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The National Educational Development Tests were administered to the ninth grade early in 1965. At the time of testing I didn't give the matter much thought. Standardized achievement tests were a part of being a baby boomer student and NEDT was not a new concept for me.
I may have taken an IQ test when very young but I can find no record of it in my mother's files. There is a record of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills in 5th grade at Osborn School. I scored in the 86th percentile - and much higher in reading and arithmetic. I don't think I picked up much vocabulary and language (punctuation - spelling - usage) skills in the classroom. Most of that came from outside reading which I had just begun to find engaging.
The Iowa tests were taken again early in 9th grade, their name now Iowa Tests of Educational Development. My composite score for the eight tests was in the 96th percentile. And in the 99th percentile for a ninth test - Use of Sources of Information. By far my lowest score was for Correctness of Expression, in the 68th percentile, consistent with my lifelong hearing difficulties - as my brain does not process sounds very well. This issue was detected by second grade and I received several months of speech therapy at Osborn that year - the individualized attention of an excellent speech therapist my best elementary school experience. There was no cure but once alerted to the problem I was taught how to pay better attention so that I was able to compensate for it.
Later that school year came the NEDT. Both 9th grade tests were probably positively impacted by the predatory incident two years earlier and the identity crisis which followed, as I withdrew into myself distractions decreased which improved my ability to stay focused in school. Test scores improved, if for no reason than I had become skilled at "zoning in" during testing. They likely also improved because I was putting more concentration into both classroom learning and outside reading.
My completion of 6th grade coincided with the Ashland public schools transformation of the town's school system, creating a junior high and moving the 7th and 8th grades out of the elementary schools. So 7th grade suddenly became the grade in which the basic decisions about pigeonholing students were made. Some of this was probably being done when 7th grade students were scattered around town in the various elementary schools, but I assume the effort to do this became more aggressive with school centralization. I suspect that improved efficiency in pigeonholing was advanced during the funding campaign as one of the benefits of building a new high school and converting the old high school building to a junior high school rather than simply tearing it down.
For me the timing could not have been worse as the my late puberty would exacerbate the trauma of going from one of the oldest students in the small school building to being one of the youngest and smallest in a much larger building, there was one girl who was smaller. And in the months immediately following the predatory incident my learning engagement hit an all-time low. Not helped by the fact that my 7th grade science, English, and arithmetic teachers were by far the worst and least interesting instructors I had ever encountered, the science teacher an aging school nurse pressed into service because the teacher shortage caused by the opening the the new school. Shop class and art class were the only periods in which I exhibited any interest. The result being my pigeonholing as an average (B) student in the three 8th grade areas being aggressively pigeonholed; English, arithmetic, and science. History was my strongest subject and that had been spared the pigeonholing process.
Looking around my various classrooms at the start of eighth grade I noted the absence of the really good students. Indeed I was never to be in a class with my cousin who was destined to be the Class of 1968 valedictorian. This did not alarm me as few of them were friends and there were immediate advantages to having little serious competition. I was probably blissfully unaware initially that these class assignments were by design and I pretty much aced every 8th grade class. My parents may have attributed this to their nagging as I had told no one about the predatory incident.
At the start of ninth grade I was placed in the advanced English class, most likely at the request of my eighth grade teacher who was assigned to teach it. I was unaware of just how rare an event it was for someone to ascend from their original pigeonhole, pigeonholing was a one time process and the administration fiercely resisted admitting an original classification error. Although it would have been relatively easy to break out of your pigeonhole and fall into a lower strata if you were willing to totally tank a course. Despite all A's in 8th grade science and math I was not moved up to advanced science ( Biology instead of another year of General Science). I was put into Algebra instead of 9th grade arithmetic.
At the time I was disappointed about not getting to take biology and extremely distressed about having to take advanced English as I was one of only two boys in the class. The two of us were not allowed to sit together. Two years earlier a couple of junior high girls, one of whom I knew and trusted, had lured me into the ambush. I must have been appealing prey as they were turned on by their domination and the event, coinciding with the whole puberty thing, brought on an identity crisis. The result was two and a half years of aggressively avoiding almost all the junior high's girls. I would describe this as a full blown phobia except that I had for all practical purposes withdrawn from virtually everyone at school so it would be difficult to discern much practical difference.
Although neither girl was in the advanced English class I was still too traumatized for it to be a productive learning environment despite the excellent teacher. I interacted well with the girls at my church but that was in a different town and a different school system. Somehow I was able to keep things compartmentalized.
One day near the end of ninth grade someone from the office came to the class and escorted me to the office. Imagining all sorts of bad things I was stunned when the school principal presented me with a certificate for scoring the highest in the school on the 9th grade NEDT and in the 98th percentile nationally. I left the office in a daze and headed for my mental health haven, the isolated ticket office at the outside entrance to the school auditorium
No one went there unless there was an assembly and there were ways to reach the auditorium unchallenged. This had been my refuge for the past two years. During a stressed out melt down I would sit in there and the junior high would become a place without me in it. I was so quiet and well behaved that occasional absences were overlooked.
I needed a quiet place to think about the implications of these test scores and how they impacted the shattered identity I was then trying to rebuild. Although I did not know anything about the concept of identity and would never have used that word I was instinctively trying to address it. Earlier in the year I had gotten a "D" in science as a result of being effectively comatose from boredom one grading period. My parents required me to appeal to the teacher for extra credit to elevate that grade. After performing the penitence necessary to raise the grade I had a moment of inspiration and volunteered to start a science club. I forced myself to do the development work, recruit an advisor, and chair an organizational meeting. The club's first act was to replace me as their leader. This allowed me to quietly bow out of a club that had filled up with junior high science nerds. I don't know what I was expecting but the moment this demographic registered I rejected the club as an possible substitute for my shattered jock identity.
So my reaction a few weeks later to these test scores was more panic than pride. I did not see much upside to being a school brain. They were not going to hold an assembly and publicly present the award certificate. My parents and teachers would load me up with even more grade pressure. There was no status improvement that I could see and I had always felt that my brainy cousin envied my world of lower expectations. And it was not going to go far toward improving my self esteem as my identity issues were mostly about my feeling that I was different from typical people and not in good ways.
After a while I calmed down and returned to the advanced English classroom, gritting my teeth at the door as I faced the prospect of my entrance calling the class's attention toward me. I promised myself that only my parents and teachers would know about the test scores, because I knew that I would tell no one else the news and would do my best to avoid even thinking about it.
Was my choice a huge waste of potential? Yes and no. In an alternate timeline I might have achieved some great things but with my need for control and the resulting hypertension it is likely that people would have been celebrating my death for the past thirty years.
For more of my hilarious junior high science adventures go to the science fair section (about two thirds of the way down) of my 2013 baby boomer blog.
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