First and foremost, thank you for all that you do, I have been reading your Substack for years now, and I love your work. Pretty much all of it resonates for me.
This is my first time commenting, but I just had to share because this article hit very close to home. I have home-schooled both of my children for the entirety of their schoolin…
First and foremost, thank you for all that you do, I have been reading your Substack for years now, and I love your work. Pretty much all of it resonates for me.
This is my first time commenting, but I just had to share because this article hit very close to home. I have home-schooled both of my children for the entirety of their schooling (my daughter is now 21, and my son is 17 and he just graduated a year early). My son plays high level hockey, and decided he should take his SAT's in the hopes of playing college hockey. Having a score is helpful for scholarships. My daughter didn't feel the need to take these tests, and is doing very well for herself, so this was my first experience shoving one of my kids into this testing la-la land.
My son signed up to take the June 1st test because he wanted to be done with everything else first, and give himself time to "study." That didn't happen, he finished high school close to the beginning of May and got busy with other things. He proceeded to study the evening before the test, taking the pretest first (he did this on his on-line login that was required to take the actual test). He received a 1320 on it, finishing at about 10pm at night, and then stayed up too late studying the English portion to hopefully get a better score on it. Math is his strength. I have no clue if they adapted the actual test to this pretest, they had sent several emails to us for it, pushing that he take it beforehand. They were very pushy, and I wouldn't put anything past the school systems. Who knows.
The next morning he headed off early. Took the first portion of this digital adaptive test that he said was way too easy (our state, New Mexico, has one of the worst school systems in country). Had a ten minute break. And sat down for the second portion. Just like with the pretest, the second portion became exponentially more difficult. Needless to say, after very little studying and not enough sleep, he ended up with a 1280. 93% percentile in our state. 90% in the USA....I put no significance on this stuff. I home-schooled my children because I have no faith in the system. Never have. This is just the data they came back to us with. Could he have studied a little harder and done better, possibly. I do feel it helps to give a very real situation to back your data, and thought you and your readers may find a first hand story intriguing. He said that second portion had questions that were seriously hard on it, and who knows what those questions were or what level of math and english they jumped to. No excuses on our end, but he definitely seemed to fall into the exact category you are speaking about in your article.
They are definitely messing with our children to create a safe space and justify DEI. The proof is in the pudding. Would my kid have scored higher with the paper test? Absolutely. FYI, he is a white boy that didn't choose his skin color, but has certainly worked extremely hard at everything he puts his mind to. My heart breaks for him in this society, but I am extremely proud watching him push past all of the bs and succeed anyway.
Please comment more often, Stephanie. That was very instructive. All the best to your boy. I'm sure he'll make it despite the challenges our crazy society throws in his way.
Thank you guys! It has been a long, long time that I have gotten myself into the middle of posting anywhere (I haven't been on social media in probably almost 10 years now). But I love this community on Substack, so you just might see me more often...we shall see.
First and foremost, thank you for all that you do, I have been reading your Substack for years now, and I love your work. Pretty much all of it resonates for me.
This is my first time commenting, but I just had to share because this article hit very close to home. I have home-schooled both of my children for the entirety of their schooling (my daughter is now 21, and my son is 17 and he just graduated a year early). My son plays high level hockey, and decided he should take his SAT's in the hopes of playing college hockey. Having a score is helpful for scholarships. My daughter didn't feel the need to take these tests, and is doing very well for herself, so this was my first experience shoving one of my kids into this testing la-la land.
My son signed up to take the June 1st test because he wanted to be done with everything else first, and give himself time to "study." That didn't happen, he finished high school close to the beginning of May and got busy with other things. He proceeded to study the evening before the test, taking the pretest first (he did this on his on-line login that was required to take the actual test). He received a 1320 on it, finishing at about 10pm at night, and then stayed up too late studying the English portion to hopefully get a better score on it. Math is his strength. I have no clue if they adapted the actual test to this pretest, they had sent several emails to us for it, pushing that he take it beforehand. They were very pushy, and I wouldn't put anything past the school systems. Who knows.
The next morning he headed off early. Took the first portion of this digital adaptive test that he said was way too easy (our state, New Mexico, has one of the worst school systems in country). Had a ten minute break. And sat down for the second portion. Just like with the pretest, the second portion became exponentially more difficult. Needless to say, after very little studying and not enough sleep, he ended up with a 1280. 93% percentile in our state. 90% in the USA....I put no significance on this stuff. I home-schooled my children because I have no faith in the system. Never have. This is just the data they came back to us with. Could he have studied a little harder and done better, possibly. I do feel it helps to give a very real situation to back your data, and thought you and your readers may find a first hand story intriguing. He said that second portion had questions that were seriously hard on it, and who knows what those questions were or what level of math and english they jumped to. No excuses on our end, but he definitely seemed to fall into the exact category you are speaking about in your article.
They are definitely messing with our children to create a safe space and justify DEI. The proof is in the pudding. Would my kid have scored higher with the paper test? Absolutely. FYI, he is a white boy that didn't choose his skin color, but has certainly worked extremely hard at everything he puts his mind to. My heart breaks for him in this society, but I am extremely proud watching him push past all of the bs and succeed anyway.
Please comment more often, Stephanie. That was very instructive. All the best to your boy. I'm sure he'll make it despite the challenges our crazy society throws in his way.
Excellent comment and insights. It would be great to hear from you more often.
What a great post. I don't see any problems for your son, especially if he treats life like a hockey game.
Thank you guys! It has been a long, long time that I have gotten myself into the middle of posting anywhere (I haven't been on social media in probably almost 10 years now). But I love this community on Substack, so you just might see me more often...we shall see.
Good luck to your boy!