Fly by
I am laying with Ash willing her to close her eyes and go to sleep. Yes, I have to lay with my 9 YO to get her to sleep. Every fucking night. So instead of playing FarmVille I will do a quick post. There is a lot of great stuff going on but I am going to rant about common core and standardized tests.
Common core sucks ass. Seriously. You know, ash has done great, until this year. She has always been above grade in math and reading. Until this year. The bottom fell out of math. We struggled all year. I hated the teacher, it was a horrible match and the more behind Ash fell, the less attention she got. We finally got her moved down in January (this was a whole mess and handled horribly and the old math teacher accused me of attacking her in front of the principal. So I got to go in and complain after the teacher told me 'she was done with Ashley' in an email). She is on grade now and isn't doing great. For example, the teacher now tells me she is struggling with subtraction. Um, OK. Well, she knows how to subtract but if she doesn't use the strategy the teacher says to use, she gets no credit. I am at a loss for what to do. Does it matter how you get the answer if you show your work? Apparently not. So she went from doing great in above grade math to a 66% in on grade math in less than a year.
Then I get the scores used to determine GT placement. Clearly, she is not GT given what we've been through with math this year, but I was really not prepared for how low her scores are. Like last year, she was getting all above averages and 90-95th percentile (MAP tests) and this test (CoGat) she is in the bottom 15%. WTF? She has extreme test anxiety and putting a timer on her is like putting a gun to her head. I reached out to a friend who is a teacher and has her daughter on an IEP. Should I look into getting her on a 504 plan? She has the SPD and anxiety diagnosis from her therapist. I just don't want to jump the gun and make the wrong decision. I feel like the schools spend most of their time and effort on the 'advanced' kids. The average/normal kids get lost in the shuffle. Or should I not care about test scores? I am thinking about opting out. At least for ash. It isn't worth all the anxiety leading up to it. We have PARCC in a few weeks and ash has herself so whipped up she can't sleep.
It sucks to have to hear your kid say she is too stupid to do math.
Common core sucks ass. Seriously. You know, ash has done great, until this year. She has always been above grade in math and reading. Until this year. The bottom fell out of math. We struggled all year. I hated the teacher, it was a horrible match and the more behind Ash fell, the less attention she got. We finally got her moved down in January (this was a whole mess and handled horribly and the old math teacher accused me of attacking her in front of the principal. So I got to go in and complain after the teacher told me 'she was done with Ashley' in an email). She is on grade now and isn't doing great. For example, the teacher now tells me she is struggling with subtraction. Um, OK. Well, she knows how to subtract but if she doesn't use the strategy the teacher says to use, she gets no credit. I am at a loss for what to do. Does it matter how you get the answer if you show your work? Apparently not. So she went from doing great in above grade math to a 66% in on grade math in less than a year.
Then I get the scores used to determine GT placement. Clearly, she is not GT given what we've been through with math this year, but I was really not prepared for how low her scores are. Like last year, she was getting all above averages and 90-95th percentile (MAP tests) and this test (CoGat) she is in the bottom 15%. WTF? She has extreme test anxiety and putting a timer on her is like putting a gun to her head. I reached out to a friend who is a teacher and has her daughter on an IEP. Should I look into getting her on a 504 plan? She has the SPD and anxiety diagnosis from her therapist. I just don't want to jump the gun and make the wrong decision. I feel like the schools spend most of their time and effort on the 'advanced' kids. The average/normal kids get lost in the shuffle. Or should I not care about test scores? I am thinking about opting out. At least for ash. It isn't worth all the anxiety leading up to it. We have PARCC in a few weeks and ash has herself so whipped up she can't sleep.
It sucks to have to hear your kid say she is too stupid to do math.