THE GRINCHES WHO STOLE KINDERGARTEN
BY:  MATT PRESTBURY

Kindergarten went from play-based
To four or five high stakes
Test to determine
Whether a teacher is working
To make a six year old child work force ready
Soon as you finish one test there's four more ready
Waiting in the wings
We forsaking other things
Things that used to matter like social development
Now character betterment's been deemed irrelevant
No time for raising kids to be compassionate
Only time for raising kids to be competitive
No time to let kids be artists any more
Only time for pushing kids to raise composite scores
Five and six year old kids
Turned test guinea pigs
Many follow along at the behest of big wigs
Who don't know the first things
About what our kids need
Who think the children succeed
By staring at the screens
On tablets and laptops
With Lexia and Dreambox
We need a mass exodus
Where we're saying that we're not
Taking anymore
Our kids are more than just a score
I want em writing on the board
And building with Legos on the floor
I want em learning many marvelous things
I want em feeling the joy that being an artist brings
Painting pictures of cars or plucking guitar strings
I want em to build with blocks
And pretend to be cops
Locking up bad guys
Like I did when I was five
I don't need my kindergartners posing as fourth graders
Sitting here knowing Algebra, reading the Isis Papers
They ain't about to go out and pledge Zeta Phi Beta
So why I need em college ready? They got time for that later
Keep all your antics, your gimmicks and your data
Building airplanes in the sky, I'm building something much greater
Imaginative, collaborative, conscious human beings
Leaders who love learning and look forward to seeing
Their teachers in the morning and being lovingly greeted
Happy to come each day cause their lovingly treated
I just wish we could give em all they deserve
Without the pressure of data collectors getting on our nerves
I wanna teach how I see fit in my own manner
Let me out of this straight jacket call common core standards
Let me teach em how to become some real difference makers
Not teach em how to become indifferent test takers
Before reform breaks us
All