We were sent home a consent form to sign regarding some psst (government testing) our school was participating in.

The program is set up to determine how the kids are learning and grade three has been deemed the right year to identify our brightest young minds and roll out the research.

CCAT—Canadian Cognitive Abilities Test. The questions are not curriculum related but after bubbling in answers on a computer print-out, it’s designed to be an indicator of intelligence.

Aside from suggesting it will identify those kids who are considered to be “gifted” it also begins the process for the seven and eight year olds to think about how they want to spend their futures. They will file their answers into a time capsule and re-introduce the dialogue about how they fared with their high school guidance counselor who will tell them despite their aspirations to be an astronaut, based on their grade three test scores, they are really better suited for small engine repair.

Me: Hanna, how was school today?

Hanna: Terrible. We had a test and it was terrible.

Me: Oh dear. What happened?

Hanna: I wrote all my answers and then I erased them all and handed in a blank page.

I wondered if she was old enough to be pulling the old, “I failed, it was horrible!” and then change gears while waving a perfect paper in your face while you celebrate over ice cream (or at my house, carob chip, zucchini muffins….wait….I don’t think we used food to celebrate, for obvious reasons).

It turns out she wasn’t old enough for this trick. That or, she hadn’t figured out its works-every-time charm.

I sat and worried about what I should do.

I worried because the test was being offered over two days and I feared if she didn’t know how to “bubble in” her answers the first day, she might not have figured it out by the second.

I had a moment as a parent where I debated my options and did what I thought was right. I called her teacher and left a message explaining my concern over Hanna’s test. According to Hanna, she became confused about where to place her answer and I wanted to be sure it was explained to her for the following day so she didn’t make the same mistake twice.

I felt strange calling a teacher and never thought I would be “one of those” parents. In this case however, I knew these tests were a reflection on the class and her school as a whole so I thought it would be to everyone’s benefit that all students knew where they were meant to pencil in their answers.

Her teacher (have I mentioned how lovely this woman is?) called the following day and said things were great after day 2 of the test. Apparently the first day, Hanna read the sample question then used the space for question #1 to answer the sample. This shifted all of her answers one box down until she reached the end of the test and realized she had run out of boxes. She panicked, erased everything and cried on her desk before ding, ding, ding, the timer cut her off and the tests were rolled into the time capsule for future reference.

My concern now is we will have no way of knowing if she’s gifted.

Wait.