TCAP Madness

“Oh Mommy, I’m so nervous!” my daughter said when she came home from school a couple of weeks ago. “If I don’t do well on my TCAPs, I won’t get into magnet school!”

“What are you talking about, Punky?” I asked her. “Who told you that?”

“Everyone’s talking about it!” she said. “TCAPs are in two weeks and I have to do well on them. I just HAVE to!”

And so it begins.

As a third grader, this year marks the first time my daughter will take a standardized test that actually affects her future. Her scores will determine everything from admittance to magnet school to her final report card grades to the teacher she’s assigned next year. Similar to what’s been going on in every other elementary school across the state, her teachers and administrators have been in a frenzy of preparations over the last few weeks, administering practice tests, holding pep rallies, and making sure every child is up to speed on the TCAP’s contents. It is teaching to the test at its finest.

And like most other parents, I HATE IT.

I hate the pressure put on our children to do well. I hate the fact that so much of their learning time is devoted to preparing for TCAP- time that could be spent instead on science experiments and writing centers and class projects and all the other things that allow elementary school students to actually ENJOY the learning process.

I hate hearing the stories from friends of children crying over TCAP stress, of Power Point presentations given to the students detailing all the ways TCAP scores will personally affect them, of folders sent home containing dozens and dozens of test prep worksheets, to be completed by the end of the week.

I understand that this is not the teachers’ fault- TCAPs are every bit as stressful for them as they are for the students. And when a teacher is stressed, the students know it and often internalize it.

It’s not the most optimal learning environment, is it?

The TCAPs have me on edge right now, as well. Punky is not a great standardized test taker, and never has been. She loves hands-on learning, like science experiments and writing letters to her classmates and elaborate class projects– but give her a test booklet and answer key and she tunes right out. Sometimes, she doesn’t read the instructions carefully enough and other times she gets off track as she’s filling in the bubbles. She’s had three standardized tests to gauge her learning so far this year and the results were laughable- While the tests scores were supposed to climb every few months, Punky’s results looked like a series of steep mountain peaks. It made no sense.

I laughed to myself and threw the scores away. They didn’t define my child- I mean, this is a kid who has always made straight As. She’s in the gifted program. She spends hours a day reading. I’m not worried.

Or at least, I wasn’t worried until now.Will all of these things count for nothing if her standardized testing scores aren’t great? Is that really possible? I don’t want to find out. Punky and I have had a few discussions over the last week about the importance of reading the instructions thoroughly and going back to check her work and make sure she penciled in everything correctly when she’s done.  “You sound like a teacher, Mommy,” she said with a grimace after one of my lectures. “Can’t you just be supportive?” I gaped at her.

TCAP madness. It’s gotten to me, too.

Image via albertogp123/Flickr