When it comes to our education system, am I the only one who feels like parents are in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent? Once more I’m utterly baffled at the level of nincompoop happening amongst the top level decision makers in Texas education. I’ve threatened to take over the school system before, but when a poet can’t even answer the questions on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test that are about her own poem, someone needs to take over!
Poet Sara Holbrook writes readable, fun, real poetry – a lot of it for young readers. We’re not talking about outdated language jumbled into iambic pentameter about ancient dead kings of countries that no longer exist on modern maps. Her poems are about stuff junior high kids can actually relate to, might actually not throw up in their mouths a little when they have to read poetry. At least not until the poetry is on a STAAR test followed by ridiculous questions that are impossible to answer.
But let’s put our teachers and principals on the guillotine with the results from these tests written on the blade above their necks. Yeah, that’s a great idea. That’ll foster an environment of excitement for learning and teaching! Let’s all sign up for that!
Poet Holbrook, who admits she felt like a “dunce” when she couldn’t answer the questions about her poems, sees that “Teachers are also trying to survive as they are tasked with teaching kids how to take these tests, which they do by digging through past tests, posted online. Forget joy of language and the fun of discovery in poetry, this is line-by-line dissection, painful and delivered without anesthetic.” And then we wonder why creativity and logic are dying off.
When I finally sit on the throne as Grand Universal Empress of Education, the first thing I’ll do is have every member of the Texas Education Agency and Pearson Assessments who administer the wretched tests actually take it under timed conditions like the students do. Let’s see how they score. Oh, and let’s make the retention of their jobs depend on passing.
“Any test that questions the motivations of the author without asking the author is a big baloney sandwich,” Holbrook wrote. “Mostly test makers do this to dead people who can’t protest. But I’m not dead. I protest.” Yeah, me, too!
