A good post

I just had forwarded to me a good post on the MCAS and its real-life effect on students.

The woman (we shall refer to her as Ann) was asked to attend an IEP (individualized education plan) meeting about her twelve-year-old daughter and one of the recommendations was to move her daughter from her small-group math environment back into the main classroom. When Ann mentioned that this was attempted before without much success, the teacher’s comment was that her daughter was not being exposed to enough of the material that would be appearing on the MCAS. Period. Ann, never having been a supporter of MCAS, took the bait. When she continued to ask questions about the move and made the comment that the move was being made to accommodate the test, not her daughter’s needs, one of the meeting participants commented, “That’s where we are right now.” Ann’s final rebuttal was that her daughter’s grade might suffer. Her teacher piped up again that, “her exposure to the material is, to me, more important than the grade.”

Ann thought about that logic for a moment. First of all, what the hell does ‘exposure to’ in educational terms? Does it actually mean ‘teaching’? From Ann’s perspective, it was nice of her teacher to award her daughter a theoretical pass on the grade but, unfortunately her school very much cares about her daughter’s grade. Two failing grades in one year will result in the student having to repeat the grade. The long and short of the story is that Ann ended up agreeing to the switch and now she was unsure about that decision.