It’s almost a bit too easy to take a shot at this, but I saw this short news piece in our paper this morning in which the superintendent of the largest school district in 0ur area admitted that a standardized test given to high school students was riddled with grammatical and spelling errors. (See AP story)
I’m resisting the urge to create a comic about it. Resisting ….
What I wonder is how many students caught the errors and then wondered if the errors were part of the test? Maybe one error might make you think, that was a mistake. But 100 errors? That becomes like some Jedi mind trick, don’t you think? And who are the “district proofreaders” and what were they doing when they should have been reading the test?
Sometimes, in novels, I stumble across an error and it always makes me stop and wonder about the editorial process, and the layers of proofreading that go on (we went through it with our Teaching the New Writing collection) and still, that one erroneous werd finds its way in there like a worm in the ear.
Peace (in the proof),
Kevin
PS — Yes, werd was intentional. I hope you caught it. If so, give the Springfield schools a call. They may be searching for some folks.