Is your child just a test score?

From Yahoo Voices

by Chaplin Speaks

Mrs. Wallen gently rubbed a strip of my long dark hair with the strawberry-blonde locks of my best friend, Mary. We were sitting on a concrete bench at recess serving a little time for excessive giggling during our science lesson. "Your hair is like chocolate and vanilla ice cream, all swirled together," smiled our third grade teacher in the lazy sun. We weren't too bothered about missing a few minutes of play. We were happy, and we were safe. Life was good at school.

It's 30 years later, and I am taking my own daughter to elementary school. Her class is full to the brink with 31 students, though more could be added as the year progresses. The teacher smirks as she sizes up each student. Within 15 minutes, she has determined which ones will be retained at the end of the year.

My daughter becomes a number - 27 - and must call out her double-digit every time the class lines up to leave a room. Single file! My daughter is also just a number in future school meetings behind closed doors, and in state standardized test statistics. She will remain a number as the federal government is creating a national database that will track students from preschool to 12th grade.

Recess is only 20 minutes and will be faded out completely by middle school. Music, art, and physical education have also dwindled to once a week. Foreign language is already gone. My daughter is taught only the outer shell in science and history, if there is time.

The main focus is math and reading, because it is those scores that matter most, to the school, to the state, and to the federal government. High-stakes testing and the resulting "teaching to the test" philosophy have turned my daughter's school into an assembly line test-prep center.

I have to race to teach my daughter about the birds and the bees before the public school beats me to it. The school is preparing to give a standardized test even on that subject. New school guidelines call for sex education instruction to begin in 2nd grade.

Homework is an overload of meaningless busywork - worksheets, worksheets, and more worksheets. As much as 20% of my daughter's school week is dedicated to testing and test preparation. She is being trained well in spitting back random facts, but I question what skills she has actually been taught.

The government makes us wonder if we can we trust our teachers. Databases are being proposed to track the backgrounds of our hard-working teachers. New pay-for-performance policies will link our teacher's pay to my daughter's state standardized test scores. What if her scores are low? How will she be treated then?

I email my child's teacher to express my concerns about high-stakes standardized testing, but my emails are not returned. In the grocery store, I run into this teacher and receive a whispered apology. The teacher was unable to reply, because, as she said, "you never know who is reading your emails." What kind of country do we live in where teachers are afraid to voice their concerns?

This is the state of our public schools today. While the federal government continues to extend its long-reaching arm into our schools, I ask you, parents and citizens, what do you intend to do about it?

http://voices.yahoo.com/my-child-not-test-score-10838423.html?cat=9