I have two children, ages 15 and 13. Neither child has ever been at grade level. My 15-year-old son, Jorman, is a college sophomore. My 13-year-old daughter, Jolene, is dyslexic and needs specialized tutoring to remediate her learning disability.
After a disastrous, test-centric, third grade, Jorman concluded that there was no point in going to school because teachers spent so much time practicing for tests that they never learned anything. Ultimately, we home-schooled him through eighth grade, and he re-entered the public education system for ninth grade.
Technically, Jorman is a high school sophomore. In practice, he’s a full-time college student.
His high school doesn’t place students in grades according to age, instead placing them in courses based on their current skills, including college courses for those who are ready. While not a traditional choice, my son is happy, pursuing something he loves, and growing up to become a confident young man. His early college program is an innovative example of what’s right with the public education system.
While we are incredibly grateful to have found such an innovative high school, Jorman is again dealing with the rigidity of high-stakes testing. Last spring, Jorman was supposed to skip three days of college classes to take TCAP exams. This spring, he is supposed to skip seven days of college (four days before midterms, three days before final exams) to prove via the PARCC exam that he is on the path to college readiness. He is supposed skip Calculus 2 to prove that he meets 10th grade math standards. Last spring, he was supposed to skip his college composition class to prove he met ninth-grade writing standards.
This is not accountability; this is stupidity.
For my 13-year-old, high-stakes testing has created an environment that is directly harmful to her education. Jolene is a bright, funny, creative kid. She’s also dyslexic. Jolene’s been seeing a tutor for dyslexia-specific language arts remediation for the past few years. During this time, she has taken a number of standardized exams, some for school-related reasons, and some with her dyslexia tutor.
Her scores have ranged from the 99th percentile in math to the 16th percentile in spelling. She reads well, albeit slowly, but her spelling skills are three or four years behind grade level, which hinders her ability to write.
Two years ago, Jolene applied to a local public middle school. She was admitted, but the school refused to provide any dyslexia remediation because her test scores were too high. It is important to understand the difference between accommodation and remediation. Accommodation means giving my daughter a computer with a spell checker and ignoring her inability to spell. Remediation means actually teaching her to spell and write to the best of her ability using techniques that are well known and have a proven track record within the special education community. Jolene is capable of learning to spell and write. It just takes a lot longer and requires fairly specialized individualized attention.
High-stakes testing has created perverse and directly harmful education policies because it does not consider the whole student. Instead, those skills covered by the test become the only measure of success and the needs of real students are ignored. In our case, Jolene deserves an education that allows her to pursue her dreams as an adult, so we have abandoned the public-school system and are making sure she gets the instruction that she needs. Few have the resources to do that, so while my daughter is actually learning to write, many thousands are failed by the reformers and politicians who have created a system that sees our children as nothing more than test statistics.
I am well aware that there is no magic bullet for fixing our education system. The problems are too wrapped up in issues of poverty for any simplistic fix to have an impact. As a former college teacher, I do know that we regularly waste millions of dollars creating yet another test instrument. Teachers know from daily instruction which kids are struggling and which have mastered concepts, yet we test and test and test, removing weeks’ worth of instruction time from our classrooms. Teachers don’t need days of standardized testing to figure out who needs additional help; they need time and resources.
Politicians continue to pass laws requiring high-stakes testing. Most politicians are not educators and have no idea what constitutes good practice in education. It certainly isn’t high-stakes testing. As parents, it’s time to address the problem the only way we can. Refuse to participate in high-stakes testing. It’s your right.
Jill Gebelt lives in Black Forest.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit or check out our for how to submit by e-mail or mail.
