Testing children in kindergarten is becoming common practice. Oregon will begin testing all 5-year-olds next fall to assess their “readiness” for kindergarten. It is never too soon to test children, and some states have drafted standards for pre-schoolers.
How did this happen? An article by Stephanie Simon in Reuters explains it all.
“Testing young children is not a new concept. In the 1980s, many states assessed children to determine whether they were ready to enter kindergarten or first grade. Experts in child development denounced the practice as unfair and unreliable and it faded out.
In recent years, however, the federal law known as No Child Left Behind has put pressure on schools to raise scores on the standardized reading and math tests given to students starting around age 8. Schools that post poor scores are labeled failing; principals and teachers can lose their jobs.
With the stakes so high, many administrators have decided to start testing in the earlier grades, to give kids practice and to identify students who need help.
The Obama administration accelerated the trend in 2011 with a $500 million competitive grant to bolster early childhood education. States that pledged to assess all kindergarteners earned extra points on their applications.”
So now state after state is falling into line, testing the littlest students to find out what they know and what they don’t know. The experts are strangely silent about whether this is developmentally appropriate. It is never too soon to start compiling data, it seems.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes, children are data, and we all know data is for sale.
Why doesn’t anyone confront Obama directly about his administration’s exploitation of student data? Fingers are pointed at Duncan, however Duncan is not the President.
Current & future misuse of student data (to stimulate the economy) should be challenged by Democrats. No one cares what Republicans think, although they’re no better when it comes to data collection.
Plus, no way Romney will win so that leaves us with Obama & his affinity for data for dollars.
I just had a knock-down, drag-out fight last night about homework . . . with my first grader. They are really dialing up academic “rigor” to get ready for the grade 3 standardized test. This sort of thing is getting out of hand, and you can bet that I’ll be pursuing Opt Out procedures and encouraging others to do so as well. We are watching our six year old daughter’s once considerable enthusiasm for school whither before our eyes. It should not be this way.
We fought this kind of battle last year (3rd Grade). I conferred with her teacher and we modified the expectations a bit. I worked with my daughter to try to figure out some new strategies. It was a tough year for her, but got better. She’s happy and eager this year, I’m pleased to report.
I wish you well in your efforts.
Opt out of homework too. It’s not appropriate for first graders (or elementary kids in general, really).
I couldn’t disagree with you more. You would be teaching your child that the rules simpy do not apply to him. I’d hate to see what that attitude develops into for a teenager! Instead, remind your child what the purpose of homework is (to practice skills!) and that sometimes we have to do things we do not want to do…life is tough.
One further thought.. We discovered that between class time and the afterschool program our daughter almost never brings work home (this year).
I do agree with Dr. Ravitch, though. Six hours of class time per day really should be enough.
I see I mistakely attributed a comment to Diane, when it was actually made by Dienne. Sorry.
Our daughter was assessed prior to Kindergarten, but I think the purpose was to identify children with special needs. This sems to me to be a perfectly appropriate use of testing.
Washington started testing Kindergarten this year with the WA Kids assessment. They told parents that it was a get to know you interview using a booklet of questions during a parent conference that included the child during the first three days of school. As a teacher in the district who also has a kindergartener, I knew that these booklets were actually standardized assessments that were being kept on file and scored. I opted out. I attended the conference. I participated in an interview that discussed my child’s interests and perspectives, but I let the teacher know that the booklet should not guide the conversation nor should it be filled out.
Now this week the first round of DIBELS testing took place in kindergarten. I also opted out of that. My kids attend a public Montessori, yet in the first month of school they have already been assessed through two standardized tests. My own children did not participate in the testing but we’re talking about kindergarten and they already see this much testing.
I share the view of other readers regarding standardized testing – especially of kindergarteners! – but assessing for kindergarten readiness seems different to me. Common core standards have changed everything, and kindergarteners are expected to do so much now. We hope they learn to read easily, because they also need to be writing 5 sentence paragraphs as a kindergarten standard! In my daughter’s kindergarten class there are some children who do not appear to be ready for kindergarten. They are good kids, but do not have the attention span or focus or muscle controlor academic readiness to succeed. It is sad to see their faces – they have a fantastic teacher in a fantastic school but they are already aware that they are just not up to the same tasks that their peers are. Do I wish that kindergarten were more Ike it used to be? Yes. But if we are going to allow the standards to be ramped up so much through common core and school evaluation processes it only seems fair to students (and teachers) to allow an honest assessment of whether children are ready for it. Keep in mind too that this is complicated by that high expense of preschool – parents might know I their gut that their child isn’t ready for kindergarten, but they are trying to figure out how to aoid the high cost of preschool. Providing for universal preschool would make a huge difference! But that seems like a pipe dream at this point.
If writing a five sentence paragraph is a requirement for kindergarten, then it’s not that kindergartners are ready for kindergarten, it’s that kindergarten isn’t ready for kindergarteners. Reams and reams of research show that reading and writing shouldn’t really be part of the kindergarten curriculum at all, let alone writing five full sentences. Good grief.
I agree. The assessment my daughter took was nothing like that. She got a perfect score because she had a great, appropriate, and relaxed pre-school experience. Again, our system seems geared toward aiming students with extra needs to extra services.
I agree with you, but the common core folks didn’t. Common core is fully implemented in the elementary schools in our school district this year. I commend our teachers and administration for bringing it in thoughtfully and carefully, but our district can’t change the state mandate. Writing in kindergarten, prepositions in first grade – most teachers think that concepts are all being done (and mastery expected)a full year or two earlier than before. While teachers won’t like this, they are doing their best to help kids succeed, which is why I think a kindergarten readiness assessment is not inappropriate in this environment. No one, teacher or parent, wants kids to fail.
