While I was reading Fish in a Tree in print, I was listening to the Brilliance Audio production of Rain Reign (2014), by Ann M. Martin. It was an interesting pairing, and both were timely reads this week as my district started a looooong seven-week schedule of state standardized testing that will frustrate many students like Ally and Rain Reign's Rose, a young girl with Asperger syndrome. 
 What the people who put such high stock in these tests don't see is what they do to the students taking them. Good teachers, and we have legions of them, know their students, and like Mr. Daniels see their strengths and their weaknesses, many of which are not measurable on these tests. Like Ally, these students feel that they don't measure up to the "standards" and many feel they have no hope of ever doing so. 
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