THANE: Your dog nosed through my carefully arranged basketball clothes, found both of my freshly-washed---and dried---socks that I'd hidden under both my T-shirts and my shoes, and now is clamping her mouth on them like they're dead rats---she'll never let them go.
GLORIA: Not my problem.
THANE: Your dog has a sock-fishing problem. She needs counseling or something. Oh, and Cole and Owen: your STAR testing results came today.
COLE: Where?
THANE: I'll get them from the office [...] I'm pleased to say that Cole's testing results are quite clear, the boy scored well all-around and 100% on a particular section, the section for which he has professed the *least* enthusiasm, but perhaps only to spite me. You perhaps know the section to which I refer, but let's just be clear: Cole got 100% on the ALGEBRA ONE section.
COLE: Ha, ha. Ha.
THANE: And Owen, too: Practically perfect. He missed only one problem, characterized only by the category OPERATIONS WITH FRACTIONS AND DECIMALS. So: good job.
GLORIA: Cole's reading level is marked as 12. I think it only goes to 13.
THANE: What is on the level 12 reading list?
COLE: Moby Dick, books like that. Old books. Boring books. Long books. Not interesting books.
THANE: Is there a possibility we can move this child on a little early, send him off to some other distant location to continue his education? An education not troubled by reading the Great Masters? Just a thought.
GLORIA: He does have a new bike.
THANE: They've changed the nomenclature on these STAR tests.
OWEN: The middle band---it should be AVERAGE, I think. Maybe it was. Now it's BASIC.
THANE: Well done, anyway. Each boy is ADVANCED. I say let them move on.
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