INDIANAPOLIS — It was a less than stellar day for my daughter in middle school. The students were given assessments that supposedly told them what they were best suited for in the future. She was a good student who stressed over projects, tests and grades. So imagine our surprise when we got a piece of paper from people who knew nothing about her suggesting she consider grocery store bagger or flower shop assistant. I kid you not. Grocery. Store. Bagger. We ripped it up and worked to convince her it was simply bizarrely funny, and in no way an accurate reflection of her worth and future. I wanted to go back to that school a few years later with her magna cum laude college diploma in hand. I wanted to tell them that whomever developed and scored that assessment might be better suited to keeping the soft items like bread away from the heavy canned goods. Unless that was beyond their skills. It’s quite possible the assessment was somehow biased against girls. It recommended my son become a lawyer or brain surgeon. But frankly it doesn’t matter. The nerve of anyone telling a child that they are doomed to minimum wage labor instead of telling them they should spread their wings and fly is disgusting. In Indiana today we are using a standardized test that is meant to help track students’ progress along with teacher and school effectiveness. It’s just the latest in a string of standardized test iterations Indiana has tried over the years, starting with the “A plus” program launched by Gov. Robert D. Orr in the 1980s. From there we went to ISTEP; then Gov. Evan Bayh tried to change that to the IPASS testing program, but we ended up back with ISTEP, then ISTEP+ and now ILEARN. We’ve held the tests in spring, then fall, then spring and fall, and spring again. We’ve changed who takes them and how they take them. It’s no wonder many teachers want to say IQUIT. Educators have many reasons they aren’t happy with the tests — from having the results tied to their pay to the fact more test-taking preparation and time means that they spend less time actually teaching. But as a parent, the part that concerns me most is the tests are used to tell children as young as third grade that they are not career or college ready. In third grade I still planned on being a cowboy. I understand the goals of these tests. Parents and teachers do need to know if their child is keeping pace, and what steps need to be taken to help them become their best selves. And we all need to know if our schools are educating our children or failing them. But even if the test accurately finds that a child is struggling, that should be the starting point for finding out how to help them learn — and not the time to tell him or her to prepare for a life as a grocery store bagger. History is full of famous successful people who were failures at school. Some of these stories — including that Alfred Einstein was considered a dunce — seem to be apocryphal. But some are painfully real. My favorite: Richard Branson, the business tycoon who founded the Virgin Group which includes some 200 companies in 30 countries. He dropped out of school at age 16. It turns out he was dyslexic, not stupid. Branson said “on one of my last days at school the headmaster told me that I would either end up in prison or become a millionaire.” He went for billionaire instead. Recently, schools and parents received the results of the new ILEARN test. And while the exact data hasn’t been officially released, Gov. Eric Holcomb and Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick have both said they are disappointing. State Rep. Bob Behning, the Indianapolis Republican who is chairman of the House Education Committee and one of the biggest drivers of this new standardized test, issued a statement saying that “the value of Hoosier students and teachers are not defined by test scores, but by the learning being accomplished in the classroom.” Great. But if their value is not defined by one test, Indiana needs to stop acting like it is. And while giving up testing isn’t an option, how we handle the results is. Mary Beth Schneider is an editor at TheStatehouseFile.com, a news web site powered by Franklin College journalists. Send comments to [email protected]