Skip Nav

Alexandra Penfold Tweet on Test Scores

Author's Viral Tweet Proves Kids' Test Scores Don't Tell the Whole Story

As a new school year begins, it's more important than ever to remember that not everything about your child's aptitude can be found in a report card or test score.

Author Alexandra Penfold made that sentiment wonderfully clear with a tweet after she had "sorted through some papers my mom saved from my childhood." She compared her own handwritten self-assessment from when she was in fourth grade with the results of state testing that same year.

Although she had scrawled in grade-school-level cursive that she loves to write and hopes "to become an author someday," her official holistic writing score was just a 4 out of 8. Based on the writing sample she'd submitted, the test decreed, "This student is minimally proficient in writing."

Alongside the hashtag "#morethanatest," she proved that she was more than that "remedial" score. "Random House published my sixth book last week," she wrote.

Alexandra, who writes children's books, just released her latest picture book, All Are Welcome, which just so happened to hit the second-to-top spot on the New York Times bestseller list.

When she's not writing successful stories of her own, she hopes that parents who read her tweet pass along her message: "Feel free to share my story with anyone who might be encouraged by it."

Latest parenting