Too Much Testing

Yesterday's meet went better than I had any right to expect.

Her coaches have been very focused on conditioning for the state TOPS test, which should be taking place sometime in the next couple of months. They've been so focused, that when it came time to train for this meet (which was being hosted by our gym), my daughter had lost some of the skills she had mastered at the last meet we'd attended, back in March.

I braced myself for low scores, especially on the dreaded balance beam. Especially when I saw on the rotation schedule that beam was Megan's first event. And that she would go first.

"These optional meets don't really count," I reminded myself. There's no pressure for her to perform until her compulsory season starts in September, and by then, she'll be great.

I need to give myself these pep talks, so I can pass them on to my daughter, who can be very hard on herself when she doesn't perform up to her own expectations.

At her level, she has to perform a cartwheel on the damned thing. My heart sank as I watched her practice and miss it on every landing.

I held my breath as she faced the judges with her "gymnast salute" and ascended the beam. She was wobbly, but soon got that under control and started to look good. Then, the cartwheel...

...and she did it.

She finished her routine without a slip and scored an 8.65. In fact, she completed the meet with a very respectable all-around score of 34.00 - more than a full point higher than she'd managed at the last competition. Not bad at all! (chest puffing out with pride...)

This morning was another matter. She didn't want to get out of bed, and begged me to let her stay home from school. This is something I've agreed to a couple of times after a Sunday meet, to her father's dismay. I feel it's all part of this balancing act we're trying to accomplish with the unbelievable demands of this sport she loves -- and the current educational fad of overloading young children with homework and tests. I know our lives are out of whack, but I think it's more a case of the world we live in now more than anything else.

Yes, I know I've CHOSEN to allow her to train for gymnastics 16 hours per week -- but the child is so GOOD at it and LOVES it so much. And I think her little body actually NEEDS this level of activity. When she misses a lot of workouts (like when we're on vacation), she gets visibly hyper -- she bounces around and has trouble focusing. (Her doctor gets upset when I describe that state using that word, "hyper," because she's not ADD or ADHD -- he says she just has a lot of energy that needs to be expended... although I don't think he quite approves of this level of activity.)

My husband and I like to compare our daughter to the Energizer Bunny -- she just keeps on going, and going, and going... until she completely runs out of juice and needs her batteries recharged. This is why I was tempted to allow her to stay home from school today (and her normal Monday workout) so she could rest.

But then I remembered: Today is the start of California Standards Testing in LAUSD schools. She needs to be there.

"But today is only a practice test," Megan moaned.

True. That's why I don't have to go in to work today (as a part time "paraeducator," I have to work in the classroom over the next couple of weeks as a proctor). Megan can miss the practice test without it affecting the school's score (because this is as much a high-stakes test of the school as of the child - in fact, it's more important to them than it is to me). But she is likely to do better on the real test if she's had a taste of what's expected of her in the practice.

I sent her to school with a promise to pick her up early, after the testing is over. After all, being rested is another factor that will contribute to her success on the real thing.

And then I stewed in my own thoughts about my disillusionment with our school system, which began when I became an employee of the vast bureaucracy that is the Los Angeles Unified School District and has mushroomed since I realized that my kid might be juggling school with this level of athletics for years to come.

She has done a remarkable job of learning to manage her homework load (which is one to two hours per day) with her gymnastics commitment. She has matured into a supremely capable and confident little girl.

But it comes at a price. She doesn't get nearly as much sleep as she should, often asking us to wake her at 6:00 a.m. so she can finish the previous night's assignments and turn them in on time. I worry about her health. I worry about injuries. Tired kids catch viruses. Tired gymnasts have accidents. Scary ones.

So I've been trying to figure out how to simplify her life (and mine) - some way to make it easier, some way to squeeze in an extra hour a day for sleep. And I've been looking ahead to middle school (which begins in sixth grade in LAUSD -- the year after next).

I'm dreading it. Not only because she will be leaving the nurturing environment of our sweet little elementary school for the bigger, badder, more impersonal secondary school up the street... with the bigger, badder adolescents within... but because her school workload will increase exponentially.

The way I see it, we only have two options. One would be to tell her it's time to get serious about school and quit gymnastics entirely. After all, colleges only want to recruit elite gymnasts and fewer than 200 girls in the entire country make it all the way to that level. We're not raising an Olympian here.

