Gary Norton Archives - Colorado Central Magazine

Lies, damned lies, and standardized tests

November 18, 2009September 1, 1997 by Staff

Article by Gary Norton

Education – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

My summer afternoon was disturbed when I got a call from Colorado Central — they had some 45 pages of school statistics, mostly achievement test scores, on seven school districts in Central Colorado.

The data had been collected by the Independence Institute and sent to the magazine, and Ed and Martha, and at least one educator they asked, had difficulty finding rhyme or reason in the numbers. Ed asked me to go over them and try to make some sense out of it all.

The Bill of Rights is Dead

November 12, 2009July 1, 1995 by Staff

Essay by Gary Norton

Constitution – July 1995 – Colorado Central Magazine

As a former teacher of American history, I apologize to the students I put through the torture of retaking tests on the Constitution and Bill of Rights until they could earn an 82% or higher grade. A rebellious student was right (and I, the teacher, was wrong), when he declared that it was pointless to learn our rights when those rights existed only on paper and not in the real world of the modern United States.