In this post, Valerie Strauss recounts the sordid history of Florida’s State Superintendent, Pam Stewart, who tries to force severely disabled children to take standardized state tests.
One of them, Ethan Radiske, was dying as the Florida Department of Education harassed his family to get him to take the test. Poor Ethan cheated the state by dying without taking the test.
Valerie Strauss writes:
“Now, a mother named Paula Drew is fighting the same kind of battle with the Florida Department of Education. Paula’s daughter, 15-year-old Madison Drew, has cerebral palsy and cannot speak. She suffers from a number of conditions related to her condition and takes several medications daily to prevent seizures, which can affect her cognitive abilities, a doctor’s written diagnosis shows.
“Drew said she sought an exemption from state-mandated testing, but Pam Stewart, the Florida education commissioner, denied the request…
“I asked the Florida Department of Education…
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Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 
ciedie aech
March 28, 2016 at 12:24
Not only do our poorest districts force tests onto special needs students, but onto children who have little to no English. Thank you for helping to expose how vicious our test-making companies have become.
Lloyd Lofthouse
March 29, 2016 at 07:50
Your welcome.
Bubble tests and student essays that are part of those tests that are graded by computers must not be used to label students as failing, fire teachers and close public schools that are then turned over—property and all—to become the property of a for profit or even often fraudulent non-profit publicly funded, private-sector corporate charter school that do not answer to community based democratically elected school boards or parents.
The corporate billionaire oligarchs and/or hedge fund managers that are funding the corporate media propaganda that is demonizing and stereotyping public schools as socialist and a monopoly are, in reality, weapons being used by corporations that are waging an all out war against the U.S. Republic the American Founding Fathers created and its participatory democracy to replace it with an oligarchy ruled by the few instead of the many.
This is a war being waged between a segment of the wealthiness 1% in the private sector versus every job in the public sector: police, military, US Postal Service, National and State park services, the Veterans Administration, public school teachers, public prisons, etc. If these forces of darkness win, then there will be no freedom of choice except what the corporations and their overloads approve of. The U.S. Constitution that was written to protect the people from their own govenrment will become worth no more than used toilet paper ready to flush.