Realistically, what has the LSAT or the bar exam to do with anything you’ve ever done as a member of the bar? I think if most legal educators and bar admissions officials were completely candid about the process, they would admit that neither test has anything to do with anything. It’s just an easy way of deciding who gets in and who is left out.

You might run into my cousin while you’re there. If you think UVA admits students with marginal LSAT scores over students with high LSAT scores you’re crazy.

I am studying at the University of Virginia right now (#10 in the country), the next time I see the Dean, I will tell him that.

Tell that to all of the top law schools in the U.S. which will not admit students who have an LSAT score under a certain number.

Even Phil Krinkie would not call himself a moderate.

Chris -

Standardized tests are a tool. Relying on them as much as some people want to would be like trying to build a house with only a hammer. You could do it, but you end up with a pretty shitty house.

When you pass the bar, you don’t have to take another test, standardized or not. Whether you like it or not, standardized tests are a good measuring stick - from the Iowa Basic Skills to the SATs to the LSATs. You are right that they should not be the only measurement. But our schools do need to be measured for how they are serving our children.

Josh,

I am keenly aware that 1/2 of the bar exam is essay as I sat through both days of the exam. Don’t fool yourself by thinking that the Multistate portion of the bar exam doesn’t count for anything.

I’ve taken far more than two standardized tests in my life, and I did pretty damn well on all of them. But they are garbage. In each case I know of people smarter than me who got lower scores than I did. Standard tests do not measure your intelligence, they measure your ability to take standardized tests. Tell me Chris, after the Bar Exam, when was the last time you had to take a standardized test in your professional career?

The “Independent Republicans” no longer exists. Both literally and metaphorically.

Not even Karl himself could bail Ritchie out of this one. The only question remaining is how many other moonbats are going to fall with him?

Oh yeah…we’re loving it baby!

By this post and the entire story hype, I would say it has already happened.

Education spending is out of control and because Education MN is a major part of the DFL, you will never hear them ask for some spending resposibility.

The hype you place on this Zach just takes away any credibility to your argument.

But this detracts from the real point: standardized testing only provides a very limited measure of learning, and frequently best measures test-taking skills. Add in the fact that teachers whose jobs are tied to test scores will teach to the test, rather than teach the subject matter or towards their students’ needs and you start to see the limits of standardized testing. But the mood is to go to testing because it’s another one of the cheap and simple solutions to complex problems favored by fools like Krinkie. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really solve the problem.

Someone also needs to tell ol’ “Dr. No” that the big-section classes in college are frequently the ones the students learn the least from and provide the most frustrating educational experiences. If that’s his damn plan, why not just elminate teachers all over the state? Hell, you could just have one set prepared videotaped lectures and everyone could just sit in front of tvs and email questions in. Hell, why not outsource the answers to India! man, that’ll save money.

Of course, we’ll get stupider and more useless as a society, but who cares as long as you can cut taxes?

I do think it’s especially amusing that Krinkie talks about “warehousing” students, yet wants to go to class sizes that will only fit in a warehouse. Maybe I read that wrong. Maybe he’s really a big proponent of the “babysitting and warehousing” model!

I have to say that people who rate the quality of their lives upon the amount of money government spends need a better measuring stick. You rail against standardized tests, yet you took at least two - one to get into college and one to get into law school. You’ll take another standardized test too when you take the bar exam. It’s funny that the left is so in favor of just giving more money to education, whatever that means, but oppose any measures of how or if the money works. If you want a real solution to fixing education, let’s get rid of Education Minnesota and its lobbyists who year after year put double and triple the amount of money in Minneapolis and St. Paul schools at the expense of the rest of the state. If there was a level playing field among all schools in the state, education would improve overnight.

It reminds me of “The Yes Men” http://www.theyesmen.org/.

Whether the pranksters are joking about converting the dead into oil or announcing that the WTO is proposing slavery in Africa, there antics are eerily close to the reality that the likes of Krinkie, Strom, Norquist, and others would like to create.