Last semester, Cobb County School District responded to minor controversy over its newly implemented standardized Student Learning Objectives (SLO) testing by requiring that SLO scores only affect students’ grades beneficially. Students and teachers applauded the decision as a reasonable solution to SLO tests’ inaccurate measurement of student achievement in courses not already including state-mandated Georgia milestones assessments. CCSD’s decision, however, inadequately prepares students for inevitable unfairness in their futures, and the county should remedy this by returning and factoring all SLO scores into students’ fall semester grades.

CCSD students took unfair tests that did not adequately measure their performance. So what? Does CCSD actually think everything else in students’ lives will go justly? No, these students will face favoritism amongst college professors, nepotism in job interviews, and countless other unfair situations.

CCSD’s only respectable choice in its fall semester SLO decision  remained to allow high enough test scores to help students’ grades. Students lucky enough to “Christmas tree” their answer sheets correctly in the face of an inaccurate assessment should receive award for their savvy guessing skills.

Students not fortunate enough to hypothesize solutions for material they had not yet learned did not receive sufficient consequences for their failings. Had those individuals’ dismal SLO scores provided major hits to students’ hard-earned course grades, they would feel motivated to try harder on whichever inaccurate, misrepresentative test they take next.

Students desiring that they and their peers learn such important lessons should petition CCSD to return and factor the fall 2015 SLO scores into students’ previously recorded final grades for the courses they took last semester. If students do not face the consequences of poor guessing skills now, they will leave high school unprepared for the rest of life’s unfair events.

April Fool’s, you fool!

XOXO, The Chant