The CAPT Mastery tests are one of the greatest shams ever perpetrated in the State of Connecticut. They are by design and intent made to present your child and the school system they are attending appear to be inferior and failing.
Truth be told, children are no smarter or less so than any time in history. Today's kids, however, live under economic times where their abilities and potential have been sold out from under them and the job they would have filled, flourished in, and retired from shipped overseas.
The CAPT's are the beginning of a weeding out process that is ultimately destined to deliver a class order. The tests are formulated to prove the innate superiority of white , suburban Connecticut. No programs are or will be put in place to equip the urban, suburban, rural poor to from birth compete with the privileged few.
We are rapidly moving to an Education System where the gifted few are taken from what ever class they come from to serve the needs of Corporate America. Best programs, best schools, best jobs will be their rewards. If your child is one - Congratulations! Enjoy! But if your child is not....
I, as a youth, wanted to be a M.D., soon learned I did not have the intellect. Yet. in 1970s America there were thousands of professional,business,trade,and manufacturing careers open to me. I chose public School teaching. Others I graduated from high school with distinguished themselves in the trades, business, or manufacturing. They did well, but the very jobs they excelled at are denied to their children because the jobs ( thanks to profit taking 1 percent America) no longer exist. Those jobs are now in Mexico, India, China,etc., etc.
Look at those CAPT scores with a jaded eye. They are meant not to promote excellence, but rather to promote superiority as a means of establishing an economic class order. For the poor and middle class this is already reality—for the rich who raised an "average child" this is your awakening. The fault is not in your children's teacher or school (or even in yourself), it is in what we have all allowed the 1 percent to bring us.
What ever we are doing, it is NOT working. Blaming this on the 1%, what ever that is, is ridiculous and makes zero sense. Blame the DOE (state and fed), the teachers unions (keeps crappy teachers employed) and the American people for not demanding better and electing fool after fool. This is a democracy, we get what we deserve. Was this written in a tent at some OWS camp? The CAPT testing is a joke but so is this article.
1. Affirmative action laws mandating that a person receives a job based on sex, sexual persuasion, ethnicity or skin color. Time to do away with this absurd set of rules. 2. Minimum wage laws that force out marginal producers. No employer is going to pay a high-school dropout $9 per hour to sweep a floor, plus health insurance, plus FICA taxes, plus mandatory paid sick time if here in CT. It’s cheaper to buy a Roomba. 3. People who can’t find jobs or earn a living being an entrepreneur are FAR too comfortable in their poverty. Between 99 weeks of unemployment “benefits”, food stamps, EBT, disability, free cell phones, section 8 housing, free healthcare…..on top of that the myriad of charity handouts that people can get makes having no job and living on the government tit a very appealing lifestyle.
A real solution, like privatizing the entire education system, is considered so “radical” it’s not even considered a viable idea. All we have to do is take a look at what more state socializing and monopolizing education has provided us, and that is a decline not only in the intelligence of kids coming out of our state-monopolized system, but a decline in the entire moral fabric of our society. Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil. C.S. Lewis
Google the phrase "town shuts down lemonade stand"....you will find news stories about local police shutting down lemonade stands in violation of local "health codes" The Obama admin recently tried to enact tougher regulations concerning children working on family farms. Had the regulations taken effect, it would have made family farms very difficult to run, because even using a hose would have been illegal. it seems the US is moving toward a "nanny state", rather than a "take care of yourself state" I know a few people who stayed on unemployment for 2 years and never bothered looking for a job, because they were receiving unemployment "benefits". I hope you can agree that our system of a "safety net" is abused, has become a lifestyle for some people, and not a "safety net". Sure Waterford has a decent government run school compared to other parts of the country. I am not sure where you got the 90% figure, but let’s suppose you are correct. How does it compare to other countries? How does it compare to private schools or magnet schools? Would it be better if parents could choose other schools? That competition would improve schools everywhere. The children you see shoveling and mowing.....are they children of the household or young entrepreneurs?