If you are a parent of a student, then chances are that you are having fun with the EOG’s or some other end of the year testing. Here’s what makes this year a little more interesting than those of the past.

First is that I’ve had a bit of trouble out of my current fifth grader. In fifth grade the material begins to be more challenging, plus you have the hormones kicking in which doesn’t help with the talking in class, not listening and being a little rebellious. So when it has came to grades this year, my A&B student dropped to a C. But since he’s not ever had any issues in the past with EOG’s, I didn’t think too much about it until a friend of mine called and said her fifth grader didn’t pass.

So when mine said he didn’t pass, I was not happy but I wasn’t totally hit out of the blue. He took 3 tests…science, reading and math. He failed his reading and his science. Why he’s failed his reading I have no clue because the last book he was reading was one of the latest Harry Potter which looks like it took a huge oak tree to make.

While they were in school, they were only given the results on the science. I asked how many kids failed out of the 19 in his class and he said 7 which would be about 35% of the class. That was only on one out of the three tests so when you think about it, there was probably at least 50% that failed at least one test when you look at all three.

What does this mean? This means study, tutor, study for the next week or so until re-testing. What does it mean for those who fail one test by one point again? It means they must repeat the 5th grade.

In the past there has been summer school which according to radio announcements and my kids school office, will no longer be an option this year in NC. So when they were thinking about cutting this small feature out of the budget, were they really thinking about the results? Cutting out summer school may cut costs now, but what about the ones in the future? If there are a much larger population of students that end up repeating grades due to end of year testing, won’t this simply mean more tax paying dollars spent on educating these same kids for multiple years? Keep in mind, some of these same kids make good grades all year, yet can fail a test by a point and be held back for an entire year…talk about pressure.

I’ve never quite agreed with the testing systems that are in place in the first place. However without a safety net for the kids that don’t test well or need a few extra weeks of learning time, I think the consequences are going to be much greater than what was ever considered.