Whats wrong with leaving those potentially scary or upsetting words out?
What’s wrong with the theory is that there’s no evidence to back it up. Sure, kids read stories that contain earthquakes and hurricanes and fires and somebody dies — they read about all kinds of different situations. But the testing industry has become completely enamored of the notion that children won’t be able to test well if they encounter something that upsets them. There’s no basis in research for that. I’ve never seen the studies that demonstrate that there’s any truth to that. No studies at all? No. The thing that’s so alarming about what I documented is that all of these practices are now considered the industry standard. They haven’t been debated, there’s no literature in educational research publications where people argue about these practices, they’re just accepted. They’re stringently applied in the test development industry because of this belief that anything controversial will sink the whole test. In Massachusetts just a couple of weeks ago there was a great flap beca
