Aggravated Over Education and the Lack Thereof

I'm really aggravated tonight. If any of you who read this are friends on Facebook you've seen my post about today's educational policies in the schools. If not, you're about to read about it. Zach and Dolly were sent home on Friday with their quarterly binders which hold their attendance records, their behavior records, the goals they've set for themselves, and their test results for each month.

Everything is fine with me except the tests because when I say 'tests' I'm not talking about teacher-prepared tests that the kids are given on each subject. I'm talking about state-mandated - or is it federally-mandated? - tests that the schools are forced to give the kids each month. Yes, my kids get spelling tests each week and Zach has had a social studies test once or twice but these other tests are pure bullshit.

I realize that the "No Child Left Behind" policy has a lot to do with it but I've never liked that policy. Children are taking these tests that the schools are forced to give them and passing them, although I don't know how. Dolly has STAR reading and early literacy tests, ELA something-or-other and some other test; and Zach has STAR reading, Rocket math ratings, and SMA something-or-other tests, and I can't interpret the results of any of them because the codes don't make any sense to me at all.

Quite honestly I don't understand how these tests rate or place the children in their grades because I've seen the work of some kids hanging on the hallway bulletin boards and a good many of the kids can't spell basic words. Just to give you an example, one child, D, in Zach's 4th-grade class had a Halloween story on the board which read, "It was halween and it was a cold halween so me and my mama and my brother & sisters and my dady just got threw trica treating so we went to my Gramals and I was just geting up the hill I sall red eyes..." That is directly from the D's paper.

The child is in 4th grade and not only does D not use punctuation or proper grammar, D also can't spell the most basic of words like 'daddy', and 'saw.' At D's age 'Grandma', 'getting' and 'Halloween' ought to be spelled correctly, too. As a matter of fact, that entire little paragraph ought to be almost perfect for a nine-year-old child. It makes me sad that it's not. I feel for the child and I feel for the teachers because apparently grammar, spelling, and punctuation are not part of the government's curriculum or policies.

To make matters worse, D's parents probably aren't very involved in D's schooling and D will, most likely, end up graduating from high school with no real grasp on the English language or how to write or spell correctly - if D even makes it that far. I definitely know D, or any child for that matter, won't be learning how to write in script because the schools don't offer lessons in that much-needed skill anymore.

Script has become a thing of the past - and so has basic printing, apparently - because children are being taught how to type rather than write, which is really sad because Dolly had a 'team buddy' working with her on a project who prints like a two year old. I was shocked, when I saw the project, to find out that the 'buddy' was a third grader who was assigned to help Dolly. Dolly prints better than the buddy. I guess the school doesn't care because kids are expected to learn how to use a keyboard rather than how to write in print or cursive - I'm guessing because the government mandates it.

Not learning how to write makes sense since we all know that documents theses days are signed electronically. Right? Wrong! My children won't know how to sign a check, or a lease, or mortgage documents if they ever decide to buy houses of their own, or even birthday cards to their spouses - that's if the schools get their way. Too bad they won't.

See, not only do I teach my kids to write - print and script, but I also teach them to read, spell, do math, and all that other fun stuff that the schools won't let them do. I don't care if my daughter is up to G-level reading in her 1st-grade class. I don't even know what the fuck that means. I just want to know if she's reading on par for her age group or if she needs a little extra help. I know she doesn't need help because she can spell and read 'saw' and 'Grandma' and she's only six.

Something needs to be done about all this bullshit testing the government is forcing on the schools and the children, and the teachers need to be able to return to the classic format of teaching and testing without government interference. If the government wants to blame someone for the kids not doing well on the state exams - which I also despise - maybe the officials need to start going door to door and speaking to the parents to find out who actually gives a shit about their kids' education and who doesn't. Maybe that would take some of the pressure off the schools and teachers and the government could actually put the blame where it belongs - on the parents and on the government itself.

Kids need to be taught and tested in schools with finals at the end of the year, the way it was when I went to school, and let the year's worth of work and final exams determine whether or not a child moves up to the next grade. Obviously all the state/federal bullshit is doing is churning out illiterate children who are being moved up to the next grade because they reached a certain goal on the mandated-yet-useless monthly tests. I refuse to allow that to happen to my kids. I'll keep doing what I'm doing at home and make sure my kids turn out better than the government wants them to be.

Until next time...peace to all.