John Merrow demonstrates the incisiveness of poetry as a means of communicating complex ideas in his rewrite of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall.” Merrow turns the poem into “Mending School,” a scathing critique of bubble testing. Used appropriately and sparingly, he suggests, the bubble tests may offer value. Used promiscuously, as they are today, they are a parasite that is consuming the host. They have become not a measure of education, but a substitute for education, an insidious force that strips education of meaning. Merrow’s annotations are important. In one, he writes, “Robert Frost’s poems, including ‘Mending Wall,’ may not be on many school reading lists in the future because the Common Core State Standards emphasize non-fiction” another annotation refers to the growth of the opt out movement. And one exposes the uselessness of the current regime: “School districts generally get back the test results about four months after they are given, long after students have moved on to new grades, new teachers, and perhaps new schools.” One wonders how useful the test results would be even if they were reported in a timely manner. One wonders about the long-term effect of judging students by the format of a multiple-choice test. How many decisions in life consist of four defined, discrete choices? How many are “none of the above” or “well,, two of the four might be right”?