Twenty-five years after 9/11 and retired from the classroom, I’m still incredulous that we powered through a state testing session before telling our students about the attack.

Today, I‘m thinking about what else educators kept from kids during my own twenty-five years in the classroom… and what was kept from their parents.

1.) Your “permanent record” will not follow you your whole life.

When I was a student, the “permanent record” threat was frequently tossed around. It was a nebulous file that supposedly included every infraction kids had ever committed, which would follow them for their entire lives.

Threw a pencil at a bully in fourth grade? It would be on your permanent record. Swore under your breath at an unfair teacher when you were a freshman? It would be recorded for everyone to see in the future: police officers, potential employers, doctors! It could affect your college acceptance, maybe even your ability to buy a house someday!

It’s true that grades, attendance, immunizations, and test scores were the mainstays of the literal file or record schools kept on each student. Depending on the school system, other information could also be included: notations about behavior and discipline, personal anecdotes, and teacher assessments. It’s also true that the entire package was often handed over to anyone in authority who requested it- except parents. Potential employers, police officers, banks, and military officials had access if they asked, but parents often were denied.

However, those willy-nilly practices changed slowly after 1974 with the adoption of federal FERPA (The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) regulations. Like HIPPA in the medical field, FERPA ensures that only people with a vested interest in the student’s welfare have access to this sensitive information. Parents are also permitted to view and correct the file.

Even so, the threats of information going into your permanent record continued in the classroom and among students well past 1974, and parents were sometimes still denied access to the records of their own children.

Knowing your rights is important, whether as a student or as a parent.

2.) “Cut scores” (or passing scores) on standardized tests are determined after the test has been taken and scored.

The standardized tests that take up so much instructional time are not like a test at the BMV: right or wrong; pass or fail because the number of questions you can miss has already been determined.

Nope.

The pass score is decided upon by a group of teachers who gather with test company
psychometrists each year- after the test has been administered and graded. Occasionally, the cut-score committee will throw out a confusing or unfair question. But their primary job is to find the question where the shift occurs, where the test gets harder. Essentially, they’re trying to create a bell-shaped curve.

I know because I served on several of these committees, and I was shocked at what I learned.

How many teachers and administrators know that the cutoff score is determined only after the test has been taken and scored? And if most do realize that, then why do they accept it?

PS- Many of the practice or benchmark tests given during the school year to prepare for these standardized tests do not align with the standards or the official assessments. 

3.) Trades-bound students don’t really need to have a higher reading level than college-bound students.

The opposite was the buzz when Common Core pushed its way into educational standards.

While that might technically be true- on a limited scale- because of the complexity of industrial jargon, it doesn’t mean that all students should be reading college level literature or nonfiction essays. Yet those were the passages on the Common Core-based national PARRC and Smarter Balanced standardized tests.

The part that was forgotten when discussing reading ability is that interest plays a huge role in motivation. Students who want to be electricians or hair stylists or auto mechanics may have little interest in philosophical or political or scientific texts. They probably have no need for them in their future successful careers, either.

It would be better to ensure that these students can read and comprehend texts that interest them and move them forward in their future occupations and as responsible citizens. Teach trades-bound students to think and question, to problem solve, not analyze rhetorical elements and spot literary devices on a test. Students will understand their industry-specific jargon because they will use it on a regular basis and, if challenged to think logically, they will be able to handle issues that challenge them in the workforce.

4.) Everyone does not need to go to college.

Again, this is a load of hogwash. The idea that all students needed to go to college came from Common Core. Then it was revised to say that all students need to have post-secondary training. Okay, that’s better.

How hard we teachers had to beat that drum for several years to justify the increased rigor in our classrooms and on the graduation exams!

It is true that most students will need some kind of training after high school. But not all students are cut out for college. And that’s okay!

How much college debt was amassed by young people who believed that nonsense, and then discovered after a semester or two that it just wasn’t true for them- or worse yet, they felt inferior because college wasn’t a good fit?

Now, with concerns about the jobs that AI will snatch from college-trained employees, many young graduates are wishing they had pursued hands-on jobs with tasks that AI cannot replicate. They’d be making more money and not coughing up outrageous monthly student loan payments, too.

5.) Gifted kids don’t always have it easy.

It’s simply not true that all high ability (top 15%) and gifted (top 5%) students will get along just fine without classes taught by trained teachers who know how to challenge and address their inherent needs.

When untrained teachers simply pile on extra work, being smarter than the average bear creates new challenges. For starters, how are they supposed to get all that extra work done? Teachers of high ability and gifted students need to understand the principles of working with this population, just as they do with other special-needs students.

Being a gifted student is not a social status badge or a line on a resume or something for parents to brag about. With giftedness often comes overpowering anxiety, constant overthinking, paralyzing worry, loneliness, and a host of other social and emotional challenges. They may not relate to others who cannot understand their ideas or words. They may struggle to regulate their own emotions and actually be less emotionally developed than intellectually developed. Or they may be gifted in one area but struggle in another, and no one gets that.

Some students may even have another exceptionality and be considered “twice-exceptional,” e.g. ADHD and gifted; dyslexic and gifted; blind and gifted. Don’t these students deserve well-trained, expert teachers, too?

6.) Dual-credit classes don’t always count towards a degree. 

In many districts, the trend has been to offer dual-credit college courses to high school students. Students complete the classes and are officially college students, with coursework already under their belts. The schools shine brightly as they tout the head start their students have on their college degrees and how much money the students will save at universities.

What’s wrong with that?

Sometimes, the college classes students take while in high school are considered introductory courses. Why? Universities take a financial hit when students enroll with their first year of coursework already completed. Instructors and professors lose class sections to teach, and tuition income invariably suffers. So incoming students must take a separate foundational course.

That means individual universities also choose which course credits to accept. Generally, credits are not accepted if students have declared a major in that same subject. For example, a future nurse may not receive credit for that dual-credit high school anatomy class. Universities say they want their majors to experience the class from their university department and professors.  

In addition, once a student has satisfied their general education college credits from their high school work, any additional general studies dual-credit coursework taken in high school won’t count toward their degree.

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Sometimes, it’s hard to know what to tell students, especially in unique circumstances, like on 9-11. I’m ambivalent about how we charged ahead with the almighty standardized testing, keeping the students in the dark. But then, what could they have done but cower in fear, speculate about the future, or try to watch the news on the static-filled Channel One television screens perched high in the corners of the classroom? I’m afraid students did all those things later that day, after lunch. And I don’t remember anyone ever asking why we continued testing.

Oddly, my own elementary-aged kids who were in the building across the lawn knew about the attacks even before I did! 

Age should be a consideration in being honest with our students. I certainly wasn’t explicit in my instruction about every Shakespearean allusion in Romeo and Juliet with my freshmen. It wasn’t necessary. I also tried to be sure that many sides of all arguments were presented, not slanted toward the one I believed was right. That way, students could weigh the evidence and decide for themselves.

Today, however, with societal concerns about transparency in education and homeschooling vs. public education, educators owe it to students, parents, and the country to check that they’re being up-front with the big stuff: standardized testing, college credit, respect for individual differences, and insidious bias.

Here’s my bottom line on this twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11. Just as they did then, kids need at least these three things: educators who care enough to be age-appropriately honest as it fits the curriculum–or generally explain why they can’t be; educators who know their students well enough to address their differing needs; and educators who will help them begin to build a variety of successful futures in a land where they are blessed to be free.

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