On This D.C. School System Quiz, No One Succeeds

Okay, teachers. It's your turn. The back-to-school pop quiz is not just for kids today. Here are six multiple-choice questions. Answer them correctly, and you'll also be able to answer the one question that boggled the best minds on the D.C. Council this summer: What is a "high-quality" education -- and how do you get one free?

Question One: In July, the D.C. Council considered placing on the November ballot a referendum on giving public school students the legal right to a "free, high-quality" education -- "with the term high-quality to be defined by local law enacted by the Council of the District of Columbia." But the idea was scrubbed because:

A) Council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large) didn't know what "high-quality" meant. "What's this going to do for kids?" he asked his colleagues, sounding dumbfounded.

B) Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D), a mayoral candidate and a former school board president, became paralyzed with multiple-choice anxiety: "If I had everyone in this chamber write down what a high-quality education means right now, I bet we would get a hundred different answers," she fretted.

C) The council feared that if voters actually legalized high-quality education, some kids might get hooked, and the next thing you know, other kids would be filing lawsuits so they could get high on learning, too.

D) All of the above.

Question Two: Maryland, Virginia and the District have adopted "social studies standards," which require every high school graduate to:

A) Explain how a U.S. president managed to lie about why he took the country to war -- and how he got away with it, to boot.

B) Psychoanalyze a country that allowed him to continue sending Americans to die for nothing.

C) Ponder what social justice could mean -- if it means anything at all -- in a country where millions go without health insurance while the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, especially in the nation's capital, where the richest families have incomes that are roughly 12 times as great as the poorest ones.

D) None of the above.

Question Three: With high-quality education, a high school senior in the District will be expected to: