Creel Elementary School in Florida has had a long-running program to get kids excited about taking the standardized Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. This includes urging students to sleep well the night before, wear comfy clothes, and eat a well balanced breakfast—before being served some Mountain Dew pre-test to really get them going.
Apparently, taking a standardized test requires the same pre-game strategy as a marathon World of Warcraft session. Of course, it needed to be scaled down a bit from the standard 3 liter bottle of soda and a whole bag of Doritos, because children are small and standardized tests don’t really run 24 hours at a stretch. So, they were only given “about 3 tablespoons”  and some trail mix to get them going, according to Florida Today. 3 tablespoons, by the way, is roughly the same amount of liquid that’ll fit in a standard 1.5 oz shot glass.
Don’t worry, though. One student’s grandma found out, and she rained on their caffeine-powered parade. The school stopped the practice after concerns were raised, but they maintain that it was instituted with positive intentions. In fact, it was put in place ten years ago after school principal Kathryn Eward read in an education journal that such treats had a positive impact on students.
“We don’t think we were giving them enough to really get into” negative impacts of sugar highs and lows, Eward said. “We’ve done it for years. The kids look forward to the treats.”
I mean, sure, a shot of Mountain Dew doesn’t sound like enough to get them really cranked up on caffeine, but it also doesn’t really take a whole lot to distract a bunch of kids from standardized testing. Plus, they were giving kids shots of Mountain Dew.
So, the school board advised Creel Elementary to only provide the state standard of water to their students before the FCAT. According to Brevard Public Schools Spokeswoman Michelle Irwin, the decision was made because, “Since then, there’s been new information (about what’s best for students).” We’ve made major leaps in the area of child soda consumption science in the last ten years.
Oh well. Whatever happened, it’s probably better for the students that they stop doing the Dew before tests—except for the poor kid whose grandma ratted the school out. He’s probably been shoved in a locker somewhere.
(Florida Today via Jezebel, image via Brent Moore)
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