Stressing Out Young Minds

It's time once again to administer that fun, fun test mandated by our state. In order to avoid trouble, I will refrain calling it by name, but if you are at all familiar with public schools in Washington State, you know which one I mean. There are six sections of the wicked thing, and it just seems to go on forever. In reality, of course, it only lasts two weeks, but we are still exhausted by the time we finally reach the word STOP in our test booklets.

This year, the stress and excitement were made all the more interesting by certain errors in the testing instructions. Of course, I will not (and cannot on pain of lawsuit) go into the details, but let's just say that some non-essential portions of the directions were a bit lacking in the editing department. It got to the point where there were so many reported errors that they started to release erratum for the remaining sections.

Now many people would be quick to point out that I am not exactly the queen of great editing myself. However, I am not claiming to be a professional writer, and I am not getting paid millions of dollars to deliver perfect text. How the heck can these kinds of errors get past an entire firm of professional writers AND a whole bank of state officials? My middle-schoolers found them in about ten seconds.

For all my complaining, I can understand the logic behind standardized tests. We need to know how we're doing as a whole, we need to know how our kids are doing compared to other kids their age, and we need some feedback on each kid to get an idea of how they are progressing. It's just that I really feel for them when they are in the middle of the actual testing. Some are quite nonchalant and easy going about it all, but many feel the strain, and a few even show signs of serious anxiety.

This week I gave them chocolate meringues during testing breaks, and we always play a few relaxing games when the tests are over. I always try to remind them that this is only a small portion of their year, and it will soon be over. More than anything, I don't want the testing experience to ruin their impression of school as a whole. Most kids at our school are pretty involved and engaged in the work we do (amazing but actually true), and I wouldn't want that to change just because they had to find out officially how much they know about order of operations or comprehension of literary devices.