Certus Stone

There are still instructions on the back of the answer sheet because there is a subset of people in the world who haven’t been subjected to the horrors of adolescent-standardized-testing (AST). I’ve been subjected to AST since 2007. The WKCE test was given to me in third grade. It wasn’t a big deal at the time, but as my classmates and I advanced into middle-school, standardized tests became more important. I remember taking a test that would determine how you were required to spend your time during a free-period. If you did well on all subjects, you were allowed to have what was essentially a recess. If you did poorly, you were required to go to an extra class that was set up for you the rest of the kids that did poorly in that subject. You would continue to not have an extra recess like your (implied to be smarter) peers until you could take the test again and do better. If you did poorly on more than one test, socially speaking, it was all over; you had to individually test out of each of the subjects that you did poorly in and if you passed subject one the first time and failed it the second time, you had to take that class again. The kids that did not require extra classes knew who was included in their group. Children make enough arbitrary and hierarchical social groups without an artificial restriction on who “the smart kids” can interact with during this part of the day. This is bullying fodder.

Okay, so I may have gone a little off script there. My point was that I didn’t even consider that there are people that go to the same school as me that have taken standardized tests so infrequently that they need to be reminded of the proper form. When I was younger, AST was just a part of life and it was made to be such a big deal that the notion of someone not knowing how to fill out a scan-tron is absurd.