The Powerful, Enforced Silence Around Standardized Testing
Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) testingtakes more than ten hours for students in grades 3 through 8 to complete.
These students have spent countless hours preparing for the PARCC tests, and they have heard that the tests are important. However, they will receive no immediate, clear benefit from taking the tests. Their teachers will receive no clear, immediate information to inform instruction. By the time PARCC scores come, the school year is over, and likely another begun.
The teachers know that student scores on PARCC are meant to be used to grade them and their schools.
All of the above makes for a high-stress situation for both kids and teachers.
And once it is over, kids now know that the testing companies and departments of education are trolling social media to see if kids discuss the experience.
Such constitutes an abuse of power.
Pretend I am Pearson. I have just spent ten-plus hours with your child. You have no idea what we “talked” about, what exact ideas I have presented or how I presented them to the tender mind of your child. I can “discuss” whatever I like and present it with authority. I can promote certain people as “good and others as “bad.” I can promote products. And I can shape your child psychologically via my topics and presentation of such topics. Why, I can even collect psychological information on your child.
And once my ten-plus hours of “meetings” with your child are ended, I make it clear that I plan to monitor your child’s public discourse about the experience.
All that this does is protect me, the one already in incredible power.
You did not request that I meet with your child. Your child did not request the The Powerful, Enforced Silence Around Standardized Testing | deutsch29: