My 9 year old came home from school the other day and told me she wanted to quit her Challenge class (that is what our school calls the gifted program) because she felt dumb. She felt like she was the stupidest one in the class, like everyone else got it quickly and it took her hours or days to get it. She was crying and the words were hard to say for her. It had taken her weeks to even figure out how to put these feelings into words. I sat at the table with a little girl who felt defeated. She had been asking me for weeks to quit Challenge and I just ignored it. I thought she was upset because she hadn't done well on a test in that class and just didn't want to put in the work. Now, I sat at this table with a sobbing little girl feeling so guilty I could hardly stand myself.
You see, Krissy is Dyslexic. That means her brain processes things differently. Her brain is special, extraordinary. It means that she can see things and imagine things in a ways that you and I can't. But it can be hard to be so special and so not standard in a standardized school system.
We are blessed that she has great teachers that love and respect Krissy and they are all going to work to help her not feel alone or dumb, but in a few weeks, she will have to take that dreaded standardized test. Last year, the anticipation of the test literally made her sick. She had to come home 2 days in a row because of severe migraines brought on by the stress of anticipating this test. A test that is incapable of measuring this child's ability, knowledge and especially not her worth.
I have read many great letters that teachers and parents have written to the children about this test, detailing that this test doesn't know them, who they are and what they are made of and I will write another one of those to my sweet daughters. But first, here is a letter to those who have imposed this test on these kids.
Dear "Powers That Be"
I am sure you have good intentions. You feel you must evaluate your teachers, the standards for the school, the curriculum. I applaud you for your intention, but I respectfully submit that these tests are your way of trying to find the easy way out.
I understand that a test everyone takes gives you a nice clean spreadsheet of data which is much easier to deal with than actually going to schools, walking through halls, sitting in classrooms and meeting real teachers. If the test is the new measure of a school's worth, then what is the job of the principle, the school board, the superintendent? Is the test in place because you don't trust in your ability to hire a principle that can evaluate his or her staff and the educational needs of his or her community? You say the test is to be sure that what needs to be taught in the classroom is in fact being taught, but wouldn't a better way to evaluate that be to actually go to the classroom and see? Meet the principles, the administrators, the teachers and the children. See for yourself the many and varied needs within a specific community and allow the individual schools the freedom to meet those specific needs.
I pose these questions because children are not standard. That is what makes them amazing and beautiful. Maybe trying to get them to fit into the mold of a standardized tests is what is keeping these kids from becoming extraordinary adults. Maybe that's one of the reason we have so many young people without the drive to be extraordinary, they all just want to be standard. Which makes sense if we have taught them in the 12 years of school that the goal is a standardized test.
If we teach our children to meet standards then the drive to be extraordinary is being stolen from them. They are taught to be good enough, instead of great. They are taught that someone else always has the right answer instead of learning how to discover for themselves. What's so wrong with letting kids explore, discover, learn and make mistakes? Why are we so afraid to allow teachers to use a different path to the same destination?
I know the argument is not all teachers are extraordinary, but finding and keeping the ones that are and getting rid of the ones who aren't,well, that IS your job. A job meant for a person, not a test. A test can't assess a teacher or a child's passion, enthusiasm or ability to creatively teach the children in his or her classroom. A test doesn't show you the progress of the one child who started the year angry and combatant, daring the teacher to try and teach him and the fact that the teacher has worked all year, slowly, lovingly, painfully to help that child get past his anger, and the pain that anger was masking, to help him redirect his emotions and channel himself into learning instead of the destructive behavior he was exhibiting.
If the test is meant to highlight the teachers and schools that are failing to teach, I dare say it has failed miserably. It seems to me that the bad teachers are the ones that will teach the kids in their classrooms just enough to pass this test, nothing more, nothing less. They will selfishly be sure they can bubble in the correct answer without making sure the children in their rooms understand how to actually use the knowledge they have gained.
To be completely honest, I don't know all the reasons you think this test is necessary. All I know is what I experience in my own house and my community. What I see is one child that breezes through the test with flying colors every year. She far exceeds the expectations every single time which is not surprising because she is incredibly smart! She remembers things after you tell her once and she processes things very quickly. this also means she spends most of her days at school bored, because she has already gotten what they are teaching the first time around and yet, she is not in the gifted program because the test for that program, she doesn't do as well. But because of these tests, the teachers who know her are not allowed to make an exception and put her in the program. I encourage her in the best way I know how, but how long, how many years before she is bored with school all together and simply stops trying?
Then there is my other child who is in the gifted program. She has an amazing mind and is full of knowledge, passion and ability, yet she is horrible at standardized tests. This is partially because she is dyslexic and mostly because she is not standard. Neither of my children are standard. They are extraordinary in very different ways.
I say all of this to ask a question. Is the data gained from these test really accomplishing the goal? Are you really assessing anything? Or should we try a more personal approach?
I am sure this test is expensive to administer. In my house, this test costs us a lot. It costs my child's feelings of insecurity and self worth. It costs weeks of stress and tears. It costs hours of encouragement and reassurance that the scores on those tests do not measure who they are as a person or what they can accomplish. That is too expensive in my opinion. So I ask, is the cost worth it?
Sincerely, A Concerned Mommy
