Do you care how your kid does on SOL’s?
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Anonymous
| The teachers are stressing kids out, saying make sure you get enough sleep, eat a good breakfast, blah blah. They make the kids feel like this is the most important thing in their life. I have an elementary school kid and a middle school kid and I really feel like telling them “it really doesn’t matter in the scheme of things.” do you downplay the importance of SOL testing to your kids? (I’m not talking about high school kids.) |
Anonymous
| Nope! I told me kid to fill in all AS and then read his book. |
Anonymous
|
I have a very high stress/high strung perfectionist elementary school child, so yes I absolutely downplay them.
At the end of the day they are a useful metric to make sure my kid is absorbing information as expected. |
Anonymous
| Not even a little. I always tell the kids it's to help the state to assess the school and teachers. Has nothing to do with that actual kids. (The exceptions are the 6th grade AAP used for Algebra placement and then the stuff they have to pass for HS). |
Anonymous
| just pass |
Anonymous
|
passing is around 50% ish...
so is not that hard, most kids end up passing just a few will fail. |
Anonymous
| Just by DCUM standards, I can’t blame teachers for stressing the importance of the tests: “Failing public schools”, “Good school vs bad school”, “Good teacher vs bad teacher”, “Our school’s rating dropped”, “Teachers should be held accountable for student progress”… |
Anonymous
This, but mine is in middle now. I tell her constantly that "SOLs don't matter one bit for you--they only matter for the teachers and the school." She still doesn't believe me. I also said, "literally every other test and even quiz this entire year matters more than this stupid SOL." She finally did say, "I only need to pass. It doesn't matter if I pass advanced." And I said, "You don't even need to pass!!!" The truth is, I do care how she does and I do think it is one metric to assess what she is learning, but she stresses about enough things in her life so I do not need this to be one of them. So to answer the question, yes I care, but no, I do not tell my kid I care. I have a HS kid, too, but he never gets stressed about tests of any kind. |
Anonymous
This before AAP change. Tell kids it’s to grade teachers and just a practice to learn how to take tests for kids and score doesn’t matter. After AAP change, admit I’d hope kids do well in math and reading in 1st and 2nd, but still would tell kids doesn’t matter other than to practice taking tests— and given kids never see test to know and learn from what get wrong, it is truly completely worthless to kids. |
Anonymous
There are no SOLs before 3rd grade. |
Anonymous
| Yes, because effort matters. |
Anonymous
| Nope. Not one bit. Even if they fail. |
Anonymous
| We do care and we've had our kid do the optional prep/review work the teacher sent home but we aren't letting the stress pass down to our 3rd grader. |
Anonymous
| Yes, I cared, but my kids tested well and didn't stress about them. |
Anonymous
| Nope. My kid was stressing about one this am. He’s never passed one and he’s in 5th grade. I do not care if he passes or not. I will not make him retake it. |