This is not a full-fledged diary but a primer on one I'll be writing as I compile all the facts on this topic. However, this one's burning in me and it's worth getting some light shown on it right now.
My wife is a school teacher in a predominantly Hispanic school district in the Phoenix area. Many of the children in her district are English language learners and come from homes where the rest of their family speak only Spanish. Often there is only a single adult in the household as a result of divorce or one or the other of the parents being illegal and sent back to Mexico.
My wife tells me often of how wonderful and fulfilling it is to her to work with these wonderful children and see the impact she and other educators have on their lives. Knowing her intelligence and compassion as I do, I have no doubt that the young people she touches truly receive a daily gift in their lives and a firm motivation towards learning all life has to offer.
She also comes home often seething at the incompetence she sees in school administrators and in the state and national politics that have turned her school into a testing factory with the dark goal of diminishing the role of public education in our country and subsidizing private schools for the well-off.
Because of the push of No Child Left Behind, our state requires all students to undergo frequent testing utilizing a battery of standardized tests called AIMS (Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards). (A more honest view of AIMS) These controversial tests are utilized to not only define requirements for graduation from high school but to also rate each school based on the annual increase or decrease in these scores. The tests look at only four core areas - math, reading, writing, science (the latter only recently added) and do not delve into history, the arts, physical education, geography or any of the other traditional subjects our schools have always taught.
If schools do not show annual improvement in these scores, the schools are labeled as failing institutions and must endure state control. In a district like my wife teaches in, the fact that there's a huge turnover in students each year means nothing to the comparisons. Special education students scores are lumped in with the regular students. If one goes over a list of the failing schools it's painfully obvious that the ones not passing muster all fall in low income areas of the county.
However, for political purposes the finger of blame goes not on the demographics but on the teachers themselves. More and more control is taken away from these gallant people and the schools become nothing more than factories trying to push through test takers. In my wife's school since language is a huge barrier to learning, the focus of education goes almost completely to reading. There's nothing wrong with throwing some extra resources that way but instead the entire district is saddled with a national program called "Reading First" where children basically learn to read by rote and repetition. My wife is outraged because the importance isn't about comprehending the reading material but simply being able to sound out the words properly. Some of the assignments are material made up of nothing but nonsense words and sounds.
Of course this program is largely unfunded and no new resources are provided for carrying it out so it's done at the expense of all other learning. Science and social studies were removed from the curriculum. Children could no longer go on field trips. Special area teachers were forced to become involved with this program's sessions and their own areas cut short.
Now to the story she brought home that so engulfed me in this issue. AIMS testing is occurring this week throughout the state. My own son is taking the tests at his middle school. My wife for years now has brought home horror stories about how classrooms are turning away from opening up children's minds to the wonder of learning and only concentrating on things that will show up on these tests.
Well they went to far the other day. She told me that all the students at her school were required to sign a statement where they "pledged allegiance to the test". I was dumbfounded. This sounded like something Nazi youth would be required to do. She then went on to tell me that over the morning loudspeaker they were playing some silly song about the test as well. The Pink Floyd "Brick In the Wall" started playing in my own head.
We have been so concentrated on this upcoming election that these things just come up and slap you along the side of a head like a 2 X 4.
Our educational system has been under siege for the last decade and we're all worried about whether Hillary's snipers were real. Our children's futures are what this election is about and this latest affront to logic and ethics is why John McCain cannot be elected President no matter how raw your emotions are from your guy or gal not winning the nomination. And it doesn't stop there. Even if we win the White House and get huge majorities in Congress we must hold accountable our leaders to once again empower and reward the teachers and educators and help them put out into our world well-rounded citizens instead of zombies.
I look forward to the bonfires when these standardized tests are burned victoriously in the streets and the people that forced these things on us are run out of town tarred and feathered.