I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Testing Nation=Anxious Kids

Now we're talking:

We forget to think about how it must feel for kids to be solely responsible for teacher’s pay and jobs.  How must it feel for students that if they do poorly on a test it will directly affect the teacher that they love?  Kids are not stupid, they are aware of what is happening around us, how politicians and “reformers” are asking their test scores be part of something bigger.  For this text-anxious child that knowledge would have been the nail in the coffin.  People say that with this knowledge students will do even better because they will want to protect their teacher, to show off what they know.  No child goes into a test trying to deliberately fail, at least not most, and yet placing that pressure of someone else’s livelihood and dream is just too much for children to bear. [emphasis mine]
This is a fantastic point and one that bears repeating over and over again: children should not be responsible for an adult's livelihood.


There are many, many ways to assess a teacher's abilities without putting a child through the stress of a high-stakes test. It is shameful that we are putting this burden on children without any thought as to the consequences for them.

What a shame that a teacher from Denmark has to remind us Americans that what we are doing impacts the kids more than anyone else.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Solely" responsible? Not true, not anywhere, not even close.

Should kids not be responsible at all? The job of a teacher is to teach. If kids aren't learning anything -- if year after year, the kids don't learn even the simplest tasks -- then the teacher may be doing something wrong.

Anonymous said...

Hey, Anonymous, you stole my name!

Please clarify: what are these simple tasks? Do you mean passing the HSPA or ASK? Do you know what these things are?

czarejs said...

Forget it Anonymous you won't get an answer from Anonymous....lol.

All jokes aside. The child shouldn't be responsible for any of it. If a teacher isn't teaching, or doing a good job, there is a process for that. Putting the weight on a student isn't the answer.

Anonymous said...

Say, a teacher from NY recently told me that his kids are not allowed to erase answers on their standardized tests--to change an answer they have to "X" the darkened oval, and, if they change the answer again, put a box around the other wrong answer. I don't know how far they take this.

Was he pulling my leg?

I am Anonymous (Blue)

Duke said...

Anon (Blue), see above on the LA Times editorial. Apparently, it is true, although I've not looked much into it.