What am I missing here?

 

There is some controversy over the STAAR test. It seems that learning disabled children (whose parents have for years pushed for mainstreaming), can't pass the test unless the teacher puts only tasks and questions on the test that she knows the student can accomplish/answer. The State has said they can't do that anymore. So the teachers are upset that those students won't pass the test and they will be stigmatized (not to mention that the teachers may not get performance pay, etc).

 

About 1% of Texas students get these individually designed tests. Some of them, though in their teens, have the understanding of a 2-year-old. So I guess the personalized questions for those students would be along the lines of "What color is Barney?" "How does the piggy go?" "Can you count to 3?" Up until this year, students who could answer the questions the teacher knew they could answer before she put them on the test were deemed "proficient."

 

So there is some protest going on. The Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education sent to state legislators a letter which said in part: "We want our students, who are responding to the best of their ability, our teachers, who are dedicated to teaching and supporting them, and their families to be acknowledged for their effort and not given a 'developing'/unsatisfactory score for having a significant cognitive disability." Wonder if we should apply that same principle to medical school? I'd like to think my doctor got his medical degree based on something more than his "effort."
 

 Maybe the best thing we can do for those students is to help them understand their limitations and prepare them for what they can do in life rather than artificially feed their egos by patting them on the back for "passed" tests that have no meaning.

Ashley Jones of Richardson weighed in on the subject. "Tomorrow my students take their first STAAR test. They'll be judged against all third-graders in the state. No special boxes to check off that say: raised by absent single parent; slept on floor; or didn't eat dinner. Equally so, there aren't special boxes for others saying: two college-educated parents; ate a healthy meal; or slept in a clean bed."

Give me a break, Ashley! It sounds as if you have a big old case of class envy. Do you use different lesson plans for the advantaged students than you do for the less-affluent? What about when these students grow up and apply for a job? Do you think their job applications have all those check-boxes on them? No, they don't. The employer is interested in hiring the applicant who can read -- the one who can add and subtract -- the one who can write a coherent sentence. He's not really interested in how much the applicant's daddy or mama made, or what the family's sleeping arrangements were. He's interested in whether or not the applicant has the ability to do the job he has for him to do.

All the brouhaha over STAAR is just a symptom of a deeper problem in our country -- the entitlement attitude that is sending us down the tubes.

"Pushing hard on STAAR." The Dallas Morning News; April 23, 2013; p. 1B.