STAAR Nonsense Vs. Real-Life Writing

I spend a fair amount of time annoyed with how we bastardize literacy in our schools. After completing my first book of 2024, and I paused and thought, "How should I respond to the journey of thought I experienced during the last two-hundred and one pages? Should I build a diorama, write a book report, or answer a short constructed response question about the author's purpose? Instead of doing any of these asinine things, I decided to log into my Amazon account and write a brief opinion essay about the brilliance of the author, hoping to persuade others to read this powerful and provocative informational text. 

Below, you can see my review. I also created a manufactured prompt that shows how the stupid STAAR test corrupts, depreciates, and pollutes authentic literacy practices. 🤮

Real-Life Writing: Amazon Review I just finished my first book of 2024, devouring it in three days. Peggy O'Donnell Heffington is such a relatable historian, writer, and woman. Chapter after chapter, I found myself thinking, "How have I never heard about this?" From eugenics, to puritan rituals, to wild ideas about contraceptives, I was fascinated to learn that since the beginning of time women have been finding ways to make choices about their reproductive options. I found myself thinking a lot about collectivism vs. individualism. As a woman who has mothered for many years through the act of teaching—yet has never birthed biological children—the final page dedicated to Nancy Olivi wrecked me. Heffington's acknowledgments and notes were equally compelling, and I plan to tell all the women I know about this book. In a time when reproductive rights are embroiled in identity politics, we need to know the origins of charged terms like "nuclear family", "barren", and "biological children". Our choices are not binary. False dichotomies serve no one. Her plea to unify with other women instead of take sides in an unhelpful civil war makes so much sense. I also now have two new poets to follow on Twitter. I hope women all over America will read this provocative, informative, and insightful book.

STAAR Nonsense: Short excerpt from the Introduction of the book titled, 🔗We're Not Having Children  Read the excerpt from “Without Children.” Based on the information in the excerpt, write a response to the following:  Explain how women can unite in their pursuit of freedom, regardless of their motherhood status. Write a well-organized essay that uses specific evidence from the article to support your answer. Remember to —  • clearly state your opinion • organize your writing • develop your ideas in detail • use evidence from the selection in your response • include a counterargument • use correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar Manage your time carefully so that you can —  • review the selection • plan your response • write your response • revise and edit your response Record your answer in the box provided.

If politicians and test designers would actually listen to teachers, we might be able to help them develop quality performance assessments that mirror what it looks like when folks lead literate lives. Instead they torture us with 10-point, extended constructed responses where kids are expected to craft a well-developed informational or argumentative essay responding to a bone-headed prompt. Authenticity is hard to standardize and impossible to scale. I no longer have the bandwidth for this kind of hogwash. Screw STAAR.