Common Core Tests: Educational Malpractice for Students with Special Needs
Dear Mr. and Mrs Gates:
This is what is gong on in every county across the country as students with disabilities are forced to take tests they are not yet ready for and have not learned the content:
In about one week I, and my colleagues, will be asked to participate in educational malpractice. This malpractice will be in the form of administering the state mandated standardized tests. I have read many critiques about these new Common Core aligned tests. But no criticism I have read has touched on an issue of such fundamental fairness and decency that I must speak of it.
These tests discriminate against students with disabilities. They do this is many ways, but the method I wish to address today, is that they require us to give tests that cover material the student has not yet been taught. So imagine if you had taken French all year and were eager to demonstrate how much you had learned and felt ready for the French test. But the test you were handed instead was in Spanish. Your face flushes, you feel like you are about to throw up, but instead you shakily ask the teacher and she says, “well I know you have not learned this yet, but just do the best you can.”
This may seem extreme and unfathomable. But imagine a 5th grader with a severe learning disability in math. He needs to begin learning math facts and how to add and subtract accurately and place value. At the end of the year he has learned a lot and is so much farther ahead then when he began. But he is not yet at the end of the year 5th grade level. He is handed a test that contains decimals, percentages and fractions. He has learned none of this and we just shake our heads and say, “Do the best you can.” Right next to him sits the 5th grade girl reading at a 2nd grade level. After a year of hard work, she now Common Core Tests: Educational Malpractice for Students with Special Needs | Teachers' Letters to Bill Gates:
