We enter the darkest days of education.
Tomorrow we enter into one of the darkest days in education. In New York State the abusive Common Core tests get underway. Our students, some as young as 8 years old will begin the grueling process of reading passage after passage and answering an unforgiving array of multiple choice and essay questions. These children will sit for at least 9 hours to fulfill a political ideology that has nothing to do with educating the child.
With these ‘new” untimed tests, some children could potentially sit for 6 hours on each of the 6 testing dates. Their only break will be a sequestered supervised lunch break where they will be monitored to ensure they do not discuss the test with their fellow students.
Our children will struggle with questions that have more than 1 plausible answer. They will have to select the best plausible answer. Questions will ask them , for example, to analyze paragraphs 3, 14 , 24 & 26 and then choose the answer that best describes their relationship. They will be forbidden to give their opinion in an essay as they regurgitate details to fulfill the task at hand.
When we look at past tests, we can almost guarantee some passages will be We enter the darkest days of education. | Opine I will: