A reader sent this letter written by her 14-year-old daughter. She should become active in the opt-out movement. She should contact Tim Slekar and Shaun Johnson “At the Chalkface.”
Mother and daughter: resist. Join with others. Don’t let them destroy your education in the name of “accountability.” Hold the Mindless Testing Fanatics accountable.
She writes:
“Thank you for speaking up about these high stakes graduation exams. My 14 year-old daughter was required to take Algebra 1 this year (in 8th grade) and to take a first attempt at passing the new Pennsylvania, Keystone Exam. We live in the high achieving, suburban Philadelphia school district of Lower Merion, and have been extremely happy with our district until the Common Core Sate Standards and Keystone exams affected her this year. We know other children & families who feel much the same way.
“After day 1 of the exam, she came home a ball of stress. As a way of letting out her feelings, she wrote the essay below. At the end, she writes that she will never take a Keystone again, but unfortunately, that may be impossible. As I am sure you are aware, districts need to create projects for students who opt out or fail repeatedly. We have no idea what these projects entail. She is hoping that her essay will be published as a post. Thank you for considering giving her a voice.”
STOP KEYSTONES ONCE AND FOR ALL
My Story
By Jordyn Schwartz
Today I have experienced one of the most confidence breaking and mind troubling obstacles in my entire life; the Algebra 1 Keystone exam for the State of Pennsylvania. When I sat down to take this standardized test, I did not know what I was getting myself into. My math teacher had been preparing us for this test, but even with all that drill and practice, my mind could not take it all in. The first 14 questions took me over 10 minutes each when I was trying to solve the unfamiliar equations, long word problems, and words I didn’t even know how to pronounce. I was telling myself that I was going to be fine until all of the stress overwhelmed my body. I was frustrated. “I should know this,” I thought. I wasn’t even half way done when they announced that there were only 10 minutes remaining. I only completed my first set of grueling questions, and still had another set of them and 2 short answer sections containing at least 6 more questions each. I wouldn’t get help from a,b,c or d with these.
At that moment, my mind broke down. I was telling myself that I was stupid, and that these kinds of tests make me feel like I don’t know anything. After hours of work, I still had so much more. It is extremely difficult to continue concentrating at the same intense level as you did when you first started. I was sick and tired of looking at those same boring Algebra problems.
I am an A average student all around, and score advanced on PSSA’s. But I couldn’t even read the next problem without all of those discouraging thoughts spiraling in my mind. I tried telling myself to pull through, but I found myself not caring anymore, and just wanting to circle some letter. I did that for two or three questions and stopped. I dropped my pencil on my desk, tried taking some deep breaths, and thought of ripping my booklet into shreds. I poked holes in my booklet with my pencil, and started squeezing my hands tightly as if I was going to explode. I was that angry, outraged, fuming. I felt so incredibly frustrated that these stupid test companies don’t care what they are doing to the students of our country. All they want is the money, and the worst part is, nothing is being done to stop them. Why don’t the politicians making my generation the most over tested in history try the tests for themselves? I bet most of them would fail or do poorly. I mean, if smart, educated people don’t do well on these tests, than what do they show?
These Keystone tests are breaking kids down, making us feel dumb and not want to learn, instead of making us want to enjoy the wonders and greatness of education. I know that when most people in my grade hear the words, standardized testing, no one is jumping up and down with excitement. I am an 8th grade student in the Lower Merion School District: a district known for their excellent education. When kids here are complaining about how difficult it is for us to take these tests, who knows what kids in struggling school districts are experiencing. Why should these tests be a graduation requirement for high school?
After my big meltdown from the frustration of not knowing how in the world to do these problems, I didn’t continue my test. I told the guidance counselor I couldn’t take it any more, and how it made me feel horrible inside. Although I kept calm on the outside, on the inside I was bomb about to explode. I was holding back my tears. I bet many other kids felt this same way, even if it wasn’t as strongly as I felt. I will tell you one thing, I am never taking one of those tests again. No test shall ever make me feel as low and deflated as I did today. I don’t care what alternative project I have to do in exchange for the Keystone test. Let me be exempted. No one should experience what I have experienced today. Standardized testing needs to be stopped.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am glad she had access to a counselor, it must have been very frightening to experience what she was going through in the confines of a mandated test environment in the classroom.
This letter should be sent to the Philadelphia Inquirer and any other news media in the area. Students can’t be fired and if they make their situations known perhaps they will garner outrage from the public, It is certainly worth a try.
