4-10-1005

2005-04-10

High Stakes testing.

Okay. So yeah. I've got 3 children. I gave birth to two of them. Beautiful wonderful experience, blah blah blah blah. (It hurt like a motherfucker, but yeah it was very worth it...and the human race hasn't died out..so clearly it was a bearable pain...) and one is my husband's child from a previous marriage and we have custody of her. I've raised her for years, so as far as I'm concerned, she is my child. Anyhow...3 kids. All three different as they can be. Two boys, one girl. The two older children are both supposedly "gifted". They are in special programs in school and they want to commit ritualistic suicide if they get less than 99 on their report card, right? Over.Achievers. The did NOT get this from Sanford or me. We were "squeek by achievers".

The youngest child...our baby...the happy child...the one who jumps out of the car at school with his arms thrown wide and yells, "Let's get this party started!" well, he is not an "over achiever". He is a "squeek by achiever". He comes by it honestly and naturally. Until this year, he was on the honor roll all the time. Which is weird. I mean, a Kindergarten honor roll? Then he maintained that through 1st and 2nd grade..sometimes by the skin of his teeth, but he did stay on the honor roll.
Well, 3rd grade is a harsh new world, evidently. And it just opened up whole new social worlds that needed tending to! Anyhow, we have been struggling to have this particular child take any of his school work seriously. We're talking all "C"s on his report card. We're talking, he comes in the room and says "Hey Mom! I got a 47 on a quiz..that's pretty good, right?" and he is all smiles.

Dude. NO. That is NOT pretty good. That's pretty far from good. So, we've got a whole system worked out, and it's working now...he is doing better. He is quite capable of making just as high grades as his siblings, he just doesn't particularly CARE.

So. Parent/teacher conference time rolls around. We sit down with his teacher, who I am not impressed with anyhow. So, we're sitting there, and the purpose of the prescheduled conferences is to brag about the child, no matter how hard it is...the teacher is supposed to show the child's best work and find positive things to say. If there is a problem, there is supposed to be a separate conference scheduled. This is a student-led conference.
So, we're sitting there, and it comes time for the teacher to tell us something good about my child.
This is all she can come up with:
"He is very friendly."
I wanted to get up and beat the living crap out of her. My child is very friendly. Well, great. I guess he'll plan GREAT keggers in college...ASSUMING he gets out of elementary school....
she acted as if he was slightly stupid and that he would have to depend upon his personality and smile to get through life. That pissed me off royally.

Two weeks later, was the state mandated standardized tests. They prepare these kids from Kindergarten until 3rd grade for this test. They take it for the first time in 3rd grade. So this was my "friendly" child's first time taking it. The schools obsess and scare the kids for years over this test. They have to take it every year after 3rd grade. The principal's pay is determined by how the student's perform. All sorts of stuff is determined by the children's scores. Not fair.

Guess what? The "friendly" child? The one she couldn't think of any scholastically relevant positive thing to mention? He missed one question on the entire test. He made the highest score.

Bitch.