I never cease being amazed how some issues and concerns never seem to go away.

They hang around so long that you’d think they would get moldy, would wither and just disappear like so much dust.

Back to the Earth.

But they don’t. They linger. Forever and ever.

Standardized tests and the concerns about how Texas educators administer them remains a hot topic.

Seven years ago, on April 13, 2009 to be exact, I wrote a blog about Texas’s standardized testing regimen that went by a different name.

Here’s what I wrote then:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2009/04/teaching-to-the-test/

Another school year is drawing to its conclusion. The Texas Legislature will convene next January for its biennial 140-day bloodletting.

Teachers are still complaining about the current form of standardized tests they must give to their students. Parents gripe about them, too. I’m betting students — particularly those who don’t test well — also are complaining.

You’ll recall that three decades ago, a fiery Dallas billionaire named H. Ross Perot led a blue-ribbon commission to reform the Texas public school system. He’d bitched out loud about how Texas was more interested in developing blue-chip athletes than in developing blue-chip academic scholars. Then-Gov. Mark White called him out and challenged him to come up with a method to improve Texas students’ academic achievement.

That’s when the Perot Commission came to life.

A special legislative session in 1984 produced a new set of standards that included testing for students.

Few folks liked it then. Few folks like it now.

Why can’t we craft a system that makes more people happier about it than angry about it?

My kids are graduated long ago from Texas’s public school system. They got by just fine dealing with the tests they had to take. Were my wife and I happy about the requirement that they take the tests? Not really. Still, we persevered as a family.

Our sons have done well for themselves in the 20-plus years since they graduated from high school.

Now, though, we have a granddaughter who’ll be entering school soon. We don’t know what her parents have in mind for her education. If it involves public schools, well, she’ll have to pass her tests.

The Texas Legislature comprises 181 individuals who serve in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Surely some of them have a creative idea in their skulls to come up with a testing procedure that doesn’t cause heartburn among teachers, parents and students.

Or …

They can find a committed “civilian” out there to lead another effort to overhaul the public education system that’s been overhauled already.

Unless, of course, these legislators actually like hearing their constituents gripe at them about how teachers have to keep “teaching to the test.”