Personal life has prevented me from chiming in on Pearson’s
pineapple passage debacle, otherwise known as Pineapplegate, up
until now. As I read the questions associated with the passage,
I was horrified that the likes of Andrew Rotherham actually
defended this pile of garbage. Horrified but not surprised, of
course. Diane Ravitch is right: the questions on this passage
are tantamount to child abuse. The passage itself is not bad. It
is a play on Aesop’s The Tortoise and the Hare fable, a cute
variation that ventures into the nonsensical. The passage’s
author, Daniel Pinkwater, has said as much and has let it be
known that he was not happy with multiple choice questions that
tried to make sense out of nonsense. The students had to answer
6 questions about the passage. Only the first one made any
sense. Questions 7 through 11, however, were just cruel and
unusual punishment for eighth graders. All of them, every single
one, were subjective. They are a great snapshot of the
underlying problems with testing in g