Nobody stopped it.
Nobody in Florida with the power to do so stopped the state from forcing a 9-year-old boy named Michael, who was born with a brain stem but not a complete brain, from taking an alternative version of the standardized Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
He is blind and he can’t talk, nor can he understand basic information, but, yes, Michael had to “take” the test.
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Still, in Florida, tests must be taken, and state education officials determined that he had to take the Florida Alternative Assessment.
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State Representative Linda Stewart of Orlando told me she didn’t think that a young boy who can’t tell the difference between an apple and a peach should be taking any test, and tried to get officials in the Education Department to step in to stop the charade of Michael taking a test.
She said nobody did. “Nobody wanted to take the responsibility of stopping it,” she said.
Rick Roach, an Orange County, Florida, school board member who was following Michael’s story, confirmed that Michael was in fact forced to take the test, meaning that a state employee sat down and read it to him, as if he could actually understand it.
If this doesn’t turn your stomach, I’m not sure what will.
Sheer madness.
But also emblematic of the times.
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