Debbie Stier - The Perfect Score Project: One Mothers Journey to Uncover the Secrets of the SAT

Copyright 2014 by Debbie Stier

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Harmony Books is a registered trademark, and the Circle colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York.

Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication data is available upon request.

ISBN: 978-0-307-95668-2
eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-95669-9

Cover design by Michael Nagin
Cover photography Fuse/Getty Images

v3.1_r1

For Ethan,
who taught me more about being a good mom than I ever taught him about the SAT.
Thank you for sharing this journey.

N othing will distract me. If theres a fire, keep working. If someone throws up, dont move. And no freaking out. Skip and come back; shorter is better. Backsolve, plug in, VPP; make sure to answer the question theyre asking

Its December 3, 2011, and the line at this middle-class suburban high school in Dobbs Ferry, New York, is short today, not like the last time I was here, nine months ago, for SAT No. 2. Everyone seems more relaxed. Or maybe Im just more relaxed, since this will be my seventh SAT of the year. I am a veteran.

Back in March there was more nervous energy in the halls, kids on edge, some of them anxiously rehearsing the names of literary characters to use in their essays:

Whats the bosss name in Glengarry Glen Ross ?

Write about Blake.

You pre-thought-out your essay?

I overheard one kid telling a friend, Id get a 2400 if my drivers ed teacher was the proctor.

On the other hand, I dont see the girls in flannel pajama bottoms today; at the March test, thats what they all were wearing. This December crowd seems less nervous but more serious, too.

Okay, the essay. What do I need to remember What is the thesis? Dont forget to circle back to your thesis in every paragraph. Write it at the top of your answer book, like Erica said. Dont forget to do that. And use good vocabanomaly, redolent, circumspect, jingoistictry to weave in a few of those. Leave a few minutes at the end to double back and check grammar. No pronoun errors, for godsake. Answer the questionyes or no. Agree or disagree. Declare, dont waffle. Think: debate team. Convince the essay graderbuild a case.

I want a 12 so badly I can taste it.

A Doogie Howser look-alike is in line in front of me. Its my third time, he says to his friend.

Youre kidding, right? the friend asks. Youve taken the SAT two times, already? Youre only a sophomore.

The friend seems impressed. Or maybe thats stress I hear in his voice, Im not sure. Im only half paying attention. Im in the zone, focused, running down my mental checklist of what I need to remember for the essay:

Dont forget to work in a counterexample at the end. And use a metaphor, if possible, and a literary exampleenough with the Tiger Mom. She hasnt delivered that 12. Use The Things They Carried by Tim OBrienthats what John, the super-methodical tutor, told me. Actually, he said to use an obscure poet, but that if I couldnt think of one, Tim OBrien was a better choice than the Tiger Mom. Please, God, no technology prompts.

Four years earlier:

Tell your mother, she said, guiding my twelve-year-old son, Ethan, into the conference room. Her hand rested gently on his shoulder, as if to say, Dont worry, Ive got your back. This was the school psychologist, and shed just finished a round of psychological testing on my son, a legal requirement if Ethans status as a student with a disability was to be maintained in the coming school year.

Ethans disability is what Id describe as a mild case of garden-variety ADHD, the kind without the behavior problems. Ethans an easygoing kid: hes happy-go-lucky but disorganized, and needed a lot of refocusing during those early years in school. To my mind, ADHD is what we used to call boys. Now we have treatment for the condition and legally required accommodations at school.

There were a handful of school administrators sitting around the table, gathered there on a spring morning for the annual review of Ethans 504 plan. Ethan scanned the adult-filled room sheepishly, then looked down at his shoes. Finally he looked at me and spoke.

Mom, he said, Im fine with Bs.

The room was silentfor a momentand then the door opened and Ethans math teacher bounced in with a spring in his step, like Tigger in Winnie-the-Pooh .

Ethans the classic underachiever, he announced, as if to say, No big deal, just reporting an observation for the record.

Im fine with Bs and Ethans a classic underachiever: I was the only person in the room experiencing a disconnect. Everyone else seemed to think underachievement was fine if you were getting Bs. Or maybe not even Bs; later on I talked to a family who got the same line about their son, another ADHD underachiever, who was getting Cs. And these were high school Cs, which count.

After the math teachers report, the conversation turned to me and how I might learn to accept my twelve-year-old sons expectations for himself.

When I got to my car, I cried.

I was worn ragged from years of doing battle with the schools over every scrap of common sense. There had to be an easier way. It was simply not possible that I was the only mother upset that her son was not living up to his potential, no matter what the school said. Surely there was an alternate universe where mothers were surprised to see a C on the report card after theyd been assured by their sons that they had all As.

I dont know how that happened, Ethan would say, and he meant it. He didnt know, not until his mom called the school to get the story, which was usually some variation of: He didnt turn in his homework, or He had all As, except for one test where he got an F. That brought his grade down to a C for the semester.

Ethan always managed to look on the bright side, no matter how many times this happened, and it happened constantly because he could never anticipate the problems before they arrived. His school life was like Groundhog Day , which is how I knew the seventh-grade special ed teacher was dead wrong when he called me in to give me a lesson in parenting. He said (I am quoting) I should take away Ethans safety net and let him fail a little as he handed me a xeroxed sheet of instructions from Outward Bound to clarify the theory. Intentionally letting a child fail might work with a kid who can see beyond the next five minutes, but that kid was not my son in seventh grade. To Ethan, the future always came as a surprise.

I had had enough. For meand this was where I parted ways with the schoolthe issue wasnt grades. I would have been proud of Ethans Bs if the math teacher had bounced in and said, Ethans a hard worker. But thats not what he said, and it wasnt what I was seeing. Ethan was taking the easy path, and the school was in his camp. The administrators thought Ethan, a happy-go-lucky, disorganized middle school boy with ADHD, should determine his own academic goals.