And you thought only Congressmen could be that stupid...

John Derbyshire:

Front-page headline in my New York Post this morning:

2 + 2 = 5
NY passes students who get wrong answers on tests

The accompanying story describes a further dumbing-down of state math tests for kids in grades 3 to 8. Half marks are given for fragments of work; also for wrong answers arrived at via correct methods: “A kid who answers that a 2-foot-long skateboard is 48 inches long gets half-credit for adding 24 and 24 instead of the correct 12 plus 12 . . . ”