Mastery Tests Should Put Teachers On The Hot Seat, Not Kids

To the Editor:

This is in response to your front page article about Ms Pierce’s concerns for her 8-year-old child dealing with the stress of performing well in the statewide mastery tests. As a family therapist, I would recommend some heavy duty sensitivity training for the teachers and administrators involved. Telling a child that he is going to let his class down if he doesn’t do well is nothing less than emotional battering. It is also hypocritical in the face of the fact that these tests are meant as a gauge of the efficacy of teaching methods within the state. I cannot help but feel that the Mastery Tests were meant to put teachers on the “hot seat,” not their pupils.

As for the emotional well-being of children, sad to say, my experience has been that public services in general have little interest in, nor time for, anything less than demonstrated physical harm to a child or the threat of it. In a recent discussion I had with a supervisor at the Department of Children and Families, I mentioned by concern for a client’s emotional condition in her troubled family. The supervisor quipped, “Well, if we’re going to talk about emotional welfare, we’ll be here all night.” Emotional maltreatment is, by the way, part of DCF’s description of abuse and neglect.

In my opinion, when we look at NCLB we are faced with yet another government process which may look good on paper but is either impractical or just won’t work. I think of Hillary Clinton’s foray into the medical insurance morass a few years ago. In these processes, the individual is never studied; populations are studied. When individuals’ emotions get in the way of these studies, phrases like “noncompliant subjects” appear. The federal recommendation to cut the expense of the mastery test by going entirely to multiple choice questions is a good example of this. Many intelligent people do very poorly on such tests, and are, in fact, helped by essay questions which allow them to demonstrate a deeper knowledge of the subject. Their true achievement levels would not be seen in the cheapened Mastery Test figures, and their participation might actually lower Connecticut’s scores.

I wish Ms Pierce well. She is not only a champion for her own child but for many others.

Cordially,

Bart Schofield, MS, MFT

57 Head O’ Meadow Road, Newtown                           March 6, 2006