Reading this essay was both inspiring and heartbreaking. Jordyn Schwartz is an articulate and courageous spokesperson. She should be asked to speak on one of the mass audience appeal shows, such as various NPR shows, Oprah’s network, daytime talk shows, and TED talks. If the korporatizors of K-20 education won’t listen to research, educators of every stripe, then perhaps they will listen to the consumers themselves, who know what education is, and is not, at the hands outsiders, profiteers, and self-deluded politicians.
What a powerful letter! She is right now about everything, especially her feelings about the following: “When kids here are complaining about how difficult it is for us to take these tests, who knows what kids in struggling school districts are experiencing.” I know I worry about these affects on special education and ESL kids.
In summary, It’s child abuse! This student couldn’t articulate the problem better.
That is the purpose of the current insanity in education – to break down students … And I add their public school teachers and public education. What an embarrassment this country is re: USDoE and the $$$$$. It’s about PROFIT for the few.
Thank you Diane and all who commented. Jordyn was so proud her letter got posted and currently is in Texas at a national middle school engineering and technogy convention. She called me this morning to tell me her group came in first place in the country for Go Green Manufacturing and second in the country for Agruculture & Biotechnology. I’d say experiences like these, which successfully exist in public schools, get our kids more “college & career ready” than standardized tests any day! We will follow Diane’s advice and learn more about opting out. Thank you so much!
What a remarkably well written, moving piece your daughter wrote here! How I wish that the Arne Duncans, the Jeb Bushes, the Michelle Rhees of the world had a fraction of the insight that your daughter has!
What an intelligent well written girl! My daughter too, is 14 and had a very similar experience with her Algebra EOC testing here in Florida. She missed passing by 2 points and will now need to retake the test in the summer. There is no alternative to testing here in Florida, the only option is home school or switching her to private school. Why can’t our government stay out of education and let the states handle their schools? Why do the politicians and state commissioners become so overly invested in this profit of testing. In looking for Algebra help for my daughter to retake this end of course Algebra exam, I found a common core based website, that for about $90 my daughter could practice her skills. Everything is already profit over people in our country, but when it concerns our children and their right to a free and non stressful eduction, it is cruel and it needs to stop. It is creating anxiety filled kids who think they are stupid and feel defeated.
BRAVO Jordyn Schwartz! While you are a young lady, your courage and leadership are an inspiration for the rest of us!
Thank you!
I hope every ed blog in the country prints this letter so that President and Mrs. Obama read it. Other people’s children have names, faces, feelings, and hopes for their futures.
What makes you think Obama would care? Do you think he was unaware of the 400+ letters sent to him last year? He either chose not to read them or didn’t care what they said. Why would one more letter make any difference?
Please don’t pin your hopes on Obama – it’s a losing game.
Dienne,
He’s a politician, and derives a significant amount of his influence from those of us in this camp. Plus, the DOE has a huge amount of influence in this space. It may seem silly to pin our hopes on Obama, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t press his administration at every turn.
I, too, am disappointed in his administration’s adoption of this protocol. Just as I am of Bill Gate’s. We can sit in a corner and moan, or act.
This is heartbreaking and entirely to be expected. It’s how most kids feel about what is being done to them. This has to stop.
“I can’t imagine there’s a student in America who gets up in the morning hoping he [or she] can improve the state’s test scores.” –Ken Robinson, Time magazine, June 10, 2013.
This is just so sad. It’s senseless, too, except when you realize that it’s all part of the neo-liberal free-market business plan to privatize America’s public schools. As “reformer” Rick Hess indicated, the aim of the Common Core and high-stakes tests is to prove to suburban parents that their schools are failing, so that privatization can infiltrate their real estate, too: “First, politicians will actually embrace the Common Core assessments and then will use them to set cut scores that suggest huge numbers of suburban schools are failing. Then, parents and community members who previously liked their schools are going to believe the assessment results rather than their own lying eyes.” http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2012/11/the_common_core_kool-aid.html
I think the suburbs is where this plan is actually going to backfire though. Politicians and their corporate sponsors have become accustomed to steamrolling parents from under-represented groups and low income families in urban school districts, most of which are under mayoral or state control and don’t have elected school boards, because those parents have virtually no recourse when their outcries are ignored.
