A few years ago I stopped trying to schedule my students for a spring play at one local theater company because they always scheduled their student discount day right smack in the middle of the STAR test, the state’s all-important standards test. Despite my telling the company each year that they managed to put their discount day in the most inconvenient week for California’s students, the date never changed, so I started scheduling our yearly play viewing in the fall instead. It was frustrating that a company attempting to reach out to schools wouldn’t recognize the fact that most schools were busy that week. I just wrote the whole situation off as one in which a company simply isn’t in touch with its clients as much as it should be.
As schools of course, our clients are the students, and we forget this from time to time if not often. For one, we are adults working with kids, and we feel that we know better than they do what’s best for them. We do our lip-service placing students and their parents on committees that make decisions for the future of the school: scheduling committees, planning committees, discipline committees. But whether or not we really are in touch with the day to day lives of our students in debatable.
This year, once again California students are preparing to take this test we call the STAR. It is a controversial test to say the least. At once the most important and least important test of the year. Most important because how students score on the test—which includes math, science, language arts, and social science—determines how the state views the school’s success. If students score too low over a period of three years the school may be “taken over” by the state. This entails cleaning house first in the ranks of administration, then among teachers. This possibility really means little to most students. Many of them already view high school as miserable, and the flavor hardly matters. In fact, some students really seem to revel in the idea that their miserable score on the test could have so much power over the school, and perhaps they imagine getting back at that assistant principal who suspended them when they randomly fill in bubbles on their answer sheets.
Administrators of course encourage students to do their best, and each year at our school they come up with new and interesting rewards for positive behavior during the test: arriving on time, completing all parts of the test, etc. These behaviors might earn students gift cards for Starbucks or Jamba Juice. Teachers are another story. When the test was first instated in 1999, many teachers complained that the test didn’t represent the standards required by the state. Teachers all over California balked at “teaching to the test” which they felt would lead to stifled creativity and a reduction in higher thinking skills. Whether that is true or not, some teachers refused to support the test by suggesting that students not care about it, while others simply refused to encourage students. Since then it is my perception that, overall, teachers have at the very least accepted that the test is an inevitability, and most of us encourage kids to do their best.
So here we are ready to serve our clients with this test to make sure that “no child is left behind.” My school has scheduled the first test day on April 20th—4/20. That may or may not mean anything to you. If you ask teachers whether that date has any significance, I imagine some of the younger ones or those who attended college in California in the last 20 years would probably know what it means. Or maybe you’ve watched the news in the last two years and caught stories about schools like UC Santa Cruz celebrating this “holiday.” Though the origination of the term is widely mythical, Snopes.com states that 420 began to be used “in 1971... by a group of high school kids at San Rafael High School.” 420 (always pronounced “four-twenty”) refered to a planned time that this group of about a dozen kids would meet to smoke marijuana together. Over time, the term caught on and came to represent the date as well, making April 20th arguably one of the strangest dates of the year. It is Hitler’s birthday and the date when Columbine High School was attacked by two students in 1999 (some believe this is no coincidence), but the date is also closely associated with both the FBI’s attack on the Branch Dividians in Waco, Texas in 1993 and the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, although both of these events took place on April 19th, not the 20th. Some who participate in the 420 pot smoking day even claim that smoking pot is a response to the violence and dark shadows associated with this day, marijuana somehow representing a kinder, gentler nation.
In any event, high school students know exactly what April 20th stands for, and some are quite bold about announcing that they will not be at school that day. I have made calls to parents after 4-20 to let them know that their students chose to cut class that day. I can’t really come out and say, “By the way, that’s essentially pot smoking day, so you may want to have a chat with your kid.” It hardly seems fair to assume. But I’ve also talked to plenty of parents who were well aware that their kids smoked marijuana. I once asked a student who came to school with a marijuana leaf necklace, “What do you think your parents would think of that?” He responded, “My dad bought it for me.” Okay.
The point remains, however, perhaps as teachers and administrators we should know our clients and know that April 20th may not be the best day to start this all-important test. In any case I find it telling—schools may not be totally in touch with the lives of kids. Shocking. Am I suggesting that we make room for lighting up and start our test the next day? Well, maybe. But moreover I’m suggesting that we know better. My students thought it was pretty funny that the school started testing on that day—even the kids who likely don’t smoke. It’s kind of the same way I used to roll my eyes when my mother couldn’t operate the VCR. “Dumb adults. They just don’t get it.” No, we don’t.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that in 2002, 22.4% of students nationwide admitted to current marijuana use, and that 9.9% of students tried marijuana before the age of 13. 5.8% used marijuana on school property, with more of them being 9th and 10thgraders. I am often told by students that they used to smoke marijuana, and I’m frequently surprised at who these kids are—I shouldn’t be, but I am. They are frequently older students who tell me that they smoked in the 9th or 10th grade on a regular basis, but for whatever reason, they woke up and turned themselves around, usually because they realized what kind of an impact it was having on school or relationships with friends and family. For every one of those kids, I wonder about the kids who don’t come to school anymore—maybe they were some who couldn’t stop. I often have my suspicions about kids who just don’t seem as clear as they should be and perform under their potential. Are they smoking? Probably.
Maybe someday we’ll have on-campus drug counseling facilities, but that’s just a dream I have. For now, I’d just settle for a conversation about the fact that kids might be really high while they’re testing, is that okay with everyone? Perhaps we should just encourage them to cut on 4/20—that’s what make-up day is for.
Posts
