Sam made a B on his report card- the 1st one ever.  One might wonder what could cause a 9 point drop in the average of this consistent A student.  THE SHORT ANSWER IS: HIS PARENTS.

The actual answer is a bit more involved.  Way back in 2011/2012 I became increasingly concerned about the drastic changes happening that seemed to be altering the landscape of education in unprecedented ways.  I fully understand that the only consistent thing in the American Education system over the last 30 years has been inconsistency  but still, these changes were different.  In 2012, we decided that our Son would not participate in any standardized tests. Throughout his years in elementary school we have maintained  a very consistent position about this issue. Our rights, as parents,  to make such choices about our child’s education have  ALWAYS been respected and honored by our principal and teachers whether or not they personally agreed with them.

Fast Forward to 2015.  Below you will see the correspondence between myself and the Director of Elementary instruction.

Unfortunately , Ms Bowling did not respond to our request to have our Son take these checkpoint test on paper.  When the next 9 week checkpoint test rolled around, my husband had the following exchange with Dr. Wright.

The main question that comes to my mind is which is more important-the content of the test (and assessing whether or not our kids are on track) OR the mode in which the test is administered?  Obviously, from Dr. Wright’s response it is clear that a) a student taking the same exact test on paper would have an unfair advantage and b)taking a math test on the computer is more important than the math skills the test covers.  Common sense suggests and scientific  research confirms that tests given on computers to elementary age children do not accurately  reflect what the kids know in the subject area being tested.   Instead, such tests,  are a direct reflection of the test takers computer skills.

My husband and I were not surprised by Dr. Wright’s answer and we were not surprised by the B on our son’s report card. We are not parents that are focused on the letters or numbers of an elementary school report card.  Some things are more important than grades.  Assuming that all kids in our schools have access to computers or iPads at home to develop the necessary skills that would make these tests an effective judge of anything other than their computer skills is naive and unfair.  Drawing attention to something that is clearly questionable is worth a B any day.