If your third-grader can’t pass a standardized test, she can’t go on to fourth grade, even if she’s getting A's and B's in all her classes. Sixty percent of Tennessee third-graders didn’t score high enough on the test to pass on to fourth grade. This in itself is a shitshow disaster. But the sample test? If this is an example of what third-graders have to get right? It’s a mess.
Take, for instance, this question on page 27. A student is supposed to indicate “Which change, if any, is needed to the underlined text?”
The text reads “Next month Wendy said, I will go to Australia.” She could hardly wait!
The choices are:
- “Next month Wendy said, “I will go to Australia.”
- “Next month,” Wendy said, “I will go to Australia.”
- “Next month” Wendy said, I will go to Australia.
- No change
The correct answer in the options given is B: “Next month,” Wendy said, “I will go to Australia.” But why should we assume that “Wendy” and “she” are the same person? Another correct change could be: “Next month Wendy said I will go to Australia," if the she is saying what Wendy told her and not Wendy herself.
I could imagine a kid — or anyone, really — knowing grammatical construction but not being sure if there were two people being referenced here or one. And if it seems obvious to the kid that there are two people in this example, none of the answers is right.
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In another section, we’re supposed to indicate what a character means when she says, “Dust bunnies in ketchup is what they taste like.” One of the choices is “they taste like soil,” and another is “they taste terrible.” How are those not both correct? If your kid is a very literal thinker, he’s going to have problems with this test. Does that mean he can’t read or write or comprehend things at a third-grade level? Of course not.
Should your kid be held back in third grade because a test is kind of sloppily written? How much disrespect do you have to have for Tennesseans to hinge their elementary school progress on an important test and then not have every portion of the test be clear?
I went to the TDOE website to learn how parents can appeal the holding back of their kids. In the section about having your kid attend summer camps it reads: “During the summer, rising kindergartners through rising 9th graders can also participate in the summer camps offered over the course of four weeks to cover litearcy [sic] and math.” I took a screenshot because who would believe this? Third-graders have to be able to spell or their lives are ruined, but TDOE can’t handle “literacy”? This is shameful. It's like me showing up to your house covered in piss and dirt talking about how bad you smell — that level of shameful. In a now-deleted tweet, the TDOE wrote: “TN Families: Learn more about the multiple pathways to help your child can move on to 4th grade and the strong supports that are available this summer.” I think we have a duty to ask ourselves if we think the TDOE could pass the TCAP test.
I don’t know how to experience this or explain it as anything less than open disdain for Tennessee’s third-graders. If one group has to follow the rules or they get in trouble and another group doesn’t and is constantly showing off how they don’t have to follow the rules, then I read that as the second group expressing disdain for the first group. If third-graders have to be able to read and write comprehensible sentences and spell things correctly, but TDOE doesn’t, that feels like contempt. We’re not asking kids to play by the grammar rules we all live by, because clearly TDOE doesn’t live by those rules. But they have the right to enforce them.
Lots of people believe that this is all part of Gov. Bill Lee’s plan to bolster private education at the expense of public education by making public education so onerous and stupid that parents yank their kids and put them into less harmful situations. But not every school district has a nearby private school alternative. Also, has there been any other moment in Lee’s tenure when he seemed capable of coming up with a nefarious plot? No. He’s certainly gotten suckered into others’ nefarious plots. (See: Hillsdale College.) But plan his own? No, this is one of the most passive people to walk upright. He is the plastic-bag-flitting-in-the-wind of governors.
Flunking third-graders for grammar standards you don’t make the people in your administration hold to is the same move as passing all these anti-trans and anti-gay bills when you have dressed in drag yourself.
Here’s the thing: If all I saw from Gov. Lee and the TDOE was impeccable professionalism and real thoughtfulness about education, then I would believe that 60 percent of third-graders failed this test because their skills aren’t up to par. But what I see instead are examples that the test is unclear and that the TDOE can’t comport itself up to the standards set by this flawed test. Some kids may have flunked this due to genuinely not having the skills tested for, but just based on my looking through the sample test, I think it’s clear that some kids clearly didn’t do well because they couldn’t guess which inadequate answer was the one the test-writer wanted. And the people in charge of picking out the test demonstrably don’t have the skills the test is supposed to be testing for, so how can we feel confident that the test they picked out is actually giving us useful information about children’s skill sets?
It’s like if you took an art class and the teacher was constantly critiquing your use of red, and then you find out that the teacher is color blind. Sure, you might actually suck at using red, but how would the teacher know, and why should you be penalized for the teacher’s inability to teach you proper techniques for red use?
Why are Tennessee’s third-graders being punished for TDOE’s failures?