Common core is a load of garbage peddled by Gates and company. Yeah, let’s have all students learn the same thing at the same time with no variation of ability or motivation. Continue to deskill the teaching profession so that any idiot off the street can read a canned curriculum.
I have a copy of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects sitting in front of me at this moment. I read all the standards for Kindergarten in reading, writing, listen/speaking and language and see no where that it is stated that kindergarteners will write 5 sentence paragraphs. I am not a supporter of the CCSS because they are untested/untried, but I think many schools/districts/states are touting standards in the CCSS that simply do not exist. In all of the kindergarten writing standards it says “use a combination of drawing, dictating and writing to compose…” I do think that some work needs to be done to ensure that we have not been unrealistic in our expectations in the standards, but the writing standards for kindergarten do not indicated 5 sentence paragraphs are expected.
Thank you for looking that up! I will look into it here. We are in a large district and I have heard several times about the writing standard at school functions from school personnel. I wonder if this is a state interpretation of CCSS? I shall inquire! My oldest child is finishing elementary school now and attended the same school the whole time – it is quite obvious to me that the academic demands of kindergarten have increased significantly over the last five years. My youngest is a summer baby and we started her at six rather than five – in large part due to the increased demands. We didn’t want a young kindergartener to be overwhelmed.
I am not a CCSS fan either, but I do think our district has tried to incorporate in a wise way. I think the debates over education are terribly important, and I hope that 5 or 10 years down the road we have wisened up,, but my kids are in school now. I can’t wait ten years for improvement or epiphany. If CCSS is required now, I can only hope that the stewards of our district incorporate it wisely (I live in Arizona, so notice that I hold out no such hope for the stewards of my state.)
A news brief from ACT, released yeseterday
http://www.act.org/newsroom/releases/view.php?p=2556&lang=english&hq_e=el&hq_m=2004520&hq_l=1&hq_v=d999a755f3
My understanding is that this goes all the way down to kindergarten.
Re: Testing and Loss of Instructional Time
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.
Sorry my rant is so long.
I’m glad your rant was long. That is totally nuts.
VERY well said!
This is nothing but a form of child abuse. Business wants to start creating a caste system in this country so that those students who allegedly can’t do the work will be tracked into the vast majority of low-paid, no-benefit jobs while a handful will get the better jobs. Your fate will be set at 4 or 5 years of age. Period.
My own two children were “summer” babies. When their time to be tested for school readiness came around, I was also in a teacher education program. The recommendations were that my children were borderline ready. I chose to give my children an extra year in a transitional first program and have not regretted it since. They since had very few issues in school with learning, elementary and HS -just some normal adolescent laziness- and they have since graduated college while working all four years. They are now in their mid 20’s and are in their careers and respected. I credit much of their success -and high esteem from not being labeled an underachiever like I was in school- from my giving them that extra year to mature socially, emotionally, and cognitively. They used to joke that I held them back, but now that they are adults they have thanked me for that one single decision. Their friends in the neighborhood, whose parents didn’t take advantage of the program, all to a household had children who struggled in school. I am a supporter of these programs and their benefits should not be dismissed because they are tainted by a testing regime.
They were tested once, not monthly, not every two weeks for their entire yeari in kindergarten.
Yes, that distinction must be made. That is a huge difference. One of these days I’m going to post my district’s testing schedule. It is two pages, single spaced. It is killing our students and teachers.
Have any of these people ever actually spent time with a five year old??
I’m sure glad we don’t look to Finland for advice. I mean. . . they’re not doing anything right, right? Kids start formal school in 1st grade. They only go for 20 hours a week. And, I believe I read that the information parents get about their child is in the form of a narrative. They don’t give them letter scores, numbers, ratings, etc.
Oh yeah, and when these 1st graders are in school, they spend 45 minutes in class working and then 15 minutes outside for recess.
So obviously our approach will get us much better results than Finland. I mean I forget how they rank nationally? At the top right? For like the last 10 or so years?
I sure hope people in Finland are adopting our style as we know best.
I am opting my children out of all of these tests.
And another thing. . . I believe Anthony Cody wrote in a blog about Germany’s study of play based kindergarten and learning based in the 70s. They found that in 5th grade or so, the play based kindergarteners were not only more socially stronger, but also better academically than their learning based counterparts.
But who tells us what to do? We live in America after all.
(This is depressing, Dr. Ravitch.) Any chance you can find another hopeful story for us?
Those five-year-olds are slackers. We say, “Test them in the womb.” #satire
http://studentslast.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-tiniest-test-takers.html
The term “developmentally appropriate” is dead. When I began teaching all we focused on was developmentally appropriate practices. This changed with NCLB. We weren’t even allowed to bring up DAP during inservice days or staff meetings. DAP is associated with lower standards and feel- good education, when in fact its whole purpose is teach children at a level that’s best for them. We never assumed it meant dumbing down the curriculum. You can do Venn diagramming with hula hoops in kindergarten, but not on a worksheet.
Ready? Ready for what? For inappropriate curriculum that makes young, fragile children feel like failures? Those who cannot conform to the current requirements know that they are falling short. They watch and see other children. They are not stupid.
I agree that this is a form of child abuse. Parents must use their voice to make this stop but the dominant voice has frightened so many parents (mostly in lower income areas) to believe that without their child reading by the time she/he is 3, all is lost.
What are we doing to these children?
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