Telling children a dangerous lie about life

Last year school report cards were cryptograms from hell. For each learning area, one tiny diagram contained coded letters, squares, shaded areas, black and white dots and a menacing progress line known as a class average. This year it's simpler. Your child's results are mapped onto the state-wide expected average for each learning area along a five-point scale: from A to E. C is where you need to be. A is well above the expected standard, E is well below. Parents can exhale. It's plain English all the way. Yet the welcome simplicity hides behind it the same essentially dishonest attitude towards children's education. We still don't know how and what our children are doing.