Your Permanent Record

It's that time of year again, when I start telling kids as young as eight years old that the test they are about to take will be following them around for the rest of their lives. Okay, maybe I don't shovel it on that heavy, but state testing is a pressure-filled time for kids and adults alike. If only "state testing" meant that students had to come up with all fifty states and their capitals, or they would have to exercise their knowledge of their own state's history. That might fit in some nice, convenient box. How about a test that encompasses everything you've learned in third grade? What about the stuff your teacher didn't quite get to? What about the stuff you missed while you were absent? Do your best, and know that it will follow you in an ever-expanding folder to the college of your choice. At least that's what we would like the children to imagine.
What does that do to kids? What does that do to teachers? Administrators? Parents? Advertisers? As it turns out, data collection in our schools has become big business. That's a big deal to a lot concerned parents and students as well as the aforementioned teachers and administrators. Like Traci Burnett, from Colorado. Ms. Burnett wonders what we are doing with all this data. The quick answer is that we are making an ever-expanding folder of information that follows your child from preschool to the grave. Why would that folder need to include household income and marital status of parents? For those studies that we periodically read about. The ones that tell us that kids who come from stable, well-funded families do well in school. Oops. Spoiler Alert. Kids that are absent from school a lot don't do as well. Especially on standardized tests. Sorry. Another Spoiler Alert.
Once a kid gets to middle or high school, the data collected starts having to do with personal habits like drinking and drugs and, Spoiler Alert, sex. Suddenly I am very interested to know what sort of achievement we are getting from our stoned, liquored up canoodling youth. That could be because I'm an educator, and we're the ones who hold on to such information. As if it mattered. Forever.