Failing Standardized Tests: One Mother's Story About Her Daughter's Test Scores

It isn't any secret that I live in a fairly depressed manufacturing/rural county. If it weren't for the mall, and several factories, most people around here wouldn't have a job at all. That's not taking into account the farmers that often work those jobs to supplement their farms. Finding someone around here who works two or three jobs just to pay for childcare and the bills isn't unusual.

This, also, reflects back upon the lack of caring about true education. I'm not talking about the ability to regurgitate facts onto a test paper so that the bureaucrats are happy. I'm talking about teaching a child to extrapolate information from the facts.

In other words; we don't teach our children to think. We teach them to parrot names, dates, facts. We don't teach them to theorise, guess, or be curious.

Recently, my daughter's reading really took flight. Not that she couldn't before, but recently, she's discovered fantasy and science fiction. She's discovered vampires, mummies, werewolves and the occasional alien. Being a huge advocate for reading being a gateway to actual thought, I was immensely thrilled.

Then school began again. I received, within the first few days, a letter from the teacher stating that she wanted to speak with me about certain "stories" that my daughter was telling in school. That was the same day that my daughter came home in tears because no one believed her. After comforting my daughter, and trying to figure out what "stories" she was telling at age seven, I went to the meeting with a heavy heart.

Did my daughter have an overactive imagination? Was she telling stories based on the books I was allowing her to read? Was the line between fiction and reality blurring?

The teacher was not new to the school system. In point of fact, she has, supposedly, been around for a good fifteen years. This didn't comfort me, though she was attempting to mean it as such. We settled into the chairs, and she pulled out the library book my daughter had accidentally left at school that day and then informed me that obviously my daughter was too young for such reading material because her imagination was running rampant.

I took the book, handed it to my sniffling child, and asked the teacher for specific examples.

The teacher opened her own notebook and began reading them off. My daughter, at age seven, claimed to have read two Harry Potter books. (She has.) She claimed that my boyfriend, who resides overseas, came for a visit. (He did.)

The teacher looked disconcerted that my daughter had been telling the truth. Then she brought out what she believed was the piece de resistance. My daughter claimed that I allowed her to read about vampires, werewolves and other things that go bump in the night, and even encouraged her to write stories based on those books.

Her face was utterly shocked when I told her that I did. And I was confused as to why a teacher would be against those things. The story-writing would help improve not only penmanship, but grammar and spelling mechanics. (My daughter doesn't have a computer and must instead use pen and paper.) The reading would give her good examples of grammar and spelling mechanics to follow, and would allow her to expand her horizons.

The answer I received was not satisfactory. "But they won't help her on the tests."

I could not believe my ears! How could learning grammar, spelling and reading comprehension not be good things?! How could they hinder her on a test?!

I must admit to sitting there shocked, and slightly bewildered. My mouth might have hung open as well. I asked the teacher if she was going to punish my daughter for bringing a book to class. When she said that she wasn't, I simply said that if that were the case, then we had nothing more to discuss. I had refuted her claims that my child was "telling stories" and that the stories were, indeed, true.

The teacher stopped me on my way out the door, holding my child's hand. "Your child will fail, because she will not pass the tests." She warned me.

"My child will succeed, because she knows how to use her mind." I snapped back.

Is this what education has come to? Is this the future of our children? Will they only ever be able to parrot back facts? Will they never make the leaps of creativity and invention that have allowed the human race to come so far?

It terrifies me, most especially because this is the world I'm sending my children into. This is the world that have been created for them, because of bureaucrats and the coddling of some parents to prevent their children from ever failing.

I don't want my children becoming robots. I want them to paint, to explore, to discover, to invent. I want them to fly as high as they want to, even if they fall. I'm afraid that the schools are clipping their wings before they will get the chance.