Sing a Song About Testing

The Georgia Carnival is up over at Georgia On My Mind hosted by Elementaryhistoryteacher. I guess Georgia women bloggers need to get a few submissions in for the next carnival, It has some great submissions, but there isn't a female among them.

The most recent education carnival can be found at The Education Wonks.

We begin state testing on Tuesday, and we have reached the place where the rubber meets the road so to speak. I’m not going to be able to cram anything else in their heads.

I opened up my email yesterday to find the following. It had been sent to me by a colleague. She had gotten it from someone else, who had gotten it from someone else. You get the idea.

Here’s how it went:

Go on to sleep now, third grader of mine.
The test is tomorrow but you'll do just fine.
It’s reading and math, forget all the rest.
You don't need to know what is not on the test.
Each box that you mark on each test that you take,
Remember your teachers.
Their jobs are at stake.
Your score is their score, but don't get all stressed.
They'd never teach anything not on the test.
The School Board is faced with no child left behind with rules but no funding;
they're caught in a bind.
So music and art and the things you love best are not in your school
'cause they're not on the test.
Sleep, sleep, and as you progressyou’ll learn there's a lot that is not on the test.
Debate is a skill that is useful to know,
Unless you're in Congress or talk radio,
Where shouting and spouting and spewing are blessed'
Cause rational discourse was not on the test.
Thinking's important.
It's good to know how.
And someday you'll learn to, but someday's not now.
Go on to sleep, now.
You need your rest.
Don’t think about thinking.
It’s not on the test.

I’m not really sure how I feel about the words contained here. I guess it does pretty much sum up the culture that mandated testing has brought us.

At any rate….the email provided a link and gave the following information regarding the guys who wrote the song:

NOT ON THE TEST

by John Forster & Tom Chapin 2007 Limousine Music Co. & The Last Music Co. (ASCAP)

Illustration credit: John Enos