I'm not a fan of standardized tests. At our 14-year-old Kat’s public school they are mandatory. Each year the teachers and administrators start freaking out and reminding parents to make sure their kids eat a good breakfast and get plenty of sleep the night before a Big Test.
This year everyone seemed to be especially anxious over the results. Due to the pandemic, students went home for Spring Break and never returned for in person learning. They skipped the spring Big Test, which was fine by me.
Kat has still not been back inside a physical classroom since March. She chose remote learning, which, as an introvert, she loves. She says it’s less distracting to be in a virtual classroom where most students have their mics muted so she can actually focus on what the teacher says instead of having to deal with a bunch of rowdy, chatty teens around her.
Not only did I not ensure that Kat got plenty of sleep the night before, but I also did not oversee her breakfast to ensure it had the proper balance of nutrients. I slept in. In fact, I’d forgotten it was Big Test day until nearly noon when Kat came out of her bedroom only long enough to shush her librarian mom. The stereotype of a shushing librarian is a fallacy, especially someone like me who works in the children’s department of a public library. I am always more apt to get shushed than to do any shushing myself. My family knows it. I am an extrovert living in a 935 square foot house with three introverts. Shushing happens.
“Mom, could you please lower your voice? I’m taking my reading MAP test. I need silence.”
Me, whisper-shouting as Kat turned to walk back to her bedroom, “Sorry!”
Will, whisper-laughing at me, “Notice she said, ‘Mom be quiet’ not Dad.”
A bit later, Kat came out of her room for lunch.
“Sorry I disturbed your test. How did it go?” I said.
“Oh, it’s OK. You didn’t know I was taking a MAP test.” Kat said. “I did great, though.”
“Oh, you already got your score?”
“Yep. It’s all automated so you get your score right away. I scored two points higher than last December on my RIT score, and my Lexile increased by ten points.”
“Increased?” I said. “What happened to the ‘summer slide’ or, for that matter, the ‘spring-summer slide’? They should call it the pandemic slide,” I said.
When under stress, I try to pay as little attention to the outside
world and just focus on what I have control over—namely, myself. It might sound
selfish, but it’s the only way I can keep my anxiety from spiraling out of
control. I have a natural inclination toward over-functioning as the great Dr.
Harriet Lerner calls it. If I don’t keep
myself in check, I start worrying about everyone else and neglect myself. Then
I get pissed off at everyone else I’ve been worrying about because how dare
they not change the way I think they should, and look at all this time I’ve
spent worrying about them and they don’t even have the decency to let me
control them?!
Yeah, I’m a recovered hot mess. Well, recovering hot mess, I should say. It’s hard not to worry about my 14-year-old daughter and my husband and my mother-in-law who lives with us, and all my friends and family and community members during a fucking pandemic. But I do the best I can.
Despite my best efforts to not pay attention to people and things I can’t control, friends keep inviting me to various social media groups where it seems the sole purpose is to rant about how shitty our school board members are and how shitty our county commissioners are and how shitty our other local elected officials are and WHY CAN’T MY KID PLAY FOOTBALL RIGHT NOW HE’S GONNA LOSE HIS SCHOLARSHIPS. I swear, groups like that stress me out even more than I stress myself out. I don’t need to focus on everyone else’s worries. I manufacture plenty on my own.
However, like a train wreck, it’s hard to look away. I’ve noticed many parents are freaking out that their kids are going to succumb to not just a typical year’s “summer slide” where students’ standardized test scores drop over summer vacation, but that their kids are going to lose out on the quality education that comes with in person learning due to Governor Kelly’s state-wide stay-at-home orders, which began in full force last spring, but by now have petered out to, “Well, I wish you would stay-at-home, but since I’m a Democrat in a red state with a Republican-led state legislature, I’m not going to mandate anything and let each county decide how to handle this global pandemic.” Parents are freaking out that their kids got shitty, slapped together at the last minute virtual school in the spring and with the new academic year they were at first told everyone would start the school year in remote learning only and eventually parents could choose whether or not their student could go to a hybrid model of some in-person learning and some stay-at-home learning. They are worried that our school district will not remain competitive, which is another way of saying they worry our kids are going to test poorly and we’ll lose Federal funding for our public schools.
It’s a bunch of crap. Whose idea was it to give funds to schools that test the best? If we’re going to use standardized tests to measure students’ success, shouldn’t funding go to the schools that have the worst test scores so they can hire more teachers and purchase more materials to help kids test better?
Also, who the hell are we competing against? The whole world is a shitshow right now. If our students have to all basically repeat a year once we get a vaccine and eradicate this current plague, so what? Won’t everybody basically need to repeat a year? Why can’t we just chill out, stay at home, and when it’s safe to venture out into the world again, have a do over year?
I was thinking about all of this when I realized that Kat had said something about her Lexile score.
“What’s your Lexile now?”
“I just said. I don’t know. 15-something-something. Close to 1600,” Kat shrugged.
“So pretty much still college level?” I smiled. This kid’s Big Test score has been at the college level since fifth or sixth grade. It’s something I want to feel proud about, but at the same time, since I think standardized tests are bullshit, it feels weird to gloat.
“Yep,” Kat said.
“So how did you not succumb to the pandemic slide? I bring books home from the library all the time and I never see you pick them up,” I said.
This is a fact that most librarian parents will acknowledge. When they’re little and love to sit in your lap, librarians’ kids squeal with joy when their parents bring books home for them. By the time they’re old enough to think sitting in your lap is gross, suddenly every book you think they’d like is lame.
“Mom, you say so yourself all the time. Nobody wants to be told what to read. I like to read what I like to read.”
I patted her shoulder, “Yes, yes. You’ve got that right. Once someone tells me I should read a book I suddenly lose all interest. So, what have you been reading lately that’s keeping the gears in your brain well lubed?”
Kat looked at me like I was an idiot. You know, the way I looked at my mom when I was 14. “Well lubed? Gross, Mom.”
We both laughed.
“You know what I mean,” I said. “What’s kept you from succumbing to the pandemic slide?”
“I dunno,” Kat said. “I’ve mostly been reading manga. And, I guess I have been reading a lot of Hamilton’s letters,” she said as if it were an afterthought.
“Alexander Hamilton’s letters? You mean, like, The Federalist Papers?”
Now don’t go thinking this has anything to do with my influence. The only reason I know that Hamilton is the author of most of The Federalist Papers is because Kat made me watch Hamilton with her on Disney+ as soon as it was released this summer.
“Yeah,” Kat said. “The Federalist Papers and, you know, just some of the letters he wrote to his family and friends. I found this website that has all of Hamilton’s letters you can read online. They’re fascinating. He has a real way with words.”
I smiled. “Yeah, I’m not worried about you.”
“Finally,” Kat said and rolled her eyes.
