This comment from a teacher who read the post “For Shame, Commissioner King.” That post described how the state commissioner in New York requires special education students to take examinations they can’t read.

The teacher writes:

“I am often asked to proctor extended time testing on our all-too-frequent assessment days (quarterly interims, ACTs, PSAEs, practice for all of the above, etc.). I have been told it’s because I “get it” by our very talented, also very frustrated, special education team. By “get it,” they mean that, as a traditionally-certified teacher (in a charter network which favors TFAers) who attended an actual school of education, I have taken a few required classes on student learning differences and understand that not all kids can be lumped into a mediocre average and expected to achieve the same baseline level of understanding given “optimal input” and prison-like management. My husband works in mental health, so I am also inappropriately (illegally) consulted on student psychological issues far outside my job as a Latin teacher. It amazes me how clueless, or maybe worse, how careless, our schools have become with these students. Our school has an AMAZING special education team, yet they are ignored, forgotten about, and not consulted when it comes to the students they know best. Many have left or are leaving to take their talent elsewhere, and who could blame them?

“When I proctored my first extended time interim (a totally unnecessary in-network assessment incentivized by bonuses for both students and teachers whose scores compete with other schools in our network), I was shocked and appalled at what we do to our kids who already struggle to stay focused on one narrow task and sit still in their normal 45-minute class periods. We put them all in a room together, and make them sit still and silent for four hours. It was miserable for me, and I can only imagine how miserable it was for them. One student managed to pull a dollar bill out of his pocket, and studied it intently for a good 10 or 15 minutes during his math exam, no doubt running out of time when it came to actually completing the test. Knowing this student, I’m sure something in his exam inspired some spark of curiosity that he couldn’t ignore. This type of exploration might have been acknowledged positively, could have lent itself to a “teachable moment” to help students see some cross-curricular connections between printed money and history or culture (I’m going to pretend he was reading the Latin). But instead, I was expected to silently discipline the student after the test for not “focusing hard enough” on his pointless, soulless, disconnected interim exam.

“I hate where we are headed. I hate how little schools are allowed to appreciate real, connected learning, curiosity, and critical thinking. I hate to see brilliance stifled by enforced mediocrity. I feel so lucky to have attended schools before this wave of “reform,” but heartbroken for so many of my students who trust their futures to a system that is ultimately failing to help them reach their human potential, because being human is too messy, too hard to assign convenient numerical values to, and apparently undesirable to our policymakers and their corporate sponsors.”