{"id":422,"date":"2007-05-25T11:04:12","date_gmt":"2007-05-25T16:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lopeyland.com\/?p=422"},"modified":"2007-06-13T12:46:26","modified_gmt":"2007-06-13T17:46:26","slug":"okay-this-confuses-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/?p=422","title":{"rendered":"Okay, this confuses me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wfaa.com\/sharedcontent\/dws\/wfaa\/latestnews\/stories\/wfaa070524_wz_taksprotest.6fe879b.html\">Check out that sign<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As the entry tag on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fark.com\">fark.com<\/a> states: &#8220;<span class=\"headline\">After your kid fails the minimum skills assessment, a sign reading &#8220;Let are kids walk&#8221; is probably not going to convince the school he\/she should walk for graduation.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Now admittedly, I&#8217;ve got tons of issues with standardized, mandatory assessments. They have encouraged new generations of school administrators who must force teachers to &#8220;teach to the test&#8221; &#8212; albeit not saying that in those terms &#8212; thus wasting fully one sixth of a school year just preparing kids to take a test. We&#8217;re not teaching kids life skills, we&#8217;re not teaching them to enjoy learning, we&#8217;re not teaching them anything except how to take a test.<\/p>\n<p>However, what bothers me about this protest is that these students who failed had the same opportunity, instruction, content, classes, and etc. as the thousands of students who passed. Yet, for whatever reason, they failed. Despite the large amount of extra tutoring, extra focus, extra everything that was afforded to these students, they failed. Despite having taken the test <em>at least three times already<\/em>, they failed.<br \/>\nIs it because they&#8217;re bad testers? Maybe. Is it because our educational system is flawed? Probably. Is it because kids get promoted ahead of their level without knowing basic necessary information? Probably.<\/p>\n<p>This, more than anything, makes me want to homeschool my kids.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE: My brother (who formerly taught in the FWISD), had this to say: &#8220;They want the reward without the work.&#8221; Essentially, if you read the article, it&#8217;s not about whether the students graduate, not about whether they can read or not, etc. It&#8217;s about the party. It&#8217;s about being with their friends. It&#8217;s sad and demoralizing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Check out that sign As the entry tag on fark.com states: &#8220;After your kid fails the minimum skills assessment, a sign reading &#8220;Let are kids walk&#8221; is probably not going to convince the school he\/she should walk for graduation.&#8221; Now admittedly, I&#8217;ve got tons of issues with standardized, mandatory assessments. They have encouraged new generations &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/?p=422\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Okay, this confuses me&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-free-floating-hostility","category-perspectives","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}