My
frustrated fears about my daughter's future set loose in an "I-won't-really-send-it-to-her" letter to Florida Department
of Education Commissioner Pam Stewart:
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Dear Commissioner Stewart:
You
frighten me...and you are wrong.
You are wrong, Commissioner Stewart,
about the Florida Standards validation results just submitted to you on September first. I do NOT, as do you, "welcome"
the expected news of its validity.
I want to be polite. I want
to be nice. For, after all, my daughter's future is yours more than it is hers. And then, oh and then, you have the
audacity to tell us, in so many words, that the FSA mess of a test is "just a test really..." From the Tampa
Bay Times: "Stewart stressed that state tests never are used as
the single guideline for any such [graduation] decision."
Give me a break! I am breathing frustrated fire now! Like it isn't the single most important THING for my
eleventh grade honors (3.8 weighted GPA), flag spinning, dog walking, math whizz of daughter's graduation! For sure the punitive
and meaningless "Certificate of Completion" consequences to wonderful young people, like my daughter, who've done
EVERYTHING RIGHT--gotten the GPA and done the community service and met all of your course work requirements (yawn, by the
way on the online requirement; For goodness sake Commissioner Stewart! REALLY?! What teen doesn't know how to
use a computer!?)--AND THEN DO NOT receive a diploma because of your test. What are those "Certificate of Completion"
earning young people of the last fifteen years now doing? Talk about your "school to prison pipeline!"
"They will have ample opportunities...to retake the tests",
you say. Ha! Ample opportunity to lose hope and enthusiasm and drive and will and confidence! For each time that
they are made to take these awful tests again--each time that their futures are pitifully vulnerable--all of those intangible
attributes are bashed and bruised. Don't you know that? Do you really not know that? My God.
