Advocacy Ideas

Fruit Salad Yummy, Yummy

While I am doing all this research for the Advocate badge I am realizing that the one that sticks with me is the concept of testing every student the same, even though as teachers we don’t teach every student the same. We are built to create this community where everyone is valued as an individual and yet when March and April roll around we are required to prepare them for the same testing style that was around since the dawn of time. While I understand there has to be some way to generate a measuring system I find it hard that there is no way to measure the standards while benefiting the ideas that all the little fruit grow in their different ways. The classroom, like a fruit salad, appears so much more appealing when the colors and flavors are mingled and appreciated. Standardized testing becomes the picky child that only picks the apples out because they are the most recognizable. Like the child the standardized testing fashion does nothing to help its ownself grow because it is only sticking to what appears to be comfortable. While the child (ST) believes he/she is doing well because he/she is eating their fruit, they are excluding all the wonderful feelings eating the salad together brings.

Like only sticking to what is Common, State testing as well as the ACT and the SAT excludes the flavors of the ELL, the auditory learners, the texts anxious, rewarding itself for testing only the apples (English, proficient test takers). I think it is absurd that we have gone this long without realizing that only so little of this salad is getting eaten, is getting the chance to use their test scores to get into colleges, to get into the advanced classes, to create the “elite” mentality that will help them through life. Like the poor pineapple that sits alone in the juice of the other fruits, we are throwing away the style of the children that are not apples and it is a shame.