for the fact that I'm teaching 30 students but my colleague has 26?)  Of course, to be fair we must have an equal number of special education students, equal number of limited English proficiency, and equal ratio of male to females in each classroom.

To be valid, the testing will need to be administered by outside proctors. More tax dollars down the drain. (Can anyone say "Profiles of Learning"?)

And, of course, for this to be a valid test, it must be a high-stakes test for the students as well--otherwise I can claim that they were tired from the basketball game in Winona the night before. So, to make it high-stakes, students must receive valuable credit for passing the test (perhaps failing the class if they fail the test?). Now what happens if they do fail--clearly I'm out of a job, but these students are out of a credit. Will parents want their students to repeat the course? Clearly they will want their students to know the material and insist that they retake the class after the school fires me. Or will they turn their ire upon the school itself?

By now you can see that the devil is in the details, and these details show that the true devil lies in St. Paul where people who know nothing about education are seeking to pass laws to improve education.

This does not even bring up the fact that the state will want to compare teachers across districts with different demographics. Then even more lawyers will be needed.

Hm . . .  perhaps that's they are thinking all along. Once they get booted out of office, they have years of litigation to occupy their time and pad their checkbooks.