OT: US Education (Beware, even longer)

[alicia5270]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C7217
From: alicia5270
Subject: OT: US Education (Beware, even longer)
Reply To: [Yahoo! #7208] Re: OT: US Education (BEWARE--long!)
Date: 8/18/00 6:15 pm  (ET)

Beware, this post is incredibly long and impossibly OT.....

As the daughter of a 5th and 6th grade special education teacher, I'm
happy to say that I can understand the amount of work that the 'new
breed' of teachers do in order to correct the mistakes made by their
long-suffering colleagues.

My mother came to the public profession after years in the
private-childcare sector (and after developing a curiosity as to exactly
*what* people in the school were doing that made her daughter come
home from school complaining of boredom), and spent two years trying to
convince her supervisors that the best approach to education was *not*
"give the kids the answers to the tests so they pass" or "do the work for
them". Her approach to education is a little unconventional, and has drawn
a bit of criticism from some of the dinosaurs in the department. (Okay,
so maybe running your entire lesson plan by your 15-year-old to make sure
that it's not dry and boring is a little odd, but my parents *are odd.)

Apparently, learning isn't supposed to be fun for the kids at all,
as exemplified by the lukewarm reception for teaching past, present,
and future tense through Mad Libs. It didn't matter that the kids who
participated in that particular exercise performed just as well on the
test as the regular-ed kids did, it was different, and the old-timers
didn't appreciate someone brand-new coming up with something such as
*gasp!* a novel idea.

I'm from the state of Massachusetts, which implemented the Massachusetts
Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) a few years ago. If I were to
go into my deep-seeded hatred of this exam, which requires two weeks
to be taken out of the educational time of 4th, 8th, and 10th graders
in order to administer these absurd things, this posting would be
horridly long and angry. If a 10th grade student takes the test and
fails, they aren't allowed to graduate from high school until the test
is passed. I can understand the need to assess a student's performance,
but is a two-week period (right before those nastily exahusting finals)
neccessary? Instead of following a curriculum that students would actually
learn something from, teachers are being forced to teach 'to' the test.

How absurd is the test itself? Well, when I took it in 8th grade (my
class, the class of 2003, being the first that has to pass it in order to
graduate), I scored in the 'Proficient' category. Now, I'm not trying to
sound conceited, but I would hope that my academic performance would be
categorized as higher than 'proficient'. The sad part is, I was the only
one of my class to score in that area-- everyone else either failed or
fell into 'needs improvement'. Would someone mind explaining to me how one
of my best friends, a girl who can reprogram the school's entire computer
networking system in less than three hours, solve algebraic equations in
her head, and will almost certainly be accepted to MIT in three years'
time, failed the Science and Technology portion of such an exam?

(Okay, off of my MCAS rant. I've got a habit of attacking that test
to holy high hell, as seen on my 10-page persuasive argument essay
in Freshman English. If you're still reading this to humor me, you're
a saint.)

This is continued in Part 2-- Yahoo! says that it's too long to
post. Sorry, everyone, for boring you to death.

--Alicia/Sue "Cont'd." Spinnet