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| Kindergarten College Application work sheet from ms.preppy.blogspot.com |
Every
child’s life, from K-12, is about getting into college; the way to do that is
test, test, test. Right?
That
is true according to school boards and teachers across the country.
“We need to ask them, ‘How will you get
there?’ Even if I am teaching preschool, the word ‘college’ has to be in
there,” Kelli Rigo, a teacher at Johnsonville Elementary School in North
Carolina, told the New York Times.
Ms.
Rigo has her 1st grade students create their own college
applications, which are then displayed in the classroom.
Steven
Gilhuley, a principal at Howard T. Herber Middle School in Malverne, wants his
students to not be nervous about the SAT, according to the New York Times. That means starting the
SAT conversation at age 6 or 7. Elementary and middle school children in
Malverne, N.Y., learn SAT vocabulary in the morning and keep a vocabulary
notebook.
Not
everyone agrees with the heightened emphasis on college preparation. Middle and
high school students and parents, even a few educators, are protesting the new
PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career) test.
“There
was ‘no doubt’ children were being tested too much,” Salvatore Goncalves,
superintendent of the Bloomfield School District, N.J., told the New YorkTimes.
Hundreds
of high school students in New Mexico agreed with Mr. Goncalves; students held
protests against the newly implemented PARCC exam on Monday, according to the
Albuquerque Journal. Students held signs with slogans such as “I am more than a
test score,” “Say no to PARCC,” and “Why take a test everyone is going to fail?”
If
your child is enrolled in a public school, or you are that child, it’s up to
you to take a stand. Do twelve years need to be devoted to getting
into college? Or is that putting too much unnecessary stress on elementary
kids?