What the “reformers” do not seem to have taken into account is that suburban parents are more inclined to believe and care about their traumatized children than standardized test scores. And, with democratically elected school boards, they have more options than parents with children trapped in politically controlled city school districts, who care just as much about their kids, but who tend to forget when they vote for mayors and governors that that is the only time they get to vote for the leaders of their schools.
I’ve often tried to figure out what I could do to help save public education, if I won the lottery and had the financial means to make a significant difference. Since it’s so unlikely that I would ever suddenly have billions of dollars and be able to compete with corporations, I’m thinking millions. Because I believe that it is democracy which will be our saving grace, here’s what I would do:
I would establish a 501(c)3 and a 501(c)4 and I would buy air time on radio, network and cable TV, as well as ads in city and suburban newspapers, especially before elections. I would provide public service announcements that inform people about neo-liberalism and the business plan to privatize public services like education, as well as provide info about which candidates support privatization and which don’t. I would include testimonials from students such as Jordyn who have been harmed by policies promoted by the politicians and profiteers behind this get-rich-quick scheme, which enables education entrepreneurs and corporations to feast at the $600 billion dollar per year public funding trough, at the expense of millions of innocent children. .
I’m sharing this here because winning the lottery is such a long shot, so if anyone has that kind of disposable income, I’m hoping maybe they will do it.
Thank you to everyone who commented today. Jordyn just got home from her National TSA competition, and was blown away by each of your words of encouragement & support. She couldn’t believe it. We feel much less alone now. For the record, her Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) scores came in the mail today. She scored advanced in math as well as reading and writing. It certainly seems like the new tests were created to fail otherwise successful kids (She took the PSSA test and the Keystone Exam just weeks apart). Jordyn wants to speak up, please reach out to us if there is anyone who wants her to share her story.
Maybe the faces and voices of the children will make a difference.
Money can’t buy everything.
As a teacher in a public school in suburbs of Philadelphia, I have first hand experienced the same frustration as Jordyn. It breaks my heart to watch the kids struggle over the tests and know there is as much pressure on the teacher for the students to do well. Beyond how the kids are affected the teachers are just as much. PSSA or Keystone – if they don’t cut it on the test it is now going to be a part of the teacher’s evaluation. While I agree that teachers need to be accountable – standardized testing it not a measure of a great teacher or how well a students learned the material. Best of Luck Jordyn
Tell Jordyn I saw this on Facebook! It’s making the rounds.
Check out the Philly Free School. No testing of any kind and she’ll get a great education on her own terms.
Hi this is Jordyn. I just wanted to thank everyone for their thoughts and responses to my essay. I can’t believe the great responses I am getting! (Facebook, too!) At first when I was writing, it was just a way to get out my thoughts, but now it is becoming much more. I really want to try and make a difference in education because with all of the testing, it is ruining learning for kids. I want to learn more and spread the word about opting out. I feel that it is important to tell people that we need to put an end to over testing. If we don’t put an end to it, where will we get our leaders of tomorrow? I don’t know that there will be people interested in making new discoveries and having creative ideas that will change people ‘s lives if testing continues to discourage kids. I feel that with enough work and determination we could be the people to stop this focus on all of the wrong things.
Again, thank you for everything. This means so much to me and I am sure that it does for many other students throughout the country, too.
What a FABULOUSLY well written account! How sad indeed, that our society, in this day and age, is so hell bent on creating a ‘genius’ sect that it would go to such lengths as to actually destroy, with one not-so-well-thought-out requirement, the very essence of a child. WHO would agree to allow their sense of self worth to be used as collateral? I’m angry and so sad that acceptable test scores are all our young people are worth. And I thought the high suicide rate in Japan based on too high expectations was bad..
Hi Jordyn,
My daughter is a sophomore in high school in Southwestern PA & has a 4.0 GPA & your essay sounds like she wrote it because she went through all of the exact feelings that you described. It is so horrible what the education department/government is putting you students through. It is just too much stress for young minds. My daughter is in all honors classes which is advanced courses and those alone are enough stress & I thought that she was going to have a full blown mental break down during her Keystone Exams last year. She came home from school today very upset because she has to take the Algebra I Keystone Exam over because she was just a few points shy of passing it. Her Accelerated Algebra II GPA at the end of last year was a high A. The education department/government do not realize what they are doing to the young minds of students. Do they not see that they are so close to causing massive mental breakdowns in teenagers & are discouraging them from wanting to learn especially students that are like you & my daughter who are above average students with enough daily stress of keeping up & excelling in your main classes, I am very tired of seeing my daughter so stressed, upset & crying that I am filled with a lot of rage right now! We stand with you 100% & I would love to have you & my daughter get in touch with each other & brainstorm the DOE/government by hitting them from all sides of PA.
