Fourth-grader Joey Furlong was in the hospital in New York, hooked up to intravenous tubes and preparing for brain surgery, when a stranger arrived in his room. It was a teacher with a test. She said it was time for him to take the test. It turns out that the hospital has five full-time teachers on staff to make sure that any child who is in the hospital for more than three days receives instruction and testing.
No child escapes testing. Even while they are waiting for brain surgery.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A New Low!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is INSANITY! Wonder what members of congress would do if this were his/her child.
This is part of the so-called “accountability” factor, I believe. Every kid MUST be accounted for and tested. I had a kid who had leukemia and was in school very little eho had to take tests each year. He has now passed away. What point was there in testing him? He seldom felt well enough to learn anything. Neither the good nor the bad in his scores had anything to do with any particular teacher, but testing him was required. Absurd.
I’m getting angrier and angrier as I read these horror stories. just makes me want to push harder to end this madness!
Where’s our self-proclaimed chief child advocate Gov. Cuomo on this debacle?? Our kids are being preyed upon.
No — no waay…………….
Not sick – OBSCENE! A NYC teacher in Albany to give a sick child a test in a hospital. If this doesn’t cause testing outrage and protest throughout the land- then not much will.
One last thing, is common sense a dying trait? Neither the teacher, the nurse in charge or the teacher’s supervisor seems to have it.
That’s when parents need to take charge! Testing is out of control. Teach them thinking skills, handwriting and basic math is the pathway to success. Music and art must be a part of the equation.
absolutely disgusting. shame on Cuomo, King,Rhee, Duncan and all the “reformers” , they are destroying education….and now this….absolutely pathetic.
A little neighborhood girl who knows my calling asked me if the “tests” were really important. I told her “it depends”.
How sad it is to say that the BROADIE ilk and spawn quite literally value the tests more than they do the students!
would love to have been there when the sob walked in with the test, she would have left the hospital in a body bag.
I work as a teacher in a hospital (although a little different, as it’s a psychiatric hospital) providing educational services and I have NEVER heard of a hospital teacher administering a standardized test. In fact, in Illinois where I teach, the tests have a special “medical exemption” box that may be checked so kids are not required to take the test while hospitalized. This past year of testing, we had some confusion around the tests in regards to the retention years (in IL that’s 3rd, 6th, and 8th) and what would happen to kids in those grades who missed the test. Some schools thought they’d have to go to summer school or even possibly be retained a year. We confirmed that kids will not (and SHOULD not) be penalized for being in a hospital and missing a test.
Just to be clear, I believe kids should have access to educational services when they are unable to attend school (when appropirate) but I do everything in my power to make the classes relevant, therapeutic, fun, and engaging. I never do test prep. I also do not push kids who are going through something very difficult or traumatic. There needs to be time to heal, both physically and emotionally. And I would never, ever give a child a standardized test. Wow.
This really is going too far. Amazed.
So somewhere along the line the checks and balances have gone, here (such as they are) and a child is put through something totally uncalled for. Hs test results may not tell him or his parents much, but bet the experience taught them heaps about who counts most in education at the moment. Sad.
So, if this poor kid doesn’t meet the standards, what interventions will they put in place? Won’t the results of the next test automatically be invalid due to the variable of brain surgery having been performed? If so, what’s the point? To not leave him behind? Are the teachers at the hospital held accountable for their patients’ test scores? Who will get the performance pay if the test score goes up? The surgeaon? The hospital teacher? Isn’t every mandated reporter in the state of New York who is aware of this obligated to report this as child abuse? When will it end?
At first I was going to post stating “I don’t believe this story” but a little voice said, “Look into it” and I did. The story is true! This is a perfect example of how we have lost common sense in education.
Thank you to the parent who went to the press. I suggest more parents and teachers do the same.
Sometimes kids say the darndest things. I just read this story to my 8th graders, and they couldn’t believe it. One of my 8th graders said “look on the bright side. If they want him to have a seizure so they could monitor his brain, making him take a state test would be the way to do it.” Not sure if I should give him extra credit or a detention.
🙂
Heck, make him sec. of education!
At least your student seems to understand that testing is stressful and only serves to cause disfunction.
😉
In that case, maybe President.
