Ladies and gentlemen, I give you government control of education:

Eva-Marie Mancuso, chairwoman of the state Board of Education, said Tuesday she was appalled that a cornerstone of the department’s high school graduation policy, one that was years in the making, was discarded by the legislature in the waning hours of the session.

“Maybe everybody should trust the professionals rather than running behind our backs and going to the legislature,” Mancuso said. …

But Rep. Gregg Amore, D-East Providence, the NECAP bill’s sponsor, said he is “shocked” by Mancuso’s misunderstanding of the graduation process. He said the waiver process was introduced because RIDE recognized that the NECAP was an inappropriate measure of student performance.

Linda Borg doesn’t mention it in her article, but Amore is a government-school teacher in East Providence, making him a bit more interested than your average well-meaning legislator.  This is what our state’s schools have come to: Government officials, one appointed and one elected, the latter representing the state’s most powerful special interest, arguing about whether it’s a sign that the system did or didn’t work because school districts were able to hand out diplomas to students whom they failed to educate.

We’re so many steps from a working system that this front page story might as well be about tweens arguing who was a Bieber Belieber first.