The same thing happened to my son, but in 2004 we had "Standards." The teachers felt pressure to make sure all students met them. My son was held in at recess in his Kindergarten class to complete his copious writing tasks. I found out when I stopped in one day. I asked him why he was inside at recess. "Because I'm a bad writer," he replied despondently. This is schooling in America today. It has to change. I'm a teacher myself, and I never ever treated students like this. I taught in the 90's and my principal never made me feel like I was on trial for how much I raised test scores. We eventually found out my son has Asperger's. He's really bright (was also reading as he entered Kinder), but fine motor and some gross motor are never going to be good because he was never given help. There was a lot of ADHD talk, so I finally had him evaluated for that just to show them he didn't have it. (I was right). The schools knew nothing about Asperger's, so they placed my identified-as-gifted son into special ed because of his quirky behaviors. He responded by developing worse behaviors and eventually dangerous behaviors. Eventually he dropped out of high school and slowly stopped wanting to hurt himself and "blow up the world." He still has major trauma, but therapists don't know how to interact with him. He's almost 22 and slowly starting to become a person - like taking showers, working with a job placement org, etc. A couple of years ago, he passed the GED. He could have taken an easier test we have in CA, but he wanted to prove that he could do it. Personally, I feel like being good with kids and good at teaching concepts to them is so much more important for elementary than raising academic standards for teacher hiring. We need to require some academic knowledge above the heads of our students, for sure, but other things are far more important.
The same thing happened to my son, but in 2004 we had "Standards." The teachers felt pressure to make sure all students met them. My son was held in at recess in his Kindergarten class to complete his copious writing tasks. I found out when I stopped in one day. I asked him why he was inside at recess. "Because I'm a bad writer," he replied despondently. This is schooling in America today. It has to change. I'm a teacher myself, and I never ever treated students like this. I taught in the 90's and my principal never made me feel like I was on trial for how much I raised test scores. We eventually found out my son has Asperger's. He's really bright (was also reading as he entered Kinder), but fine motor and some gross motor are never going to be good because he was never given help. There was a lot of ADHD talk, so I finally had him evaluated for that just to show them he didn't have it. (I was right). The schools knew nothing about Asperger's, so they placed my identified-as-gifted son into special ed because of his quirky behaviors. He responded by developing worse behaviors and eventually dangerous behaviors. Eventually he dropped out of high school and slowly stopped wanting to hurt himself and "blow up the world." He still has major trauma, but therapists don't know how to interact with him. He's almost 22 and slowly starting to become a person - like taking showers, working with a job placement org, etc. A couple of years ago, he passed the GED. He could have taken an easier test we have in CA, but he wanted to prove that he could do it. Personally, I feel like being good with kids and good at teaching concepts to them is so much more important for elementary than raising academic standards for teacher hiring. We need to require some academic knowledge above the heads of our students, for sure, but other things are far more important.