My name is Paloma Roberts Buceta and I am a freshman at Gonzaga University and went to schools in the Seattle Public School district from kindergarten until graduation of high school. This semester I am taking an English 101 course, and we have been looking at power and education. Recently we have read and listened to some very eye opening reports. The first which really impacted and made me think back to my own childhood experience in our school district was The Road to Rome by Jonathan Kozol. This paper discussed the issue with standardized testing for students and how they prevent the learning of students and don’t actually measure their intelligence. This made me think back to my years in elementary school and the WASL that we had to take every year. I remember when taking them I would usually feel anxious and frustrated as they seemed difficult to me. I had never understood why we had to take them and I now know that they had no good influence on my life today. As a young adult today, I can say that I hate tests and exams, not only because you have to study a lot, but because I was feel this extreme pressure to do well. I think this pressure is the result of starting test taking at a young age which has influenced my life today negatively. Although I know the WASL no longer exists, I know there are still similar tests given today to elementary students, but its just called differently. I am writing to you in the hopes that you can get rid of these pointless standardized test for young children. As you get older I see that these tests such as the SAT and ACT do have some importance, but at the same time they do have their flaws as well. I think standardized tests at such a young age affects a child’s love for learning which can influence the rest of their education from there on. I hope that you will consider this and look at the effects it has on young children.
Another reason I am writing to you is because of another recent report I hear from a news podcast from This American Life called the Problem We All Live With. In this report, Ira Glass interviews Nikole Hannah-Jones on the issue with failing schools and the only solution which is integration. Looking back at my own experience, in my elementary school, John Stanford International School, I was lucky enough to go to a diverse school since it was a bilingual school with student’s half of their day in either Spanish or Japanese class. Another great program my elementary school had was the Bilingual Education Center program in which students from foreign countries learned English for about 6 months and were then integrated into our school or another. Having this program allowed me the opportunity to meet children from all over the world with different cultures and backgrounds. However, my elementary school no longer has this program as it was cut. When I learned this, it really upset me because a big part of my elementary school experience was meeting and making friends with people different from me and from different places in the world. This type of integration, as a child allowed me to appreciate and love other cultures and not only my own. It allowed me to be open minded to others and their views as well. My high school experience, at Ballard High School, was completely different then my elementary school experience. My high school consisted of mostly white people. This is just another example of a flaw in our school system and how much better we can all do with integration.
I hope that after reading this letter you will consider getting rid of standardized tests for elementary school students, bring back the BOC program at John Stanford International School, and integrate more schools.
Sincerely,
Paloma Roberts Buceta