SBAC Field Test Question is NOT from The Onion. Neither is the Teacher’s Response.
All I can tell you is the post below is from a parent in an SBAC state. Readers can either believe it or not. I was taken to task on another thread for not identifying a parent or school district in a previous post. I had been asked to keep the identity secret of the parties for fear of reprisal. Many parents, teachers and students have been threatened with legal action if they discuss what’s on assessments or reporting on copyrighted material, so I understand why many of them don’t want to be identified. Maybe this one will not be so easily dismissed. You can see the SBAC logo in the picture:
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SBAC field test is being rolled out next week at my daughter’s school. Her junior class is slated for the math portion. In preparation for it her pre-Calculus teacher displayed the following picture on the white board and asked the class to explain “where the water was coming from” as clearly the faucet – oh forgive me “fountain” was not attached to anything. Needless to say – not one of the 35 honor students came up with an answer that wasn’t sarcastic, additionally not one of them came up with THE answer which is…sit down…clear your mouths so you don’t spit anything onto your screens or keyboards in uncontrolled laughter:
There is a clear tube that runs from the bottom of the cup which is hollow and holds a pump that pumps water up into the tube. The water then hits a force (my word) and comes back out and down around (which is why you cannot see) the clear tube giving the appearance of a flowing fountain.” Have any of you ever in your lives heard of such time-wasting s###? My daughter rolled her eyes and her teacher asked why she appeared so disgruntled so my daughter (she makes me so proud) said, “This is such a waste of our time and yours (the teacher). You had to rearrange two weeks of new lessons to make room for this field test and this is the non-sense that kids have to do instead of learning something useful?” Some of her classmates shouted out, “preach it sister!” I laughed so hard I asked her to tell me the whole story all over again. Now here is the best part and the most telling – the teacher asked the kids if they had any questions and when 35 hands went up – she cautioned, “but you cannot ask me what the point of this is.” Seriously.
