A news article on the education page of today's New York Times amounts to an editorial against standards. The article runs under the headline "The Pitfalls of Make-or-Break Tests," and reports the fact that when 73 percent of City University of New York students who took a placement test in reading failed the test, "CUNY officials and the faculty re-examined the test, which has a top score of 53, and decided to reduce the passing score to 36 from 40."
Now, there are dozens of conservative education experts out there who would bemoan this as a case of lowering standards instead of improving performance. This Times news article quotes none of those experts, choosing instead to write in its own, unattributed opinion, "The lower passing score helped many students; the passing rate jumped to about 60 percent."
The Times news department may think students who can't read are "helped" by being moved along the education assembly line regardless of their skills, but, again, there are dozens of conservative and even not-so-conservative education experts out there who would note that lowering the passing score hasn't "helped" anyone. No additional skills have been imparted; no student is a better reader; there's just been an accounting change. The passing rate "jumped" not because the students all of a sudden learned how to read, but because the definition of passing was changed.
Late Again: The New York Times waddles in late this morning with an article under the headline "Capitol Hawks Seek Tougher Line on Iraq." The Wall Street Journal had this on Monday under the headline, "White House Call to Alter Iraqi Sanctions Draws Criticism from GOP Hard-Liners."
Passive Aggressive: The following passive constructions were used in the "My Job" column in the "Workplace" section of today's New York Times: "In a flash, punches were thrown, and glasses were tossed and shattered. Security and the police department were called to straighten out the dispute." The energy and verve were removed from the writing.