"We have a lot of smart kids...do we want our children to be global and able to adapt, or do we want them all be sorts of physicists?" she asks.
As Malenfant puts it, "The problem with all testing is that it kind of depends on where the person is starting out. If I can already knit, I can probably make Argyle socks more quickly," she says.
But Fantini says he disagrees that low test scores can't be effectively handled by the School Committee.
"I think that you have to set into place a system that's going to deal with it," he says. "We have to do better on MCAS testing."
Fantini sees other looming problems with the Committee's emphasis.
"Cambridge has the worst [vocational] educational program in the state. We have the richest bio-tech city in the state, and yet we don't have a bio-tech program at the high school," he says.
Fantini concurs with School Committee supporters like Malenfant on one point, though: that meetings, held twice a month, tend to get bogged down in trivialities and minutia.
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