In Which I Finally Get My Complete and Total Accelerated Reader Rant Out of My System

It's kind of like a running joke with me and... myself (possibly also Jim, who I believe was laughing at my attempts not to go totally off on the topic during a discussion with a patron last week, and a couple of you readers who agree with me) how much I despise Accelerated Reader. I have brought it up on several occasions here, but have yet to lay it all out in detail. My place of employment, though, is one of the few public libraries in the country (and was the very first of such in the world) to offer Accelerated Reader tests to kids to take back to school to get credit for there, and many people are grateful to us for that, and since the school district DOES use it then I'm glad WE do that because it DOES get kids in and checking things out, and reading things that aren't in the school's libraries/test collections. So I must learn to temper my hatred, particularly in the open forum that is Teh Internetz. But first, allow me to put it all out there, in detail, exactly what my feelings are on the matter.

( Cut for length, but it's pretty awesome if you ask me )