About a year ago I read an article in the LA Times about how stress has been effecting our kids. The schools teach to "the test"(the CA state tests here), they have less physical education (most schools don't have PE anymore) and students have more homework than we had as kids.
While at lunch with a friend this week, she mentioned to me that she was opting her son out of "the test". It was causing him too much anxiety and the teacher kept mentioning daily, the testing countdown (10 more weeks till the test, etc). Good for her I thought! I see how much nonsense NCLB (No Child Left Behind) has caused even in my kids' school. (We are in PI-program improvement- right now even though our API score is above 850). Why should the kids be subjected to stress just to make the school look good (or bad) and judging the teachers on how well their students do on the test, in my opinion, is simply ridiculous. In looking for options and information, I stumbled across this site http://www.fairtest.org/get-involved/opting-out. I'll be checking this out for my kids as well.
It also hit me from another angle the other night at dinner when my son got all excited talking about history and asking us questions so that he could tell us the answers. He was clearly excited about this subject and yet I had never seen a test he took on the subject this year. I asked him, "How come I never see you take a history test this year?". He said, "Oh we don't take history tests because they are not on "the test""...WOW! So if it's not on the state test, I guess they don't need to know it. Interesting...
What do you as a parent or teacher to make sure your kid(s) don't get stressed out? Any stories you can share? I think it's time we take back our education system for our kids and not for some paycheck in some "suits" pocket...it is really broken and needs to be fixed!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment