Iowa City 

A Work in Progress
11

It would be unthinkable

For the Russian Army to shell Iowa City

The way they destroy little towns in Ukraine

Surrounded by farm fields

Battered by bombardment

Fifty years and more ago in Iowa City

Measurement Research Corporation

Designed a card reader that could be used

To give standardized tests in classrooms

Identifying country school and student

So that scores could be collected 

And compared

Measuring educational attainment

Donal took a taxi there from Cedar Rapids

Having flown in from New York

And stayed in university housing near the coed gym

Where basketball was played

Donal’s impression at the time 

A medieval university town 

Surrounded by flat farmland 

With a river flowing through it

Then he flew over to Stockholm

To the Karolinska Institute

Where they had a working machine

That could read pre-punched cards 

Children had marked up with answers

To multiple choice questions

All funded by IEA/UNESCO

During the Vietnam War

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

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