* A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose: NOT !

Letters to the Editor

The Valley News

Word count: 350

Dear Editor:

     Years ago I coined this phrase: “Every mother knows you cannot rush a rose.” All parents know that their children grow at different rates. I was always called a “late bloomer”  because I did poorly on tests and was socially awkward,

but somehow I managed to  graduate from four colleges: Ithaca, Kent State, Yale and Middlebury.

     After teaching in Vermont public schools for 25 years I have come to this conclusion: we are harming  “late bloomer” children by subjecting them to standardized tests. Not every Ninth Grade student is ready to be tested on what the pompous Princeton Educational Testing Service and its money-hungry clones have decided are “Ninth Grade  Benchmarks”.  You cannot rush a rose.

     Subjecting all students to standardized testing and then reporting the results on their official  school record and/or  analyzing where they stack up against all other students of the same grade level in America is, at best,  a form of unkindness, and at worst, a form of  cruelty, i.e.  a form of child abuse.

   Why have parents, without a peep,  surrendered to this kind of cruelty?  Because they  have been told by their school boards to do so.  And why have the school boards surrendered?  Because they have been lured by the big bucks of the federal government which says if you want our millions, you must report your students’ “achievements” on standardized tests.

    I advocate a grass-roots parent revolution since the school boards  and the states are too cowardly to stand up to the federal government.  Parents, especially those of late bloomers, should create an organization called BOOOST (Better Opt Out Of Standardized Testing), insisting that their child or children have the right to refuse to take any standardized test.

    Cruelty is cruelty. I still remember how depressed I felt when I got a combined score of 989 on the SAT’s in high school. (1000 was the minimum needed if you didn’t have a foreign language and I had flunked Latin). My fate seemed sealed when my high school guidance counselor told me “You are not college material.”

   Thank goodness my mother raised roses.

Paul D. Keane

Independent Candidate for the Vermont House