Reacting to Federal Guidelines, the state of Massachusetts, which has been highlighted as a role model for student testing by the two U.S. Senators from this State, released the following memo:
In response, the Federal No Child Left BEHIND Act, students will have to pass it to be promoted to the next grade level. In the hopes that it will be uniformly adopted by all the states, thus illuminating Massachusetts to a glorious front runner position in education, it will be called: the Federal Arithmetic and Reading Test (FART).
All students who cannot pass a FART in the second grade will be retested in grades 3-5 until such a time as they are capable of achieving a FART score of 80%. If a student does not successfully FART by grade 5, that student shall be placed in a separate English program, the Special Massachusetts Elective for Learning Language (SMELL).
If with this increased SMELL program the student cannot pass the required FART, he or she can graduate to middle school by taking a one-semester course in Comprehensive Reading and Arithmetic Preparation (CRAP).
If by age fourteen the student cannot FART, SMELL or CRAP, he or she will earn a promotion in an intensive one-week seminar. This is the Preparatory Reading for Unprepared Nationally Exempted Students (PRUNES).
It is the opinion of the Massachusetts Dept. of Public Instruction that an intensive week of PRUNES will enable any student to FART, SMELL or CRAP.
U.S. Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry stated that this revised provision of the student-testing program should help clear the air.
"In my humble opinion, the petty carping levied against Bush by the Democrats proves again, it is better to have your eye plucked out by an eagle than to be nibbled to death by ducks." - Norman Liebmann