Standards: Who Needs them?

Last year around this time we had the opportunity to administer the State-wide writing prompt to seventh graders at Frisbie Middle School. For me, this was a huge deal because this was my first year as a literacy coach and I had been adamant with teachers about their need to emphasize writing in everything they did in class. Read a book, write a response. Learn a grammar lesson, apply it to writing. Well to my dismay, I had the worst experience in writing ever.

It turns out that we needed more time for some of the students to complete the writing task. Since I am the literacy coach, I was assigned to take a group of students to a room and finish the prompt. Well, after several students leave and an hour goes by and I still have one student left. So, I walked over and asked her how much more time she needed and she began to cry. As I glanced at her paper, I had to do a double take and I grabbed it. This baby had written the typed directions over and over again. She did not speak English and therefore had not been able to write in English either. I was soooooo mad. I was passed furious, I could just scream. How had we allowed this educational torture to happen to this child. What took me so long to get over there and accommodate her needs? I immediately told her in my broken Spanish everything but *&%$# that test! I could not even think! We had mentally tortured her into thinking that the more she wrote the better she would do on the test. Her no-good teacher was just as guilty because she had a Spanish speaking aid that could have explained that to her as well, but did not for whatever reason.

Anyway, this particular incident reminded me so much of the article I read this week by Linda McNeil, entitled Standardization, Defensive Teaching and the Problem of Control. I couldn’t help but agree with Linda because we do so much standardizing we forget to teach these students and we let them sit there for hours taking a stupid test in the name of accountability. In fact, “Standardization undermines academic standards and seriously limits opportunities for student to learn to a high standard.” Very rarely do wee ask the teacher or the student how they feel throughout the process or if they have gained anything? We assume that this antiquated system of shoveling kids through the process of schooling is sufficient because they are the minority students, who need at least these standards to be considered educated.

Most of the time, during this process, segregation becomes the result. Because these marginalized students can’t score proficient on these stupid complex assessments we need to keep helping them by teaching them what they need to pass the test. Heavens no can we focus on a liberating pedagogy, we have to “cover” this and this because “these kids” need it. We legitimize a racialized and commodified assessment in the name of equity that has an adverse affect in the outcome.

Just like that poor baby cried that day because she had to grueled and tortured, shortly after taking her back to class, I cried too! I cried from my soul because I could do nothing at the present time to help her and I was just as guilty as the system that set her up. As humans, we should have better human standards. The students should not be held to these stupid educational systemic standards, yet, we should be accountable for being human!