Mom: Why my 9-year-old gets despondent about school
Sandy Stenoff is a public school advocate in central Florida who has opposed the standardized test-based education reforms imposed in the state for years. In this piece, she writes about the toll that standardized testing — including test prep and the narrowing of the curriculum — has affected her young children. This appeared on the Web site of Opt Out Orlando, run by activists who are urging parents to opt their children out of state-mandated standardized tests.
In this piece, Stenoff refers to the FCAT/FSA. The FCAT is the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, the longtime test that the state used to hold schools “accountable.” It has been replaced by the FSA, the Florida Standards Assessment, which is supposed to be aligned to the new Florida Standards. The FSA is the state-mandated assessment Florida paid a private company to create in place of the PARCC exam, a Common Core test. Florida dropped the Common Core State Standards and developed a new set of standards that many say are remarkably similar to the Core.
By Sandy Stenoff
Opting out of high stakes tests is about much more than just the test.
As the parents of young children consider opting out, one of the issues we face is how to talk to them about opting out. They are, after all, the ones who will be doing the opting out. In all dealings with children, honesty is always the best policy. If you get busted by your kid for fudging the truth, you’re sunk. So what do we talk about?
When my daughter was 8, we started a conversation that has evolved over the past two years. She is now 10, and our conversation now includes my son, who is 9.
I have tried to explain it to them this way:
When you take the test, you get a score. Your score gives your teacher and your school a grade. That grade tells the state and the district how much money your teacher and your school should get paid. It can even determine if your teacher gets to keep teaching, or if your school might be closed.
They asked me, “Is that why we have to do so much test prep?
“Perhaps, but it’s also complicated.”
We talk about recess a lot, because they don’t get recess. Usually, it’s the first thing I hear at pick up – whether he had recess or not. The Recess Report. He gets in the car, slams the door shut and says,
”No recess… again,”
”Bus loop – one lap,” or
”Bus loop – two laps.”
They get recess on Wednesdays. That’s it. On non-PE days, if everyone has been good at lunch (recess should be neither reward nor punishment), when there is time for a break, they get to run the bus loop. The first time I heard this, let’s just say I was more than annoyed. I’ve told this to friends and they have no idea what I mean. The bus loop is the paved driveway where the school buses turn around. That’s right. The “recess” my kids get is five minutes around the bus loop. Their school is old, in not the greatest surroundings, currently next to highway construction, so it’s not even a pretty bus loop. Anyone who has ever played on a sports team of any kind knows that laps are a form of discipline – for being late, for talking back to the coach, for Mom: Why my 9-year-old gets despondent about school - The Washington Post:
