It is that time of year again that I hate the most. The time in which I get to watch my 3 girls stress over one test. Yes if you are new to Texas it is our wonderful STAARS test. A single test that strikes fear in the eyes of our children. Growing up in the LISD school system I had my share of these awful tests. Being told by everyone if you don’t pass you cannot proceed to the next grade. Sitting in a quiet room for hours with a test booklet you had to treat as a top secret document from the department of defense. I still to this day remember the anxiety, and stress that this one test had on my childhood. Growing up with learning disabilities test taking was not my cup of tea, but somehow even though it was a struggle I passed these tests. Education is what our children need, not teaching to a single test. Teachers have to spend more time teaching for this test, benchmarks, and TEEKS, or how ever the hell you spell it, all to show the district where we stand in the state, and how much money the district will get. Give our children a chance to learn, let our teachers teach our children what they need to learn to live a productive life. Quit throwing tests down their throats, and educate our children. Taking these tests growing up I can tell you I did not learn a damn thing from them, other than learning about anxiety at an early age, which children should not have to face. In high school I made my grades, a past my 6 weeks tests, midterms, and finals, was even in the top 10 percent of my class, but one test that I failed multiple times was holding me back from receiving my diploma. I passed the very last test given before my graduation and found out the results a week from graduation, talk about stress. With the help of a great teacher, who may I add does not work for LISD any longer due to how she was treated, I was shown how to find all the ways they tried to trick you into getting the wrong answer. This helped me pass, and as I went on to college I graduated with a 4.0 and did not have to take a state test. It is time to let our teachers do what we expect them to do as parents and teach our kids about, history, science, mathematics, and English. Let them read books, let them study William Shakespeare, let them find out how we became who we are today by the history our country has gone through. We as parents need to stand up and say enough is enough our children are more important than a score on a test to show where they stand in the state. Let schools become a learning place once again, where you hear children’s laughter, and see their eyes light up when they do a science project that blows their minds. This is what we need. Over the years I have been to my daughter’s schools during the day when children are in class, and to be honest it looks more like a military base then a place of learning. Administrators go into the classrooms and watch your teachers teach the children, and quit looking at stats on a spreadsheet from a bench mark test. Teachers are afraid of losing their jobs everyday due to these ignorant tests to show if they are teaching the kids what is going to be on one test. When are the school districts around Texas going to stand up and tell the TEA our parents and school districts as are fed up? The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education. Martin Luther King, Jr. Thank You, Jason Bates