Heartbreaking. Heartbreaking and unnecessary.

These have been the phrases most consistently running through my mind as I've read the news about the Atlanta testing scandal. It doesn't have to be this way, I keep thinking. 
(If you want to catch up, here's a place to start. This one from the New Yorker is brilliant.)

I've nudged myself to understand: to put myself in the shoes of the classroom teacher who erased incorrect test scores, in the shoes of the principal who looked the other way or rallied his troops behind a testing goal number, into the shoes of the central office administrators who fired principals who didn't raise test scores, and even into the shoes of the policy makers who crafted No Child Left Behind, one of the demons behind this whole disaster.

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