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English Testing. Useless. |
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Standardized testing. A concept made to be uniform in production and distribution with the purpose of evaluating an entire region's academic knowledge.
And it's the most useless thing here in Texas.
TAKS. Or TEKS. Before that was TAAS. You know what? I don't care. It consists of four main subjects: Math. Reading. Social Studies. Sciences. A piece of cake- don't we already get tested on those, anyway? SO how is it that Coronado High isn't making the Pass numbers that it's supposed to be doing
We're not helping much. I understand that El Paso, being a border town, needs to accommodate the flurry of kids we're bound to get from our neighboring country. But to what degree should our school district be pushing for Bilingual Education?
As far as the TAKS is concerned, I've yet to see a 'foreign language' section. And our English results? Sad.
Why? Don't we speak it? Actually- not so much.
Wandering around school contemplating this, I realized that many here can't help it. We're in a city where you have as much of a chance of Spanish being your primary language as much as you do English. Does this mean that it is the student's fault? Or the educator's?
I say both.
The educator's fault: The El Paso School District pushes Bilingual Education too far. I know that a few students need the help- Some of them don't know a single word in English. This should be where the education system kicks in- but doesn't. From what I see, language classes aren't all meant for learning said language.
Spanish class- heck, any class that is not English is supposed to give you the basics. English, however, presumes that you already know the basics. English doesn't even really teach English, even. It's more reading based than ever, surrounding books with English texts that follow a code of writing you teacher most likely is apprehensive about. So, students who want to learn English are left out of the mixed, dragged to English Remedial classes still heavily concerned with book-reading than language speaking.
The Student's fault: A majority of us are slackers, period. Some are occasion slackers, doing what's needed when it's needed, so no one minds. Others- and by that, I mean a majority- are constant slackers. And while that's not my business in many ways, I find myself rather irked at the idiot sitting next to me that speak English fluently enough that we can't get him to shut the hell up- but he still managed to royally screw up his test, skewing scores for the worse.
Stupid, now I have to do that much more work because of you.
Our other low scorers are the aforementioned non-native speakers. Some can't help it, I understand. Learn it. I know I'm at a disadvantage by being in a country that for the most part speaks a language I don't understand. What should I do? Study it!
Some are ignorant enough to expect the school to pander to their 'needs' while they loaf around 6 out of 7 periods of the day, smack talking lighter skinned people like me in a language they presume I don't understand. (Another blog, another day.)
This factors into the already useless TAKS test by making it that much more uninteresting. All of the students have to go through several preparation lessons because they happen to be stuck in the same class as the idiot that circled all answers as 'C', or that one kid that refuses to learn how to read English. (If you've got time to text 13,000 messages in a month, you've got time to learn English.)
For students like me that usually blow through their tests with record speeds and scores, this doesn't bode well when we have to take it. It really IS boring enough to send some off to DreamLand, and even though we can finish it in an hour for a period where we are allotted 4 hours to do it, we don't want to because afterward, we're allowed to do nada. You can't read certain things. No music. No games. No fun. I spent the excess 9 hours I had left over the three days sleeping on my arm, which hurt like hell the following day due to a lack of blood.
All of this testing. And what do we actually learn from it all? That we're another statistic?
I'm glad this year was my last.
 Miles Luneau · Thu May 21, 2009 @ 06:30am · 0 Comments |
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