Excerpt:
MORE AND more states are requiring students to pass a standardized test as a condition of getting a high school diploma, and the complaints are flying fast and thick. These tests are unfair, the grumblers grumble. They ask irrelevant questions, the fumers fume. They subvert regular lessons. They force educators to "teach to the test." They aren't good yardsticks of what students really know. They're racist.
In Massachusetts, the statewide MCAS test won't become a graduation requirement until 2003. 12th-graders will be able to meet that requirement by scoring just one point above failing on the 10th-grade test. (Only math and English questions will count; failure in science and history will not prevent graduation.) But even that low hurdle is under fire.