The papers finally catch up

Here is a great break through in information. Guess what? Test scores are late and school report cards are not ready. What brings this great news to light? The Chicago Sun-Times reports today that they won't be able to print their edition of school report cards because schools have no test data to base them on. Why the news flash all of a sudden? How did we go through a whole gubernatorial election and this point wasn't made? Did someone at the Sun-times just look at last year's calendar and say "Oh crap! We are supposed to run the school report card issue and we have no school report cards!" They write the article like this is terrible because they won't have that issue ready, and by the way, the entire educational process in the state of Illinois is thrown off by this. Once again - the press and the public only pays attention to education when there is a hitch that impacts them. Yet there are gobs of pages flowing out there about the "Tomcat" wedding - after all that will be of great importance years from now. Nobody will be able to read about it then because the educational system wasn't nearly as important in the public's eyes as it should have been. This isn't about standardized test scores - it is about the lack of attention that education, and therefore our students, get from the general public - the public who has agreed to give an education to every one of our students.

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