principles, not principals.

Which, thinking about it, is an even more condensed version of my argument above.

Competition is all very well, but if you're talking about the education of a country, you can't very well just chuck out half the students and/or schools because they failed the competition, particularly when the competition is "rigged" from the start:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/...