Teacher on leave after controversial letter

A special needs teacher at West Oak Middle School in Oconee County said she was yanked from her classroom mid-morning on Monday and placed on administrative leave with pay after she wrote a letter to school officials requesting that her students be exempted from taking the SC PASS and SC READY federally-mandated standardized tests.

Tracie Happel, who teaches 34 students in 6th-8th grades with learning differences at the school in Westminster, said she was told by a district human resources manager that the reason she was placed on leave was because of derogatory names used in her letter to describe her students.

But Happel said each term used in her letter – stupid, idiot, retarded – were words that her students had used to describe themselves and were not words she would use to describe them.

Told of Happel’s characterization of the incident Tuesday by a reporter and asked why Happel was placed on leave, an Oconee County School District spokeswoman said the district does not discuss confidential personnel matters.

Happel said she was placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation into allegations that she had called her students names in her letter.

“What I had actually done was quoted them saying they feel stupid, like idiots and like retards,” Happel said. “I made clear it was them saying that but my administration doesn’t see it that way.”

She used the word "retarded" in quotations because one of her students, on an almost daily basis, uses that word to describe himself, she said.

"That's why I used that word, because that's how he describes himself and it's powerful to me that he feels so different from everybody else," she said. "And it breaks my heart, because he's not. He's a great kid and he's smart."

Happel said she has long been an opponent of standardized tests but decided this year to write a letter stating her objections.

“I objected to the testing because my students are already behind the eight-ball academically and I felt that the testing would further crumble their already precarious sense of self-worth, and just their views of themselves academically and as people in general,” Happel said.

In her three-page letter, Happel listed her objections, including that the tests treat students like guinea pigs, are used to rank and sort students and schools, turn over evaluation of student knowledge to experts outside the classroom and take away from classroom instruction for her students who are already behind.

“I object to forcing children to sit through hours of bubble tests when they don’t even understand what they are doing and why they are doing it,” she wrote. “This is inhumane.”

She filed the letter on Monday, the day before the tests were to begin at West Oak. She said she initially received an email reply that stated that the tests were federally-mandated and had to be given.

She told her students that morning she had written the letter requesting her students not be required to take the tests and that it went against her “professional conscience.”

Then, she said, two principals came to her classroom and told her she had to leave immediately to speak at the district office.

This is Happel’s first year teaching at West Oak, but she said she has 25 years teaching experience, mostly in Wisconsin schools. Though she’s long objected to the standardized tests, this is the first time she’s written a letter and asked to opt her students out of the test.

“The whole purpose of this is to inform my administrators and parents and whoever else would listen that this testing isn’t right, especially for kids who already have learning disabilities, who are already behind in school, and then they’re expected to test at a grade-level assessment,” Happel said. “That’s ridiculous.”