But if we do that, she'll always wonder if she could have. And she'll be sitting on her analyst's couch some day complaining about her cruel mother who didn't believe in her enough to let her pursue her dream until it was her own idea to quit.

Believe me, I have enough of my own issues with parents who, on the one hand, told me I was smart and talented enough to accomplish anything I set my mind to -- but on the other hand, tried to force me into horrible 9-to-5 jobs because they couldn't bear to see me disappointed.

No, quitting gym is not a good option. Not while she's still passionate about it. Not while she's strong and healthy. Not until it's her idea.

So the other option is making her schooling fit around her athletics. This option is so against the grain that it's proving impossible to do - and that's what's making me crazy.

It occurred to me that with her 16 hour per week gymnastics commitment, a daily PE class would be redundant. Maybe I could get her middle school to waive Physical Education so she could have a study hall and get a jump on her homework. The gym's head coach has letters for just that purpose --  and says he'd be willing to bet that his girls could ace any physical skills test any school coach could throw at them.

"[Middle School A] will only do it -- if the athlete is nationally ranked," said the mother of a girl who is attending the well-regarded school in question.

That sounded a bit bogus to me, like the principal had made an arbitrary decision to only waive the requirement for students who are nationally ranked (and so rare that it would never happen). So I whenever I had a spare moment at school, I spent time on LAUSD's employee website, looking for the policy paper that spelled out the conditions for waiving physical education in secondary schools. It took me a couple of weeks of trying different search terms to uncover the document that had the answer. The good news is that I was right -- there is some precedent for waiving PE classes, and the conditions for qualification are pretty vague.

The bad news is that if such a waiver is granted, the PE class must be replaced by another course for credit -- not a study hall. Which doesn't help us at all.

And it's a state requirement. After all, we do have a problem with obesity in our young people.

But not my young gymnast, who is all muscle and bone.

I understand why we have a PE requirement and support it. I wouldn't want more regulations and more testing to establish exceptions to the requirement. But the older my daughter becomes, the more I understand that education isn't a "one size fits all" proposition. Different children with different abilities have different needs in different areas. Unfortunately, our bloated school district (the second largest in the nation) delivers educational services in the most efficient manner they can -- FOR THEM. It's not necessarily the most efficient manner for my daughter to RECEIVE it.

Just as assigning her a couple of hours a day of homework may not be the most efficient way to insure that she takes her lessons to heart.

I blame myself for this - me and all the other parents who demanded that our schools become more rigorous and accountable, which translated into onerous legislation that required massive testing and ever-increasing scores -- OR ELSE. And now, the children in our schools begin getting homework in kindergarten. KINDERGARTEN. When I was in fourth grade, I don't think I had more than 20 minutes of homework a day, if that much. I don't know -- If I was charged with the responsibility of showing children that school is a fun and exciting place, I don't think I would do it by assigning 5-year-olds a lot of busywork to take home with them. I didn't think it when my daughter was five, and I don't think it now that she's 10.

And then, there's the testing. I am all for using tools to measure our teachers' success and to get a snapshot of how our children are doing. But instead, what we have is a high stakes situation where the test has become the end game instead of a mere tool in the teacher's arsenal. Thanks to legislation like No Child Left Behind, the schools take these tests very seriously. Our school's scores have risen 300 API points since we started, four years ago. So have the scores of much of the school district. It's come at a price. Two full weeks in May are devoted to administering the tests; countless hours practicing for it in the months leading up to it. This is on top of the very rigid curriculum all LAUSD schools must teach in lockstep.

I have always been a big believer in public education. I think it's important for our society. I have always felt that those who abandon the public schools for private ones have betrayed a trust -- creating a two-tiered system where only the "haves" get the best product. I know that's the way of our marketplace economy in everything else. It shouldn't be the case when it comes to the common goal of educating our children.

But I cannot take all the rigidity of our school system. I'm not sure it's the best thing for my daughter.

And L.A.'s mayor is now proposing to take over the school district, and reportedly plans to expand the school day so that the kids will be in class until 5:00 p.m. This would be great for working parents who would save a bundle on childcare (and offer peace of mind for those who cannot afford it). But it would spell the end to my kid's gymnastics.

Never mind, because before that would ever happen, the teachers' union would go on strike. I predict a long, nasty one -- and my kid would get caught in the middle.

