What is it with teachers’ unions these days? In Milwaukee, they want their Viagra. In Los Angeles, they don’t want to be held accountable. A.J. Duffy, the president of United Teachers Los Angeles, has been hard at work organizing a boycott of the L.A. Times after the paper dared to publish a series of articles focusing onteacher effectiveness.

The articles used past and present student test scores to evaluate each teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom. The results (shockingly) showed discrepancies among the teachers in the district, many even in the same schools.

Mr. Duffy has called for a boycott of the Times because it’s “leading people in a dangerous direction, making it seem like you can judge the quality of a teacher by … a test.”

Let me get this straight — it’s dangerous to judge someone’s competence by testing? I hate to break it to Mr. Duffy, but life is a series of tests, and the results are positive or negative based on how well you perform. If you fail biology, you have to take summer school. If you fail your driver’s test, you don’t get to drive. If you fail to set the oven timer, everyone will have dry chicken and burnt potatoes for dinner.

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