A veteran teacher explains how the testing process affects kindergarten students:
I taught Kindergarten for 23 years. In addition to using imbedded assessment practices during instruction (listening, watching, asking, redirecting, challenging, etc.) I also conducted individual interviews with kids, when needed, to find out what they knew so that I could diagnose problems and plan individual instruction. In recent years my assessment practices became less and less valued by people in charge. Everyone wanted standardized test results that spawned digital graphs about kids. This did not bother me until I found out how much instructional time was lost.
Here’s the reality: You begin the year by testing to obtain baseline scores. One might think this is useful because by testing again at the end of the year you could have a nice graph showing growth. But unfortunately this is not how it is done. Local districts want to see data showing progress along the way so they want tests to be done in between. And most significantly, if a student does not meet the benchmark, you are asked to set up a program to test that child more often, perhaps every month or every two weeks.
When a teacher is testing, there is no instruction going on for that student or any students in the class. Keep in mind that real instruction involves the imbedded assessment practices I mentioned above and must be done by the teacher not a substitute. If someone simply shows kids or tells kids something that is to be learned, this is not teaching. A teacher has to engage with students in a way that will reveal to the teacher what the children are thinking or able to do. Then the instruction moves forward based on this information. Throughout instruction meaning is constantly being negotiated among participants.
Although no child learns anything while taking a test (because the teacher is not permitted to ask questions, challenge or give guidance in any way) the children who need the most instruction end up getting less. They not only lose instructional time when they are being tested, they also lose it when others in the class are being tested. In a typical year, my students lost about 9 weeks of instruction due to testing, perhaps more. Remember, classroom teachers do not test during lunch, recess, specials, special projects, assemblies and other events. We do not test children beyond the school day or year. We test during prime instructional time and therefore it takes days and weeks to complete.
It addition, top performing students who are able to read well beyond grade level take longer to test (passages were longer, responses more in-depth, etc.). So, while spending days and days to obtain scores for exactly how far above grade level these children are, the struggling readers receive no instruction. When struggling readers miss daily instruction their learning degrades rapidly. Also it is important to note that struggling students are absent from primary instruction more than other students for a multitude of reasons.
Teaching really does make a difference and instructional time should be our number one priority. Instead, we are constantly whittling away precious instructional time and then blaming teachers when learning does not happen. So it’s not just about the time spent “teaching to the test” that bothers me, it’s also about the actual time it takes to do the testing that concerns me. It’s a huge problem that should be studied and resolved.
Diane,
Can you email me if you get a chance? I’m looking for someone outside of louisiana to investigate some school/education ussues. Jindal apparently has cowed all the media, even public media, into only doing press releases and favorable fluff pieces or they lose their, access, funding, advertisers, etc. The only people doing any investigative journalism appear to be bloggers or small web only publications.
Crazycrawfish@yahoo.com
This is simple, explicit and quite convincing. To it might be added the point that. many of today’s diagnostic assessments do reveal skill or knowledge gaps that can be addressed as a result. Not always is it an either or proposition depending on the type of assessment. Another concern, however, is that much of the assessing may not link clearly to lessons being taught, and the administration has to rely on teacher aides or assistants so the primary teacher is not teaching OR testing those kids.
This post is great. I would love to see it in the new York times!
I have such brilliant, well-informed readers
Diane Ravitch
This teacher explained the effects of testing on instruction so well.
On top of testing time, the majority of teachers are pulled from their classrooms to participate in professional development sessions. Even when utilizing the best substitute teacher, this still creates another instructional interruption for our students.
Testing and “reform” initiatives are seriously weakening our schools.
Students first? Current top-down mandates speak louder than rheetoric.
Thank you to the veteran teacher who wrote this post. You made so many good points. I see an additional problem with all this testing at the kindergarten level: Not all children will develop the same skills at exactly the same time. In kindergarten my son could write his name but could not read. He could identify by name almost every type of dinosaur. He knew Batman’s back story. He could accurately follow Lego directions and drew remarkable pictures. He was interested in astronauts. In first, second, and third grade he read a bit, but was not particularly proficient.
In fourth grade he decided to read Harry Potter because his friends said it was good. Suddenly, it was indeed magic. He carried that book everywhere and finished it in a week. Then it was one book after another. A year ago he graduated with honors from NYU (Tisch). I thank my lucky stars that no one was stupid or cruel enough to have assessed him at age 5 and found him wanting because he couldn’t read yet.
His wonderful experienced kindergarten and elementary school teachers knew then what the “reformers” of today don’t — children are individuals. Glorious, wonderful, fascinating individuals.
And please remember that in the early grades we also have individual assessments to administer, which means one child is working with the teacher while the rest are doing something else. It takes forever to get through these assessments. Oftentimes I begin the post assessments immediately after finishing the pre assessments. And then comes the task of giving the other children something to do that is something they can work on independently, not too noisy, and is at least somewhat educational in nature.
So true. Your comment made me think of something else as well. One-on-one time with the students is so precious and important. I try to meet individually with my 8th graders to discuss their writers’ workshop pieces and their free reading. It is hard to find the time, and I feel lucky if I can get to everyone each quarter. What a waste to squander that precious one-on-one time on assessments at the elementary level. It must be very frustrating for you. At least here in middle school we can assess them in a big group.
I just wrote a post about this same thing! I teach 5th grade and the testing is ridiculous! “Diary of a Public School Teacher:Standardized Testing Stole Our Day!” http://oldschoolteach.blogspot.com/2012/09/standardized-testing-stole-our-day.html
Thanks Oldschoolteach, I read your post and just shook my head; (wish I could see how those stories came out). Yesterday two of my students were squabbling over who was smarter and one said, “Well, what did you get on the CMT’s?” I intervened with a comment to the effect that test scores don’t define who you are or even tell how “smart” you are. Your post and several other contributors to this blog have noted the detrimental effect on student’s motivation and attitude that results from too much testing. Are we destroying children’s love of learning by excessive testing?
The bottom line should be that those who implement these ideas should be responsible. (e.g., If they want data, then hire their own assessors.) Instead they come up with cliches like “Data driven instruction. Data drives instruction.” Well, they ought to know that data drives everyone nuts–just a bumper sticker idea.
I just learned that the kindergarten schedule of assessments in Chicago includes fourteen (14) different sessions of testing. My kindergartener, in a neighborhood school, has a kindergarten class of 31. A whole section of those tests are one-on-one with the teacher, which is all well and good until you realize that ten-minute sessions six times a year for 31 kids means a loss of six entire teaching days of real instruction. And that doesn’t include the other 8 sessions of testing.
I find this obsession with standardized tests heartbreaking, frustrating and so much else. Five-year-olds deserve so much more than this. It’s a critical time for their creative development, their physical development (gym once a week if they are lucky in Chicago), their curiosity and social development. How can any of that flourish in such circumstances?
None of this would be tolerated in the school of the children our our mayor and school board members, which just shows how disconnected the political class and their billionaire backers are from the real schools they attack and demonize every day.
Hooray for our teachers in Chicago, who heroically fought that agenda, and are showing the way forward for all of us to fight against the corporate takeover of our schools.