“I don’t know how we fix it, but I think it begins when we refuse to perpetuate the lie. We refuse to give the tests that rank our kids by ZIP Code while claiming to rank them by accomplishments.”
SO, you may have heard of a Tulsa kiddo who recently earned a perfect score on the ACT. His parents are friends of mine & I’ve known him all his life.
He bumped around from school to school; public, private, online, offline, homeschool. Finally settled on an online Stanford curriculum.
And now — he’s a Tulsa boy. Our state claims him. One zip code. 741-whatever.
Nobody talks about how no curriculum/school in Oklahoma ever fit him. They don’t tell you how his parents toiled over the years trying to find a good educational fit around here. BUT, that zip code thing…
I have been annoying the ACT people about this and can’t get an answer. And the SAT people. And, the kid’s parents are on it too. They can’t get an answer as to where his perfect score shows up — California or Oklahoma. (And, as you probably know, this makes a BIG deal in PSAT scores. East and west coast scores require 125+ for national merit; Oklahoma 111).
Why should a zip code claim a kid when it did nothing except shut doors in his face? Shouldn’t he be rolled in some California zip code?
Perhaps this will change as more and more folks dissatisfied with education turn to online courses. Perhaps? Maybe?