[GovernmentShrinker]

"The whole system has been taken over by the test,"

This wouldn't be a problem if the test wasn't garbage.

In 10th grade, passing the state [reading] exam was equivalent to the fifth percentile in the national ranking.

Amazing!

[Zack Nguyen]

There is no mystery here - the TAAS test was made the arbiter of whether a school was doing its job. Therefore the schools centered their entire curriculum on teaching the test. The test, apparently, was not that hard. Ergo the kids are completely unprepared for a more rigorous classroom environment at the undergraduate level.

The problem here is our shockingly bad public school system, and that no one seems to want to take the hard steps necessary to change it.