Lets not confuse local stupidity and incompetence (possibly fear driven!) with the bigger issue of systemic and substantive problems with the Core Curriculum, the testing craze, the reformy crowd filled with leaders with neither the experience, training or knowledge to be educational leaders. The barbarians who are in charge, and the idiocy of too many of their policies, together with inherently obvious profit driven conflict of interest issues, are the problem. Not the poor underpaid bureacrat teaching in the no mans land of hospital schools (not to tear these dedicated souls down – but they work under impossible conditions).
The poor “underpaid bureacrat” should have told her superiors that he was already in surgery. She could have found out the time of the surgery and conveniently arrived a tad to late. And then she should have told her boss that he could stick the test up his arse.
Am I the only one who is uneasy with the fact that it’s the teacher who seems to be demonized here? I mean, maybe the teacher could have, and probably should have, refused to offer the test, but my guess is that someone above her made it clear what would happen, one way or another.
No, you are not, Dienne–my thoughts exactly. Kill the messenger?
Actually, I heard a story that might even be worse. A hospital/homebound teacher had been told that she MUST give a student the state assessment in the child psych ward–right after the student had attempted suicide.
On the flip side, however, was the principal who told a homebound/hospital teacher NOT to give a state assessment to a hospitalized, terminally ill child. “I don’t care if we get a 0 from the state! We are NOT going to do it!” he exclaimed.
The supervisors of these teachers should be fired if they gave the authority for this. If higher ups are involved they should be fired. This is outrageous. They are sociopaths. When someone is hooked up in that manner for that serious of a situation which could be life threatening caution is the best medicine. Before they go into a child’s room for class or tests they should consult with the doctors and nurses who deal with that patient. The doctor should be the shot caller in this not the school district. Health comes before tests. Is that hard to figure out?
NO!
They also give these tests to children with autism and other severe learning disabilities – kids who cannot speak or read many words at all. The parents of my friend’s 10yo child with nonverbal autism, just tell him to color the circles, because the teachers and administrators (where the parents put the blame, not the teachers who are just following orders) require him to take the test. The results are completely meaningless, just as the test is meaningless to the nonverbal child.
I am surprised the kid was not also forced to take the NYC mandated FITNESSGRAM test as well!!!
As an adult living with pediatric hydrocephalus, who had many surferies in my grade school years and college years, this story literally made me nauseous because I identified heavily with the boy. It is hard enough, developmentally speaking, to spend extensive time in the hospital, but to add state testing on top of it, to me borders on patient abuse. Stress does have an effect on patient pre-operative care and recovery. I recollect my teachers in the 80’s being very helpful to my parents in making up classwork and I do remember going to a hospital classroom in 4th grade, but the main concern was getting healthy enough to get back to the classroom-not to stress me out leading to more complications. Ah, but that was decades ago before we had the pedagogical wisdom of corporate reformers.
This is beyond words! I felt sick to my stomach and my heart!
And if the child was just too tired or stressed to answer the questions correctly, his teacher’s evaluation would suffer?? What if he had an epoxide during the test?? Funny how the blame was then shifted to the parents for not submitting the correct forms. I hope these parents now opt him out of all tests.
Is there any common sense left in the world beyond this blog space? President Obama, Arne Duncan, Governor Cuomo, Commissioner King…..how do you sleep at night knowing you are responsible for this?
I want to believe this. But before I re-post, does anyone have a credible source?
Go to the link and watch or read the news report.
Jon–read the Valerie Strauss story about the Florida boy with the brain stem who had to take the FCAT. All true, and more sickening. Honestly, no one can make this stuff up–it’s all happening, and I’ve got at least 50 really heart-wrenching special ed. testing stories, as well. Shameful torture and child abuse!
I think the child isn’t the only one who needs brain surgery. Some educationists need a complete brain transplant.
The parents should sue every possible defendant here.
I am beyond words. That doesn’t happen very often.
This can’t possibly be true, can it?
Seriously?
If he were alive today Benjamin Franklin might say, “Nothing is certain except death, taxes, and testing”
This is such a terrible story of bureaucratic abuse. The Horror.
Someone should have called protective services. This story is just plain sickening. Does anyone respect the well-being of children any more?
REVOLTING!
