Americans Like To Complain
Serious whining going on right now
The third grade tests came out last week. It’s not pretty.
Do I believe that 60% of the state’s third graders are stupid. Nope. What I believe is that the amount of testing these kids are required to do is ridiculous. “You’re just a homeschool mom, what the hell do you know?” If that is what you just said to yourself and the haters, let me tell you a little more about me.
I went to college at a private liberal arts school from 1992-1996. One more credit and I would have had a degree in English to go along with my worthless degree in psychology. After college, my husband and I moved from Iowa to Seattle WA. There I realized that a psyche degree was worthless and I could still wait tables with the best of them. In high school and college, I was always working with kids teaching swimming lessons and coaching the middle school diving team. What the heck, I should be a teacher. In all honesty, I took some education classes in my undergrad and found them to be a joke. (don’t hate) In 97 or 98 I started taking classes at Seattle Pacific University to get a teaching certificate. I had a 4.0, was tutoring others, was married, and was working full time to pay the rent. They didn’t want me working, but it was that or homelessness. After a few issues, some time off, a job as a teacher’s aide, and getting pregnant, I finished my student teaching in 2001, had a baby, and got hired to teach 1st grade two blocks from home. In 2003 I went back to school for a master’s degree, had to go to class with a 3 day old baby one weekend, and then found out my degree wouldn’t count toward keeping my certificate. I taught for four years in Seattle, I was a substitute for a year while we lived in Iowa. Once we had 4-5 kids, I did not go back to teaching because who can afford daycare for that many kids?
In WA I taught 4th grade for two of the 4 years. Fourth grade is where the WASL was administered.
We spent the year getting kids ready for this test. We didn’t teach any art or science or social studies. We spent the year working on math and reading and writing. After Christmas, the practice really kicked in. We worked on writing prompts and practice tests. I sat in meetings about these tests, and at one point the report cards changed. We went from ABCD to 4,3,2,1. Um aren’t those the same? No, a 3 is meeting standard and a 4 is above standard. Doesn’t that just mean pass or fail? No you silly thinking being, a 3 is meeting the standard and a 4 is above the standard. But if you meet the standard, you pass, how can you be above the standard, isn’t that an A? NO it’s a 4! Shut up and stop asking questions! Yes, I was asked to stop asking questions about this in a staff meeting.
Parents and teachers hated this test. This is just one news story from 2008 where a teacher refused to give this test in Seattle.
After the week of testing in WA where I would reassure these 9 and 10 year olds that this test isn’t a measure of who they are, we would then spend the rest of the school year on art projects, social studies, and geography. This was my experience teaching the 4th grade.
Now here we are. The testing in the nation has gotten bigger, not smaller. TN has decided to place the future of 8 year olds on one test. WHY? Testing is BIG money. You can blame the current republican governor, but this goes back further than him, and is bigger than him. Testing and curriculum is a billion dollar industry.
This is just a clip from one article from 2013. It’s almost impossible to even find who has created the TCAP and which company profits from it. Someone profits, I promise you that.
The really cool thing about this new online curriculum is that now instead of paying every five years for a new book, the schools can pay every year for subscription fees and updates.
I digress. The title of this article is that Americans just want to bitch. This is true and you only have to get on Facebook or Twitter to witness it.
There were 149 comments on this. Seems like a small number of comments, but we had 9 people at the last city meeting. Out of those 149 people, maybe one will actually do something to solve their problem. Most of what we see is posturing. No one wants to do the hard thing. The hard thing requires sacrifice and responsibility.
If parents decided enough was enough and removed their child from the system, you would see change. The public schools are no longer public schools as they were in 1865 when they began. They are not “local” schools. Do not kid yourself you have zero control. The unconstitutional creation of the Department of Education has ensured that for years. Federal and state dollars mean federal and state rules. I wish I could find the quote, but Ron Paul once said that it would take 25% of students to opt out of the public schools to ensure change. 25% would starve the system financially enough that they system would have to reset.
I hear all the time that it’s “not my school.” It IS your school and all of the schools around the country. Your child’s teacher has zero control over what and how they teach. The curriculum is chosen by a district employees. Did you know there are 7 employees in Robertson County just in curriculum and assessment?
Wonder what we pay them? I know I could look, but trying to look through the teacher/district employee pay scales are not an easy task. They don’t make it easy to find, and then you need to know how long the person has been teaching to figure out how much they make. Pay is based on years of service.
Education is BIG business. Not for the teachers or the districts. I can tell by the lack of running tracks in Robertson County, that the county doesn’t have the money. The money is being made by MacGraw Hill, Pearson (now SAVVAS), and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt just to name a few. How about these Fortune 500 companies. While Kaplan didn’t make the Forture 500, they gained 79% profitability between 2014 and 2015 because your kids were “behind.”
Not all 8 year olds can read. Not all 8 year olds can test. Not all 8 year olds know their math facts. Not all 8 year olds can spell. I have 7 children. They all read. Not all of them read by age 8. One was 4, one was 7, one was 9. Several were reading chapter books like Harry Potter at age 8, one didn’t pick up a chapter book until he was 12. (that book was Lord of the Rings, 1200 pages, and he read it in 4 days) Do I have it all together over here? Hell no. What I have is knowledge of my kids, who they are, and what they are capable of at what age. I have the responsibility of the raising and educating of my children.
At the end of the day, Americans will complain about big pharma, big food, big oil, and big government, but not big education. The Facebook posts will continue all summer about summer school and retention. But that’s where we are as Americans, we just complain. Change is hard and painful. Ask a lump of coal.
Brilliant work from a lot of effort on your part. Sadly, Most of us are too lazy to worry and fret about it. We are frogs in the pot. The water has gotten hotter so slowly over the decades that we continue to be happily unaware.
Excellent write up. All you need to do is follow the money. The schools and the government don't care about our kids. Mine would still be home schooled if life had continued the way it was going. As it is my kids are in Heritage schools. I'm thankful for a decent school for them to attend. I know a bunch of teachers (was married to one) who do an excellent job but sadly they are working with their hands tied behind their backs from people who could care less about our kids.