Fourth Grader Suspended After Refusing to Answer Exam Question

Passion 11-07-2006

Tyler Stoken was a well-behaved fourth grader who enjoyed school, earned A's and B's and performed well on standardized tests.

In May 2005, he'd completed five of the six days of the Washington State Assessment of Student Learning exam, called WASL, part of the state's No Child Left Behind test.

Then Tyler came upon this question: ``While looking out the window one day at school, you notice the principal flying in the air. In several paragraphs, write a story telling what happens.''

The nine-year-old was afraid to answer the question about his principal, Olivia McCarthy. ``I didn't want to make fun of her,'' he says, explaining he was taught to write the first thing that entered his mind on the state writing test.

In this case, Tyler's initial thoughts would have been embarrassing and mean. So even after repeated requests by school personnel, and ultimately the principal herself, Tyler left the answer space blank. ``He didn't want them to know what he was thinking, that she was a witch on a broomstick,'' says Tyler's mother, Amanda Wolfe, sitting next to her son in the family's ranch home three blocks from Central Park Elementary School in Aberdeen, Washington.

Because Tyler didn't answer the question, McCarthy suspended him for five days. He recalls the principal reprimanding him by saying his test score could bring down the entire school's performance.

Sugarlipz

Is this true? Kind of sounds like a joke with the broomstikk and all. Anyways its odd!

BonitaPajarita

This does seem a bit fishy. And it seems that the whole story is not being revealed.

The principle as well as any other faculty need to stop thinking about how it will effect the school and there scores for more money and thinking about this child.

Talk about letting ones values and consideration of other slipping through some huge cracks.

How dare they put this type of a punshment on the child over one question he did not answer. Unless the question was worth half of the score, which its not, I hightly doubt that not answering one question will really make the difference in his score let alone effecting the whole schools scores.