Fried, Son-ny Side Up

Yesterday, and to be honest still this morning, I wanted to fry my son. As I think about the situation, I suppose it is just fate playing a sarcastic trick on me. I do not put much emphasis on testing students. In fact, I tell my kids that though the standardized test is important for them to do well on, it doesn't mean anything. Huh! Until your kid gets the scores back, and he flopped big time. Now, how am I supposed to convince others that this test doesn't matter, when I am so disturbed by his scores? I suppose saying that I KNOW he can do better because he has done better in the past only makes me look like a coddling mother. To say that the teachers told me he was always the first one done, and that he was done in 7 minutes when it should have taken a half hour, makes me look like a mother that makes excuses and doesn't expect much from her child. But to be a mother that wants to get a higher degreee so that she can convince schools to stop placing so much emphasis on testing, and then her son royally screws up, makes it look like there are some sour grapes somewhere. The truth of the matter is that he still scored about average. He made a little improvement in Reading Comprehension, even getting done as quickly as he did. But he didn't make the expected overall improvements that I was seeing in the classroom. So what did this mother, who is against testing, tell the son who scored so "poorly?" This is the last year you can get a score like that. You'll be lucky to get into a community college with scores like that! Yes, it seems that I didn't score well on the Mother Test.