Each week I look at several publications hoping to come across something to inspire my column. Education stories often repeat themselves with slightly new spins. For instance, money gets taken out and put back into education budgets yearly; the high school where I taught kept track of how often our planetarium was threatened, and it was well over double digits when I left! That’s why President Obama’s statements this week about standardized testing are so refreshing. When last have we heard a president state that a focus on testing makes schools boring? He is not trotting out the same old education rhetoric.

In Virginia high schools, the focus all spring is on the Standards of Learning tests. Schedules are turned upside down so that tests can be administered in the morning, when students — theoretically — are more awake. The weeks leading up to each test are spent practicing dry runs and seeking special help for students in danger of doing poorly. Once the SOLs in English stopped testing knowledge of poetry, English teachers cut back on the teaching of poems. (Sorry, Keats and Wordsworth, we don’t need you anymore.)