The Pathology of Education, Part the Second

When last we convened, we had just "discovered" that our youngest child, Monkey, "has" ADD. Yes, those are strategic quotes. IMO, what we have is a normal healthy 8YO who needs a lot of physical activity that current educational pressures don't allow time for, but those aren't traits that help children excel in school. To be fair, there are also some academic concerns, so when our HMO asked at a routine well-child visit if we had any other concerns, I said that we did - and they referred her for an assessment with blinding speed. Her difficulties really came to the forefront during the state-mandated standardized testing in March, recounted here.

The Pathology of Education, Part the First

This has been a rough rough year for my Monkey Child. Bright and cheerful in Kindergarten, known for her smile, it has been distressing this year to find her angrier and more sullen and frequently weepy and a lot LESS smiley. Formerly a pretty chill kid, she has been increasingly fidgety, constantly humming and tapping pencils and jiggling legs - while she's always been a kid in motion, we've seen a dramatic uptick in the fidgeting this school year. While siblings aren't always known for getting along like best buddies, Monkey and Bookworm have been butting heads more and more as the school year goes on. It's also been hard to watch her school grades drop. I've been watching my baby girl, such a bright spark, implode, and I'm worried about that spark going out entirely. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've seen her truly joyfully happy since school started; before this year, I could probably count on one hand the number of meltdowns she had in the course of a year. She's been keeping up a pretty good front in school, but when she gets home, she has NOTHING left. Something is Very. Very. Wrong.

#OptOut - Part the Fifth

At last, the comparatively anticlimactic conclusion of the 2014 Opt-Out saga in a highly-regarded Maryland suburban school system, which I began recounting here (Part One), and continued here (Part Two) and here (Part Three). When last we convened (Part Four), my older child's middle school was working with out family to honor our refusal of the MSA's, while the younger child's elementary school went the opposite direction and pulled her from class to give her her own private makeup session. Neither school was in violation of Maryland's State Superintendent's directive to make sure that children who were in school were tested, and yet one school had the courtesy to work collaboratively with a family while the other, who could have done likewise without penalty to them, did the opposite - when they could have helped make the whole experience a lot less miserable for a family who had refused the test in writing, and for a child for whom human interaction and physical movement are like oxygen.

Had the elementary school worked with us and delayed the testing, held off on that personal makeup session, we would have had time to learn about and use "Page 113" of the MSA testing manual. It came across my Facebook newsfeed while I was following the story of another parent in the same school system who was refusing the tests for her children and was being given the same canned responses from the Superintendent and Testing Office. The mother from a neighboring county whom I mentioned in the last installment shared - as she had successfully worked out a deal with her school system to NOW administer the test to her child, NOR to have her "Sit & Stare" - a page from the testing manual which dealt with "student refusal" to take the MSA. There it was, at the bottom, clear as day: "If a student refuses to test, the student is given one additional opportunity to test during the make-up window. At the end of the make-up window, the student Test Books will be included with scorable materials and the student will receive a score on whatever portion of the test (if any) that he or she completed." Absolutely NOWHERE in that paragraph is it required that a student sit with his/her classmates if the test is refused, and in the event that this is mandated elsewhere in the manual, it also does NOT mandate that the child must "Sit & Stare" at the makeup session.

When I forwarded this to the middle school, the reply I got was that their guidance was that our written refusal counted as the initial refusal, and Bookworm not attending during the Monday makeup session would count as the second, after which she could attend school as usual; we only had to keep her home from the actual testing times (I am assuming that schools were still being directed to enforce the Sit & Stare during those windows) and we didn't have to worry about the makeup windows. As it turned out, another snowstorm closed schools on Monday, and she was allowed to attend school on Tuesday and NOT have to sit for any makeups through the end of the testing, so she simply didn't sit for ANY of the test. We had time to discuss and implement the procedural loophole, minimize absences and wear-and-tear on Bookworm, and our wishes were honored - but the way the elementary school handled it didn't brook any such discussion. And sadly, Page 113 didn't come up until Friday, which was AFTER Monkey's (uncalled-for) Personal Makeup Session.

Hubby and I conferred. We could see the stress in Monkey's entire demeanor over the whole testing thing, so we decided, as Page 113 had not yet materialized, to allow her to finish the test the next morning, like ripping off a Band-Aid. When we told her about this, the relief on her face was evident, so we know we made the right decision for her, at that time, with the knowledge we had. I don't think that I will ever live long enough to forgive the school for sneaking the test in on us, though, especially not when it could have been avoided without violating the State Superintendent's directive. Predictably, she was a mess over the following weekend, so we did our best to get her outside and run her silly, and we now - mostly - have our child back. Mostly, and getting better by the day, over a week later.

The tests have been and gone now, except for the last couple days of science tests for 5th and 8th grades. Millions of dollars and weeks of testing time have flowed under the bridge, along with any last vestige of trust in my local elementary school, where over the years I have happily volunteered and substituted, gotten to know hundreds of kids (who still come to my house Trick-or-Treating for Halloween :-)), and tried my best to give them a leg up in a system that seems designed, many days, to beat them down. Did they violate the law in any way? No, they did not - but they violated our family's trust, and that of my child, and things will never be the same.

Should *your* family refuse state standardized tests? That's a decision each family will have to make on their own, but there are a lot of reasons to at least give it serious consideration, and this graphic from the BadAss Teachers Facebook page outlines a number of them. Read, think, consider, and read some more.

Shared from the BadAss Teachers Facebook page. (Pardon the apostrophe in #8; it came with the graphic, and if it gets corrected, I'll post the corrected version.)