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The Cat ate my standardized test papers . . .


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I swear I'm becoming the person who posts all the odd stuff lately . . .

 

I decided to go ahead and give my kids the Stanford. Finally got everything all lined up. Swapping out the different age groups as required (which works well anyway, since they get breaks between sit-down sessions to go play and snack and stuff).

 

I nicely packed away the older's books and test response papers inside the test book, set aside so things would not get mixed up while the younger sat for his session. I was doing some work on the computer while younger took his session and I heard "chomp chomp chomp chomp." I looked over . . . NOOOOOOO!

 

Baby girl kitten was happily munching away on the part of the machine-scoreable form that was poking up out of older's test book . . . now nicely perforated with kitten toothmarks across the top.

 

*sigh* Time for a call to customer service. Really? At my age I have to call somebody to say the cat ate my homework??? :blushing:

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What's really cracking me up is that there was another thread recently where someone's cat barfed on their standardized test. What's up with these cats!

 

Oh my! I have to go find it now and see what happened!! I missed that one!

 

To frugal: I figured I will wait until Tuesday to call because of the holiday weekend.

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I know when I was still teaching, if a STUDENT got sick on a test paper (or it was otherwise damaged), we were still expected to send it back!

 

And, FWIW, I once had a 7 yr old EAT a chunk of his test. The poor kid really struggled with reading, but didn't have the ID needed to get alternative forms of testing (it was in progress, but the wheels hadn't turned to that point yet), and I think he just got so frustrated that he figured that if he could make it disappear, it would go away. Yes, we returned the part of the test that was left.

 

So I'm guessing kitten toothmarks aren't the most unusual thing the testing company has seen!

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I know when I was still teaching, if a STUDENT got sick on a test paper (or it was otherwise damaged), we were still expected to send it back!

 

I've read that in some places they have special barf bags for the tests enclosed with all the materials... and they'll still be graded! :001_huh:

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I've read that in some places they have special barf bags for the tests enclosed with all the materials... and they'll still be graded! :001_huh:

 

 

The sad part is that it really wasn't unusual, even 8 years ago, for kids to be so stressed that some WOULD be physically sick. Add that parents were told, basically, that unless their child was dying and in the hospital they had to be there, and you had kids who, on any other day, would have been sent home if they'd tottered in looking glossy-eyed and like death warmed over. Poor kids still had to take the test, and their scores counted, both against them and against the school.

 

The absolute best principal I ever worked under gained great respect in my eyes when one of our families, who had a child with a serious genetic illness, found out their Make a Wish trip had been scheduled during the test week-and he told them, point blank to go, take ALL their kids, and not worry about it-that the kids wouldn't be penalized in any way for missing the test, he'd make sure of it. He told me, later, that he wouldn't have felt right as a person had the family missed this opportunity (which, for these kids, meant the only trip they'd ever taken out of their home town that didn't involve a hospital or specialist)-and if the school district or state didn't like it, they could kiss his posterior.

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The absolute best principal I ever worked under gained great respect in my eyes when one of our families, who had a child with a serious genetic illness, found out their Make a Wish trip had been scheduled during the test week-and he told them, point blank to go, take ALL their kids, and not worry about it-that the kids wouldn't be penalized in any way for missing the test, he'd make sure of it. He told me, later, that he wouldn't have felt right as a person had the family missed this opportunity (which, for these kids, meant the only trip they'd ever taken out of their home town that didn't involve a hospital or specialist)-and if the school district or state didn't like it, they could kiss his posterior.

 

What is appalling to me is that this would be something remarkable. Of COURSE a Make a Wish trip trumps a test. Sheesh. How is that even a question?

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What is appalling to me is that this would be something remarkable. Of COURSE a Make a Wish trip trumps a test. Sheesh. How is that even a question?

 

Given that this was a state in which officially not passing the test at specific grade levels meant an automatic retention, and that is now saying the test must count 25% of a student's final grade (meaning that there are a sizable percentage of high school seniors who do not yet know if they graduated, even though they've already passed the minimum competencies because if they have, say, a low C going into the end of course exam for Geometry, they could potentially fail that required 3rd math class, even though the passed the math gateway test last year.), and schools are judged on their performance, I can well believe other principals saying "Tell Make a Wish you can go next week, not this one".

 

That was about the point that I started praying for ANYTHING to get out of the schools-because even though I had a good principal who was doing his best not to let the test run the show and to do what the kids needed, he was facing so much pressure to show performance that it was scary. A week later, I discovered I was pregnant with DD :).

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  • 3 months later...

Sorry for resurrecting such an old thread, but in case anybody searches for similar information (not sure what... Cat perforated paper? Barf bag tests?) I wanted to post the outcome!

 

I sent in the punctured test papers as is, no comments or explanations, and they were graded just fine. I do not seem to have been charged a hand-grading charge.

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