Dear Addison

 

When they heard the Civics exam was three hours

a girl named Addison said,

“They must really hate us.”

What am I to say to that?

I took notice in the 1990s how little 

we actually care for our kids, 

how most anything related to them 

is for greedy or political purposes.

Standardized tests were based on a false premise

to start with, and have only gotten

worse as time has gone on.

Now they are “adaptive” which means

one wrong answer and your trajectory

changes and there is nothing you can do

to fix it.

Everything we have taught about testing strategies

no longer applies. We are forcing

bad habits and punishing honest mistakes

that in the past had at least a chance of correction.

And even worse, it has opened up a world

of horrible curricula that do little to engage

and everything to form a direction of thinking

that simply may not work for every learner.

And they can be boring as hell,

and not connect to who or where

they are in life.

Maybe nobody actively hates our young people,

but they don’t necessarily care about true success.

It’s about numbers, and in a large way

trying to demonstrate the failure of public schools.

Fortunately, the excellent educators in this country

are doing their best to NOT let this happen.

So I write:

Dear Addison,

Know that your teachers are on your side.

We are doing our best to give you something real

to hang onto, and to help you know

learning is valuable in its own right.

We are doing what we can to soften the blow.

We love you.

Ms Sadler 

and all the others