I don’t care what the “state” mandates: the adults in this situation should have had NO breakdown in communication and should have assessed the situation to see if it was appropriate to approach the child under these circumstances.
Anyone who was doing their job correctly would never have gone near this child.
At the very least, a moral person would disregard their job’s policy if the humanity in this situation were acknowledged.
I truly must refrain from impolite language in further characterizing the person who did this as well as ALL the people in the chain of command above this individual.
If I were the parent and in proximity to this “service provider”, there would have been some very justified aggravated assault, out of protection for the boy . . .
I saw an administrator who stopped a parent from picking up their child to take them to the doctor. He could not pick up his child because the school was state standards testing. She offered to call his doctor to help him get a new appointment or she would call security.
Sick puppy that administrator.
TESTING is a JOKE.
I hope this parent sues and more parents do the same.
Thank you for posting this outrageous story about my son. While he is not currently having brain surgery, he is undergoing testing to see if he is a candidate. I have to say that the teacher in the hospital was very lovely and did deem him medically excused, but it still floors me that testing sick kids in a hospital setting is even considered!
Thank you for posting this story about my son. While is not undergowing brain surgery at this time he has been hospitalized for a week to test to see if he is a brain surgery candidate. I do have to say that the teacher was very supportive and did agree that he should be medically exempt from the test. However, the fact that there are kids being tested while sick in the hospital is outrageous, especially when their scores are being tied to teacher evaluations.
Truly sick policy. How could the child to his best on a test under those circumstances??!!
Just tell him to draw a pattern. Hey, he took the test!!
A special education teacher I know was directed to Phoenix Children’s Hospital to give the three-day AIMS test (which on average runs about 9-12 hours, depending on the kid) to a child who had JUST WOKEN UP FROM A COMA. There is no way I would allow anyone to harass my family in the hospital orr threaten my child’s health, simply to give him a state test. It’s madness.
Wow, did Bill Gates stop by too?
Bill Gates dropped by to make sure the doctors implanted one of his “reaction” chips.
He was invited, but…you know, he’s too busy to spend much time with us “lesser” people…
Can’t we start a movement to inform Parents that they have the right to opt out of these test? I opted out both of my children and somehow, miracle of miracles they both graduated from college and are employed. I am an educator with an Ed.D from UCLA and I find the use of these test to be bastardized into something unrecognizable.
PS. It’s now being called “erase” to the top
There is a young lady in 8th grade in our area who was starting to fall into a bad depressive funk. So her parents intentionally kept her home for the three days of ELA testing in NYS. The very first day she is back in school after that testing absence school personal grabbed her out of one of her middle school classes and made her take the first multiple choice section of the test! Child is not feeling well enough to have a safety plan in place for her anxiety and depression and these bozos are forcing her to sit for this long PIA stressful test?
Where has our common sense and no less sense of decency, humanity and compassion gone with things like this start happening to the point of having full-time employee teachers in Hospitals to administer tests to these children when they are NOT well in one manner or another and probably are not capable of testing to their full ability and or doing such could make the get worse such as in these two kids situations?
It just goes to prove that even the DATA and Metrics they care to be ALL so concerned about collecting is totally Bogus. Who wants, who demands to test and grade children when they are Sick, ill, not feeling right even suffering from illnesses of their BRAINS themselves! Like are we not trying to expand, take best care of, and then “Measure” those Brains? This is sickening.
BTW, this girl mentioned here her parents are still fighting to get her properly schooled without being dumped in some trash can of education. When well she is extremely bright and creative, way above grade level one of the smartest kids in her school and grade. Is there no way to get smart but suffering children Their Special Needs Attended to as well? Instead of lumping them in with those that have true learning difficulties and disabilities?
When will we expend as much time and energy treating smart intelligent creative kids bored out of their mind numbing skulls as the equally special needs children that they are as well? ALL Children deserve to be taught with compassion and decency, and some amount of moderate accommodation to their uniqueness not only some. It is what is the decent thing to do and it is what is best for us as a nation and society to do as well. Care for those that need help and support and help as well as helping our best and brightest reach their full potential too. In this way we will have a larger pool of those great thinkers of creativity and solutions, inventions and leaders of generations to come….
Neglecting any child is a sin against humanity and we should all be ashamed of doing such presently in such a deliberate and dehumanizing fashion…