I lust after the private school campus her best friend attends. It's got green lawns, new facilities (including a state-of-the-art science lab) and just a couple of hundred students. It costs more than most people pay for college.

I was very happy with what we have through third grade, when California state law mandates that class sizes are limited to 20 children. But that requirement shoots up to 36 in fourth, just as the curriculum becomes more complex and the kids may need more individual attention. (They are teaching algebra concepts in fourth grade, which is not the most intuitive thing even for a kid who's four years older.)

I've started researching the public middle schools in the area -- some traditional, some magnet, some charter. All have good points - all stress their rigorous curriculum. All have student populations of 1,000 or more, spanning just three grade levels.

Another mom at the gym -- whose kids all attend very tony private schools -- turned me on to the possibility of scholarships. She knows a girl who is attending one of the city's most prestigious schools on a cheerleading scholarship. "You know, they have a summer camp for cheerleading," she told me. "If the director likes Megan -- and with her gymnastics skills, she will -- she might just make that happen."

Now, my daughter isn't really all that interested in becoming a cheerleader. Neither am I. In fact, I wouldn't have been caught dead talking to one of them in high school. (Actually, they wouldn't talk to me -- but by my second year, the feeling was mutual.) But if someone is willing to give us a $25,000 per year private school education because my kid can do multiple round-off back handsprings, I think she might want to give a little "sis-boom-bah."

So I signed her up for one week of cheerleading camp at the gorgeous, 14-acre campus in a eucalyptus grove, where some of the biggest stars in Hollywood send their kids to school. My husband fought me on it and only agreed because it was just for one week -- and I'd also enlisted the mother of one of her teammates, who is freaking out about our middle school prospects along with me. Even if Megan and her friend decide they hate cheerleading, they will have fun. (And yes, if they really hate it, I won't pursue it. But I think they will enjoy having another way to apply all the tricks they've learned in gym. I know the cheerleading director was excited to hear she was getting a couple of competitive gymnasts for her camp.)

I realize that there is just as much bullshit at private schools as public ones -- but at a one-off private school, you won't have to fight a faceless bureaucracy. It may be somewhat easier to find some flexible solutions to our time management problems. But yeah - if I were to get her in on a cheerleading scholarship, she'd have to do cheerleading -- and that might defeat our purpose of finding a better way to integrate school and gymnastics.

There is a third option I've been thinking long and hard about -- one I'm loathe to mention because of all the flack I've gotten from my friends and family the second I say the words: home school.

Yes, I know all the arguments against it: That children who are home schooled are weird because they don't get enough social interaction (my friend Gina), that parents who home school do it because they are afraid of exposing their children to society (my sister), that it's only done by religious nuts (my sister again), that I'm not qualified to be my daughter's teacher (my husband).

I counter that with the assertion that Megan gets plenty of social interaction at gym and at the synagogue, that I admit to being afraid of the transition to middle school (and I'm not alone in that fear!), that creationism isn't the only reason people turn to home schooling (it's not unusual for a young athlete to do it), the home schooling things I've been researching are more of an Internet-based distance learning thing from an accredited private school with accepted UC curriculum and actual teachers who review the work and conference with the parents.

It's caught my imagination and I cannot let it go.

Imagine a life where there is no homework assigned to reinforce the lesson, where your kid can go at her own pace -- which may be faster than the other 29 kids in the class in some subjects, but can get extra attention when she needs it. She could cover the same ground in less time, and would probably move ahead.

Imagine waking up on a day like today -- after a meet -- when she's overtired, and have the flexibility to let her sleep in a little longer. Or being freed from overpriced vacation "high seasons" -- we could visit the family in May, before the airlines jack up their prices -- and no fear of it affecting her grade. We could stay as long as our budget (and work) allowed because she can keep up with school anywhere there's an Internet connection.

Imagine no more PTA fundraising obligations. For that matter, no PTA.

So there you have it. Chances are, we'll end up where we're supposed to be, at the middle school up the street from our house. And chances are, it will be a good experience. I freaked out like this at every stage of Megan's young life -- when she transitioned from day care to preschool and then again when we had to choose her elementary school. All of our decisions have turned out to be good, and I'm sure this will be the same.

It's just getting there from here. And making sure we leave no option unturned.