CURMUDGUCATION: Testing Five Year Olds

CURMUDGUCATION: Testing Five Year Olds:

Testing Five Year Olds

Well, we can at least thank Bailey Reimer for giving us one more look at how reformsters think, and a chance to confront just how wrong-headed that thinking is.

Reimer is the author of "How Bailey Reinmer's kindergartners came to love testing" (nothing about if they stopped worrying), and the piece in Catalyst Chicago is every bit as bad as you would imagine.

Reimer loves the Test, and her love leads her to say some astonishing things. She loves it, and she opens with the astonishing story of how much her students love it too-- so much that they are sad when they learn they won't be taking one tomorrow. "They love the uninterrupted work time and comparing their new score to their old one." Because, yes, five year olds are famous for their long extension spans and their desire to do seatwork.

Reimer correctly points out that ESSA has cemented the Big Standardized Test into schools, and so her school figures why not just get started practicing with kindergartners (because apparently her charter school is run by people who don't know much about child development). As Reimer tells her story, she throws in this set of non sequitors:

To get to a point where my students appreciate and understand testing, I had to first appreciate it CURMUDGUCATION: Testing Five Year Olds:

Freedom

MEMO
To: The Little People
From: Your Betters

We can just about taste sweet victory in what we're calling the "teacher freedom" case, and what better name for it? Because it's all about freedom.

Teachers need to be freed from requirements to support the unions (In fact, all pubic workers need freedom from their unions). All across the country, teachers have been begging to work more hours. They yearn for the freedom to be paid as little as employers want to pay them. They long for a manager to grab them in his big strong arms and tell them how it's going to be, without some dumb union jumping in and trying to interrupt with stupid talk of "rules" and  "fairness." (Our little joke here at Betterocracy HQ is that the unions are big Koch-blockers.)

We hear the complaints that this case could end up weakening the unions, and to that we say-- duh! Of course. That's the point. Unions should be weaker, because the whole point of unions is to gather together a bunch of you weak little people and give you as much power as your Betters-- and that is a violation of the proper order of things. If you little people deserved to be powerful, you would be. Unions are a violation of the natural order of things. Forming a union is just cheating, and it saps power away from those of us who are supposed to have it to exercise without Little People getting in our way. 

That is why we fight for freedom throughout America. We are trying to free poor people from the tyranny of welfare, because having money infringes on their freedom to be poor. Buying food infringes on their freedom to be hungry. Welfare and other government support are taking away poor people's freedom to experience the consequences of their poverty. We have fought for freedom in "Right To Work" states so that workers can have the freedom to be hired and fired for whatever reason their Betters concoct. We have suspended democratically-elected boards and governing Freedom