Monday, March 29, 2010

Brain Drain

"The Man" is trying to suck all brain power out of every student! It started with the vile SAT and the ACT for college-bound students. That morphed into the OGT - Ohio Graduation Test for high school sophomores, which birthed the proficiency tests that plague the elementary schools. All to put kids into a percentile and to decide who has ascertained the most with wrote learning.
It's gonna be the death of me!
April 10th will be the third time I've taken the ACT (the more common of the two college aptitude tests in Ohio). Every time I walk in mentally prepared at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning... By noon when I stumble out the testing room doors, I am about an inch away from a coma! My mind is so exhausted that it makes me physically fatigued! And, it's the same thing for any of those same style tests. OGT was easy, but it still took a WEEK of my time; not to mention I had Mono when I was taking it! The elementary-level ones do the same darn thing, and it's every other year -- how atrocious?!
Do other states have their version of the OGT or is Ohio just lead by sadists who want to make students suffer to prove that their 12 years of education set in at least a little?

1 comment:

DiAnne said...

Well, only Ohio has the "OGT" since it stands for "Ohio Graduation Test" but all 50 of 'em have standardized graduation tests. I understand the concept of why we have them - two many kids were being "passed" and allowed to graduate without learning anything. But so much emphasis is placed on the tests that it takes away from the actual learning process. Now, America "teaches to test" rather than teaching for the kids to learn and experience.