SPARKS, Nev. – Just how desperate is the education establishment to avoid accountability for student performance?

Consider the words of the former principal of the Nevada middle school where a student shot a teacher to death, wounded two classmates and killed himself Monday.

“As for a young student coming onto a campus with a gun, I feel that he must have been bullied and set out for revenge. Additionally, I feel that the relentless, inflexible and unyielding focus on ‘test-taking’ and school rankings and scores, etc., could have possibly contributed to this horrible school shooting,” wrote Dr. Debra Feemster.

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Huh?

“When teachers and counselors are spending an inordinate amount of time preparing, worrying and focused on test results, their time to connect with students is limited and scarce. (By the way, I hired this teacher who was killed and I guess I am upset and needed to vent). If one teacher, counselor or administrator had had a few extra minutes to look into this student’s eyes and possibly connected with him in a meaningful way, maybe this catastrophe could have been averted,” Feemster wrote.

Is she serious?

Education gadfly Diane Ravitch published the remarks on her website. “Think of the children whose social and emotional needs are ignored in pursuit of test scores,” she mused.

There’s little doubt the student was lashing out due to some grievance, whether it be bullying, problems at home or mental issues.

But for Feemster or Ravitch to suggest it could be because students are required to take a test which may be used to judge the effectiveness of teachers or schools is just ridiculous, and more than a little insensitive.

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Millions of students have been taking standardized tests every single school year, without incident. Using this horrible tragedy to try to achieve the political goal of dumping standardized testing is pretty low, even for public school apologists.