Fewer tests mean less learning

Good grief. Sen. Vincent Sheheen and Mike Fanning want to provide “relief in student testing,” offering no educated thought as to the impact upon teacher and student performance.

I invite their attention to the military saying: “You get what you inspect, not what you expect.”

Given our declining national and state education rankings, a laissez-faire approach to performance requirements for educators and students is ill-advised. The results of testing to demanding standards is never matched by self-serving evaluations and self-fulfulling expectations.

Where better than school to learn that life is a test, that can be prepared for, and that preparation can be measurable by applied standards? The money spent in testing is a sad but needed expenditure to discipline our educational system — a system that left to itself is a catadromous entity, rather than anadromous (look it up, think about it, it’s on the test).