Standardized Exams a Test of Moms’ Mettle

Friday, May 7, 2004

Page 15

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Standardized Exams a Test of Moms’ Mettle

By J’AMY PACHECO

Have you noticed a sudden decline in the availability of fresh eggs?

It has nothing to do with post-Easter depletion or Mad-Chicken Disease fears. Nope, it’s because it’s Cat-6 time.

For those not familiar with the term, Cat-6 is the name given to standardized tests administered to students in California. (I’m sure there is a longer, more official name for the tests, but I don’t know what it is, and I’m not about to look it up.)

The idea behind the tests, as I understand it, is to measure students’ performance in certain areas, thus measuring the school’s success at teaching the tested subjects. Scores earned by the students are tallied up using some mysterious formula, then printed in the newspaper where parents read them and are compelled to say things like, “Dear, I think Junior needs to move to a private school.”

In our case, however, parents say things like, “Woo hoo!” because the public school’s scores are pretty impressive.

Students don’t participate in Cat-6 testing until second grade. I know this because last summer, my then-soon-to-be-second-grader informed me she didn’t want to go back to school. Quizzed for motivation, she explained that second graders have to take “important” tests—and she was already starting to crack under the pressure.

But with a little motherly persuasion, she entered second grade anyway, assured that the tests wouldn’t be given until the school year was almost over. Throughout the early months of the school year, however, students began prepping by regularly taking practice tests.

The day before testing started, my daughter came home well prepared. She wore a “brain power” hat covered with stars and “wow words,” and carried a smooth worry stone that was to be rubbed in case of sudden anxiety.

She also carried a tiny Sponge Bob. I’m not sure what the little cartoon character has to do with testing, but she said he was supposed to accompany her to school during the two weeks of testing.

She also learned, she reported, how to do yoga and how to imagine herself in a “happy place” if she got too stressed.

“Honey,” I said. “It’s second grade, not medical school. If you get something wrong, nobody dies.”

I said it, but I’m not convinced I really meant it.

Her teachers sent home a note stressing the importance of a good night’s sleep and nutritious breakfasts. A quick glance at the cartoon-character covered boxes in my pantry sent me to the Internet, where I did a search on “high protein breakfast.”

Most of what I found was applicable to buffing up the body rather than the brain, but I did find some helpful suggestions from a pediatrician. So on Day One of the test period, I scrambled eggs, cut up melon and strawberries and spooned out yogurt.

My daughter ate the strawberries, then insisted she was full. In the car, she filled up on some Goldfish crackers she found in the bottom of her backpack.

“I was huuungry,” she explained.

I later learned that nearly every mother had done the same thing I had done that morning—scrambled eggs in the hope of sparking sudden genius in their offspring. (Had I foreseen this, I would have invested in egg stocks. For two weeks, anyway.)

The first week is nearly over, and I’m still scrambling eggs. I’m not sure it will help her test scores, but at least I know it’s helping the farm economy.

When I was in second grade, I learned to read, and sing sweet little songs like “Inchworm, Inchworm.” In second grade today, students are expected to know how to multiply and divide, how to measure using feet AND meters, and how to calculate fractions. They are expected to identify rectangular prisms, spheres, geometric sides, faces—and something called a vertex.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I managed to graduate high school, with honors, and never learned the term “vertex.” It was only through helping my little brainiac with homework that I learned to identify a vertex.

No doubt about it—children are expected to know a great deal more than the previous generation. So those of us who graduated ignorant of vertices buy eggs and yogurt, hoping to adequately fuel the brains that will run the world tomorrow.

Will it work? Too soon to tell. I guess we’ll just have to wait and listen for the “Woo hoo’s!”