This morning Joe Palca, the NPR science reporter, interviewed a U of Florida plant biologist about growing more tastier tomatoes. The biologist, Harvey Klee, noted that tomato growers were rewarded for size of their tomatoes and yield of their crops. “Flavor is irrelevant,” he said. You see size and yield are easily measured and counted, and you get more loot, as a producer. It is all about getting a lot of tomatoes to the supermarkets. All that matters are that they are round, red, and firm.

I thought “Isn’t that a metaphor for our schools, today?” Federal, state and local ed agencies are aiming their rewards and sanctions at schools and teachers who produce children with high test scores, yet what kids really know and can do is neglected. Who they are, their academic strengths and weaknesses, their “street smarts” are not measured or recorded or accumulated for county and state reports. They cannot be easily measured with standardized and multiple-choice test items easily machine scored and counted.