As President Obama's "Race to the Top" grant program, funded by The Economic Stimulus package, has brought several issues to the forefront.  Issues related to student assessment, the capstone of most education reform programs.  High stakes testing such as Massachusetts MCAS program has provided a window into the complexities of student assessment and the use of these assessments as a tool in determining the effectiveness of programs and teaching methods.  The impulse is to view this information in the simplest of terms that being comparing aggregate scores from school to school in communities and from community to community on the state level.  This simplistic method of analyzing a large set of complex data points to the weaknesses of these assessment programs and the danger of their use in determining what is assumed to be the quality of education being provided.  Any aid program that mandates large scale assessment without addressing these issues does not produce the information that the authorities state as important but does fuel the debate that public schools as they now exist struggle to meet the needs of their students and consequently failing their mission.  If one is looking to denigrate public schools and public school teachers and their unions these methods will accomplish their purpose but a level of ignorance and denial exists beyond the surface that educators know and government officials should come to understand.