Hi Clarene,
I am so glad I happened to check this page today. Please contact me through my blog and we can connect from there. Yes, let’s support one another and have our girls do the same. Check out my most recent entry, Common Core or Caste System?
http://whatsthebigideaschwartzy.blogspot.com/2013/10/common-core-or-caste-system.html
“They” know exactly what they are doing to our kids and they don’t care. Our kids are pawns in their games and it is time we stop allowing it. I look forward to hearing from you!
Jordyn’s mom, Danielle
Keystones don’t help with college!Colleges only don’t look at them!They just give highschoolers more reason to drop out!People also don’t realize how much stress it causes!Until this year,I did great.I didn’t have so much stress!Then I got to my freshmen year,I started failing math cause of the stress.I have a friend who took a keystone last year,she’s now having to take a online course and has to do a project that’s due sometime this year,I can tell she gets stressed cause of it.In my math class,there are people who took the keystone last year and they knew all the stuff,the keystones just stressed them out so they failed.Kids at my school are having to retake classes they took last year just cause they failed the keystone,instead of taking an elective of their choice.Its bad enough that we only can take two electives a year,but now cause of the keystones,kids who fail have to retake classes and are punished,just cause they failed.Its not fair.Keystones shouldn’t exist.
From a highschool student
Hi Liz,
I am so sorry for your stress. You are 100% right and it is frustrating for the adults who see that this is wrong. Please know that there are a lot of us fighting for you and for all kids. Unfortunately, change takes more time than we want. Please tell all people18 and older to vote in the next election for Pennsylvania’s governor (fall 2014). Look for a candidate who wants to end the Keystones. I know there is at least one out there. Do some on-line research and spread the word. Your generation has to speak up and get involved with the election. Your voices are important. Meanwhile, try not to stress. You are not alone. We are fighting for you.
Jordyn’s mom,
Danielle
Wow this is exactly how I felt when I took the test! I couldn’t stand myself when I was all done, I felt stupid and I started to not even care about stuff ,I was like I am just going to fail this why am I going 2 hours away from home just to take a test I know I cant pass!!
I agree with what Jordyn went through. As a freshman now I just took the keystones and was really surprised I passed (honestly thought I was going to fail.) I also am a straight A student who goes to a school with a good curriculum. But still I do not feel as if I was taught enough in my Algebra and Pre-Algebra classes and I forgot most of it by the time I took them. Basically for a whole month before them I was studying so hard and was so stressed out trying to remember algebra problems that I will most likely never use in the real world. When I got advanced in math on the PSSA’s I figured the keystones would be a breeze, but I honestly had not a clue how to do most of them problems and felt as if I was poorly prepared. Still shocked I passed and I do not think Keystones should be nearly this hard.
I am really stressing out about these Keystone tests. Here is a very smart girl that stressed over taking them. My son who is now a senior said those tests are hard. He passed one but failed another. He passed that one the second time. He is an A, B Student. My daughter who will be going to 10th grade this year and will be in the graduating class that has to pass these test has an IEP. She has a genetic disorder . She will never even have an Algebra Class and I was told she still has to take the Keystone’s and Pass. There are no special accommodations for the keystones exams. In her IEP she has special accommodations. How can Pa Government hold every person at the same standard. Everyone is different. She has struggled all the way through school. But the last 3 years she has been on the honor roll within her IEP. She has come a long way. But In PA’s eyes she will be considered dumb because she scored below basic. What’s the use of letting the kids with IEP’s go to school if they are never going to graduate. I don’t know what to do
I am 15 and i just took the Algebra 1 Keystone exam and the Biology Keystone exam. I had to retake the Algebra and the night before the retake i was so scared and feeling so down and so stupid that i wanted to cry. Then i had to take the Biology Keystones and when i was taking the test i though that i was doing good because i am really good at biology and i just find out that i may have to retake it. I am almost in tears right now. I am feeling so dumb. I go to Upper St Clair High School and that is a school where they have a lot of smart people who have no problem with them, but me i am not that smart as them i have a hard time getting a B in some classes and that is not in the Honors courses that we have. I am also worried about the schools who are struggling or the people who are not as smart as the people in really good schools. I know my opinion is not going to matter ,but i am still typing this becasue i think it need to be heard. Sorry if i offended people or anybody.