giddy with anticipation for the last time

For most, Christmas comes twice a year: once in December, and once in July, when Santa descends from the North Pole to deliver mattress sales.

For Washington educator-types, Christmas comes a third time, in August, when the state releases WASL results.

For one last year. After this, we'll have to get giddy about the High School Proficiency Exam, or HSPE, which, quite frankly, doesn't roll off the tongue.* What else does the future hold?

Students in third-through-eighth-grades will take the new Measurements of Student Progress. It will be shorter than the WASL.

About a quarter of the state’s sixth-through-eighth-graders are expected to take their exams online next spring, according to OSPI.

Dorn plans to have the majority of state testing online by the spring of 2012.

And who knows what the test will be like / called by then.

*Any experts at OSPI care to tell us how to pronounce the shorthand version? Is it H-S-P-E? HissPee? HizzPeh? H-Spee?