A special first grader and a bad test question

My little granddaughter spoke out this week when many kids would have just picked an answer to a bad test question. She was taking the MAP computer based assessment that is given in Illinois schools. She is in first grade. The test question presented all short vowel words as multiple choice foils to a stem asking for selection of the word with the long vowel sound. Not an earth shattering or even political question but she demonstrated something important when she called the teacher over and told her that the question did not have an answer. The teacher agreed and told her to guess what she thought they wanted. An unsatisfactory response.

When my daughter picked her up the teacher related the story to her and my daughter passed it on to me. I asked her what the teacher did with that information and told her that a whole lot of children would be penalized for a bad question. I worked at scoring assessments for a while and know that bad questions will be tossed when identified and the metric will be adjusted accordingly so a more accurate score can be arrived at. She called the teacher and found out that the teacher had done nothing with the information but after discussing it with her the teacher then said she would go to the person in charge of the examination at her school and find out what the protocol was for this situation.

My daughter did the right thing, but what my little miss did was even more important. She demonstrated good critical thinking and that she had the confidence to use it to question something that didn't seem right to her to a person of authority. This little girl is quiet and somewhat shy but she glowed when she received rightfully deserved praise for using her mind and her voice. I know this experience will be another stone in the foundation underlying her skills and character as she continues to grow. Her question did will also benefit all of the first graders taking this test if the people within the system follow through with correction. Our little girlie learned that the actions of one can ripple out and affect many others like her even and that no one, even adults in authority, is above making errors. More importantly, she learned that big errors affecting many can be corrected and the correction cause change.

Grandma and Grandpa join Mommy and Daddy with broad smiles of pride and hopes that our fellow citizens (adults and children alike) see opportunities to question wrong when they see it and ask seek ways to right the wrong.

I gotta question, teacher. Why is it the rich have all the money but they get all the tax breaks?

The real answer, of course, is that we allow it. It's kinda like major league baseball. The teams with the deepest pockets usually win because they get the best players. The same principal applies in giving tax breaks, the ones who spend the most on lobbying get the breaks while the rest of us are just here to make it look like it's a fair game.

We were simply not consulted about it. Even those poor deluded souls who vote Republican still think they're the ones getting lower taxes, even though study after study has shown that when their income taxes go down a few bucks a year, rises in state and local taxes and licensing fees are handing them a whopping tax increase.

Had the GOP ever told the truth about their programs, that they were taking money from the working and middle classes to vastly fatten a tiny plutocracy, they'd never have been elected to much of anything.

Something like 80% of us now want taxes on the rich hiked and not by a measly 3%. The men who lied to get our votes are now ignoring a vast majority of the citizens. At some point, something will give and all hell will break loose and it's likely to do so very suddenly.

...I will never understand why anyone would ever vote for a republican, but it is said you cannot fix stupid, so......

I don't think anything is going to change until we can take the money out of politics. Politicians are narcissists by nature, so they are easily influenced with anything that appeases them.

If you know the answer is wrong then you stand up and say so in a manner that can effectively bring others on board and change the system. Snarking on an chat board is like whispering in a dark closet.

that yes, Anne Frank DID die in a camp. He was sure she must have lived or "how could we have her diary?"

Oy. True story. My kid.

:thumbsup: