for 19 APR 06: APRIL MADNESS

The biggest week of the school year continues today, for some children in Muscogee County. For those of you who don't have students there -- no, the term does NOT end for the summer on Friday.

It's the biggest week of the year because CRCT testing is underway. Some critics of our schools believe those initials stand for, "Can't Read? Can the Teachers."

Third-grade students have to pass the CRCT exams to advance to the next grade. So for eight-year-olds, this is a bit like the Super Bowl - only these contestants only have security cameras for their celebratory dances.

Have you seen what some schools do to get children ready for the CRCT exams? Cusseta Road and Rigdon Road Elementary Schools actually had pre-test pep rallies last Friday! Why can't this last through high school - so the nerds can wind up dating cheerleaders?

There was even one school which brought in a star football player to provide a pre-test motivational speech. There was a good reason why baseball players were NOT invited. They teach you can be successful by getting a hit only 30 percent of the time.

Perhaps I'm a bit jealous by all the attention teachers are giving students about the CRCT exams. When I was young, the standardized test wasn't greeted with pep rallies and encouraging words. After perhaps one day's notice, you simply sat quietly and filled out the form. Advance hype might have scared some children into making mistakes.

In my youth, the standardized tests weren't that different from regular school tests - except you had to be absolutely quiet, and use their specially-provided pencil. And they didn't even encourage us to pass, by giving us number-ONE pencils....

My biggest annoyance about the standardized tests was that we never found out our individual scores. I wanted to outdo the smartest girl in the grade school, who's probably the smartest woman I've ever known. She's now a biology professor in Colorado - and smart enough not to be married to a blogger like me.

But I'm digressing: are all the hype and hoopla about passing CRCT exams a bit over the top? Wouldn't it be a bit more logical to have a party AFTER the tests are over, because you survived another set of them?

To be fair: I understand why schools make the CRCT such a big deal. The results determine whether students get promoted to the next grade - and by extension, whether some teachers get promoted to better salaries and classrooms....

And the bar is set higher this year for the reading portion of the CRCT. Third-graders have to score 22 out of 40 to advance to the next grade, instead of 17. So from now on, the official stance of Georgia is that glasses are half-empty, not half-full.

The pressure really isn't only from the teachers at exam time - it's from Washington. The CRCT scores are important, under President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" law. Which is why it's a little funny to see the President reject annual reviews of his Defense Secretary's performance....

Here's hoping the young people do well on their tests this week. And let's hoping rising students are ready for even more hype and attention -- like "post-game" interviews at the bus stop for the evening news.

Now for other things you may have missed from the last day or two:

+ Which area developer is burning trees for a new subdivision, despite the dry conditions - and doing it at midnight? One man tells me the flames are shooting 40 feet high. But he does NOT consider this the best way to have street lights for security.

+ Columbus police reported a man stopped his car on the south side of town at 3:00 a.m. to ask for directions - and the person he asked pulled out a gun and stole the car. If this doesn't convince guys to start reading maps, I don't know what will.

+ Phenix City Council voted to ban on-street parking near the Davis Restaurant on South Seale Road. This place apparently remains very busy, even though it lost its liquor license two years ago after a shooting. If signs go up calling itself "Fire House West...."

+ Columbus Civic Center Director Dale Hester tried to persuade Columbus Council to endorse a new ice skating rink in South Commons. But Red McDaniel said with the city laying off employees, it makes no sense "from a political standpoint." Well, hold on - have all those workers build the rink....

+ Georgia's first political ad of the year appeared in Columbus, backing Mark Taylor for Governor. Someone pointed out to me it borrowed pictures from four years ago, of a baby crawling through the state Capitol. If that child hasn't grown in four years, it's no wonder Taylor's big issue is health care.

(The Mark Taylor ad also repeats a nickname from 2002, as former United Nations ambassador Andrew Young calls him "The Big Guy." The question later this year will be whether Taylor should be the BIGGEST guy.)

+ Governor Bob Riley signed a bill making the peach the official Alabama "tree fruit." Sadly, the legislative session has just ended - so it's too late to nominate the supporters of this idea for official state nuts.

+ The Biloxi Sun-Herald newspaper shared a Pulitzer Prize for public service, in part because it used the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer to keep publishing after Hurricane Katrina. Of course, the Ledger-Enquirer's new owners could change things - and have Biloxi reporters cover Columbus, to cut costs.

+ Columbus High School tennis ace Brian Garber signed a letter of intent with Boston College. This could be quite an adjustment, since Boston doesn't bake lima beans.

(BLOGGER'S NOTE: The jokes for today have concluded, and we're posting them early because of Wednesday's seventh Day of Passover/Unleavened Bread. You're welcome to read on for a personal memorial tribute.)

BUT SERIOUSLY: Tuesday was a somber day for us, after learning of the death of Don Fitzpatrick. Unless you work in television news, you probably don't know that name - but he was a great help in making this blog what it is today.

This blog's roots were as LaughLine.com in January 2000 - a topical joke service seeking subscribers around the world. Don Fitzpatrick had a television news web site called TV Spy, which featured several jokes a day. I submitted my daily issues to him, and he posted a couple nearly every day as a courtesy.

It was free advertising, which Don was gracious enough to provide. And it turned out some of his postings wound up on other web sites, large and small. While LaughLine eventually went out of business (you've noticed this blog is FREE, haven't you?), Don's promotional work in my behalf showed some people like what I do.

I'm thankful not only for Don Fitzpatrick's help with LaughLine - but that he was kind enough to send e-mail condolences, when the death of my dad forced me to miss a few days in 2001. As I wrote on one of the TV Spy message boards Tuesday: "I'm grateful, indebted -- and in mourning."

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