SIMPLICIO: But then how can schools guarantee that their students will all have the same basic knowledge? How will we accurately measure their relative worth? SALVIATI: They can’t, and we won’t.

It seems to me that people love results too much these days. Grades are easy. Grades can be sorted into statistics, and statistics are rewarding. Statistics can be brought into the DoE in a manila envelope with a report that says, the 4 billion we sent to this state raised scores by 7% over two years.