This is a parody but it is uncomfortably close to reality.
The humorist known as Students Last has compiled a reading list to prepare children for failure on the tests.
Just listen to all the bigwigs warning about high failure rates, ripping off the Band-aid and sink-or-swim in the deep end of the pool. That’s enough to create a sense of dread and high anxiety.
The only thing missing from the reading list is a manual for nervous parents and an advice book on how to organize a mass resistance movement.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Beautiful.
If Common Core is not stopped, there will be demand for such books … a parody with only a razor-thin distance from reality.
Hi, Dr. Ravitch.
My name is Jenny. I’m a fifth-grade student in New York State and feel that the NYS tests are going to be too hard. Many kids are going to fail. From the research that I have done, I realize the reason the state is making the test harder is that NYS wants the public school students to fail. I AM a public school student. When we take the tests, many of us will be stressed out. What if students have a bad day on the day of the test and then they fail them? What if I don’t take the tests? I might go to summer school because NYS doesn’t allow kids to not take the tests. I feel that it is wrong to put a child in summer school for not taking a stupid test that determines if you know the specific type of math and ELA stuff on the tests. Kids need fun in the sun. Kids have rights, too.
Another problem is that teachers don’t like to see their kids fail, and I don’t like to see my teachers fail. I don’t like to see my teachers with sad faces because they see the results of the test and they say to themselves, “Did I do something wrong? Am I a bad teacher? Did I teach them what they needed to learn?” My Math and Science teacher is awesome and my Social Studies and ELA teacher is cool. They are very good teachers. They always tell my class that they want to keep us all day.
I feel that it’s wrong that NYS would give fifth graders tests that would be hard for us to pass. Shame on NYS.
Can you try to fight for us to stay out of summer school or from being punished by not getting into good classes because I don’t want to take the test?
I’m upset because I feel like they’re trading us to charter schools. I feel like NYS is treating us like test slaves.
I wrote this letter because I feel that it’s wrong. NYS is wrong for what they did.
Thank you for reading my letter. I know you have a lot of things to do.
Jenny
Another example of the BGUTI principle in action. Since Alfie Kohn coined this awkward acronym, I offer his explanation that it is “the assumption that children are best prepared for unpleasant experiences that may come later by being exposed to a lot of unpleasantness while they’re young.” [Better Get Used To It for the uninformed]
Strangely [??], though, I fail to find even a trace of this “sink and hold-their-heads-under-the-water” policy in place at Cranbrook or Harpeth Hall or U of Chicago Lab Schools or Delbarton School or Waldorf School of the Peninsula or Sidwell Friends and the like. Of course, they are all chock full of blustering claims that they’re adequate institutions of learning because they offer a plethora of calibrated and confidence-building challenges in their woefully old-fashioned arts & music programs and athletic activities and foreign language and drama offerings and education abroad electives blahblahblah…well, plenty of substitutes [margarine instead of butter!] that simply cover up their excuses for eliding the essentials of the Common Core of the School of Hard Knocks.
I guess they must have missed the memo. [Not that memo, Michelle!]