Reading, writing and SATs

While Roman adds new words to his repertoire on a weekly basis, Reni is teaching himself how to read and write. He's been sounding out words and writing them with this gigantic Avengers pencil in a little Target dollar-section notebook Armando picked up for him a few weeks ago. I flip through it occasionally to see what he's written, and amongst the pictures of little robot-like men and airplanes are words like "walkie talkie" (spelled exactly like that), "pop," "tut" (toot), "mama," "kite," "new," "mine," and some other words I can't make out but I'm sure he knows what they are. He also writes all the numbers up to 20 and, probably in a copy cat move from his sister, draws lots of hearts after his name. He made a "Shapes Book" at school, where he colored, cut out, and then wrote the name of each shape (copied from the white board) and he likes to read this before bed. He is so stinkin' proud of himself. Anika is also making a book, one where she writes a little story corresponding to each letter in the alphabet. She's on the letter F right now, and she does the pictures and words all by herself, sometimes asking how to spell words like "duckling" and "Easter."

I wish they had more time to do this kind of thing at school. Instead, Anika has been practicing for the SAT. Yes, the Standard Achievement Test. In kindergarten. All this past week, she wasn't allowed to have recess outside because "we might disturb the kids taking the test in the cafeteria." If I didn't have to work 9 hours on Monday and Tuesday, I would pull her out of school and take her to the zoo or something more productive than filling in bubble tests. Most moms I've spoken to feel the same way - we wish our kids didn't have to do this - and one mom, who used to be an assistant in classrooms, told me one year her full-time job was to serve as a proctor for kindergarten test-takers. She had to walk around and "make sure they filled in all the bubbles." "What's really sad," she told me, "is that kindergartners really don't even understand the concept of cheating, yet here I was reminding them not to cheat." I remember hearing this ridiculous "no child left behind" testing was going to be replaced with some bill that passed recently, but it may be too little, too late. I heard a newscast on the radio the other morning that said a recent proposal to make 20 minutes of recess a day mandatory for Florida kindergartners failed to pass the legislature. FAILED. OUTDOOR PLAY for KINDER. What the heck is going on here?! In the newscast, one of the moms who lobbied for the bill said, "When I asked my son what his favorite part of the day was, he answered 'the bathroom,' and he explained 'it is the only place where I get a break.'"

And we wonder why Florida schools are at the bottom of performance indicators? This is sad, people. We can do better.