"I'll just be the girl who got a three, or the girl who got a one, or the girl who threw up because she was so nervous."
More evidence on negative affects to physiological and psycho-emotional development caused by standardized high stakes testing. In their own words, elementary students Claire and Liam address the Orange County School Board:
"We all have to do the same thing at the same time. The kids all learn like that because of tests." "I wanted you to see that I'm a 3rd grader and me and other kids who are going to take the scary tests for the first time in the Spring, and I won't be Claire to them, I'll just be the girl who got a three, or the girl who got a one, or the girl who threw up because she was so nervous. You guys always teach us about standing up to others. Now it's time for you to stand up to the bullies who are using these tests in the wrong way. Can't you do something?"
Liam addresses his school board on the standard error of measurement: "When I took the 3rd grade FCAT, I was a wreck. The pressure on our teacher and our school's success riding on our backs was crazy. Everybody pressuring us to be great. If we weren't great, everybody knew, we would have to repeat classes and the whole 3rd grade. Ugh! I didn't do well. My parents tried to make me feel better by telling me that tests are what happens when you don't get enough time to get to know somebody. But that didn't make any sense because 'my teacher' already knew me real well." "Why couldn't people just ask her about my poems, my website, my science fair project, my speeches, my videos, the portfolio? Why isn't that my score? I don't understand why you guys even care about a number from a test on one day when my stomach felt like I ate acid." "Right now, everyone is just their FCAT scores."
Claire and Liam bring up some pretty important issues here: Coercion of children. Toxic stress inducing experiences. Forced participation into curricula that ignore children's interests, strengths and unique cognitive capacities based on a pedagogy of radical behaviorism.
The test pushers don't care if children suffer anxiety or toxic stress before, during or after the tests. The test pushers don't care if children's unique cognitive gifts are ignored by their teacher. Test pushers don't care if learning is reduced to banal test training experiences. Make no mistake, the tests are designed to confuse and trick children. Educators are forced to train children to answer ambiguously worded selected response standardized test questions.
Claire who is unaccustomed to bullying asks the question to the Orange County School Board, "Can you do something?"
"We all have to do the same thing at the same time. The kids all learn like that because of tests." "I wanted you to see that I'm a 3rd grader and me and other kids who are going to take the scary tests for the first time in the Spring, and I won't be Claire to them, I'll just be the girl who got a three, or the girl who got a one, or the girl who threw up because she was so nervous. You guys always teach us about standing up to others. Now it's time for you to stand up to the bullies who are using these tests in the wrong way. Can't you do something?"
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| Children are not homogeneously constructed. Why do we educate them so? |
The test pushers don't care if children suffer anxiety or toxic stress before, during or after the tests. The test pushers don't care if children's unique cognitive gifts are ignored by their teacher. Test pushers don't care if learning is reduced to banal test training experiences. Make no mistake, the tests are designed to confuse and trick children. Educators are forced to train children to answer ambiguously worded selected response standardized test questions.
Claire who is unaccustomed to bullying asks the question to the Orange County School Board, "Can you do something?"
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