Here is a good way to ruin the lives of very small children.
Give them lots of tests. Start when they are very young, say, five, in kindergarten.
Instead of letting them play or giving them age -appropriate instruction, test them.
In Chicago, the little ones will be tested again and again. By the reckoning in this article, as much as one-third of the year will be devoted to tests.
This will encourage their parents to find a charter school or leave for the suburbs.
It will dishearten their teachers, who might leave before her salary gets too high.
And it will teach the little ones to sit silently, training them for…sitting silently.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You once called this institutional child abuse, Diane. A few years ago I referred to the testing mania in my district as child abuse and people thought I was nuts. I stand by that opinion.
Lehrer, you are correct. It is an insidious form of child abuse. Teachers must, together, refuse to “obey orders”.
Right! Chicago readers reading this (especially parents), please call the ACLU immediately!
I am not exaggerating….reading this broke my heart, especially the statement: “Mommy, I am not good at kindergarten.” God bless these innocent babies. We do need a revolution. How much more can we take?
At a statewide ceremony for the arts, a presenter praised all of the high school students, who were receiving awards, for achieving recognition for their musical and artistic abilities despite the testing madness.
He referred to the CT testing craze and those forced to test as: “legally sanctioned child abusers”.
As I sat their with my daughter, I thought, “Well, I guess that’s my new job title.”
I spent many years teaching in early childhood (80s-90s) when developmentally appropriate best teaching practices were extremely important. This term gradually began disappearing from the the conversation in the 2000s. I guess that’s what happens when billionaire businesses take over ” best practices” for educating children. Now they will begin mining for data from all of these tests. What will Gates do with all of that info???
Sell technoeducrap!
I taught special ed./at risk E.C. for 13 years (I call them lucky!), from 1975-1983. Because it was sp.ed. &, therefore, diagnostically-based curriculum, incoming students were tested on the Brigance Developmental Inventory (which, typically, took less than 1/2 morning or afternoon session)–once, incoming (baseline), then 2-3x more per year. Again, this was strictly for diagnostic purposes, the testing was made into more of a game situation (the Gross Motor section especially liked by most kids!) &, as the year went on, the time to test would diminish as, of course, on each section, the child would have accomplished more tasks as the year went on. Which, in reality, is the purpose of testing–to see what work needs to be done to get a child within the developmentally appropriate-for-age range.
And–a half hour or more was spent EVERY morning or afternoon (we had half-day sessions) in free play, with all sorts of toys and equipment. Children had FUN (what’s that?!), learned socialization skills (many of which the home environment lacked), teachers/aides observed, took notes & wrote in teacher-parent shared journals, as
well. We had snack time, we cooked with our students, and we went on field trips (teachers often paid for students who could not afford)
monthly.
But–I’m preaching to the choir, here. I have to agree w/Lehrer & Jon Awbrey:
“We’ve moved from Piaget to Pinochet. With a bit of Pinocchio
mixed in.”
How extremely clever but, oh, so sad.
This is eerily akin to a Pink Floyd video of “The Wall”, make everyone a working drone devoid of an independent thought, great little workers. Soon we will be hiding in basements reading forbidden fiction & literature, not 50 Shades of Grey but Mark Twain, Victor Hugo, Shakespeare, etc… Maybe we can make a secret logo to let people know about our underground sect and that we are around & meet. Maybe a picture of a crayon on a milk carton under the caption of “missing”.
I can’t fathom such a massive brain-washing of the populace, its Jim Jones in Guayana all over again, I’m afraid if I and my children & students, don’t get out now I’ll be one of those who will be forced to drink the kool-aid at gunpoint.
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvPpAPIIZyo for the video of “The Wall”
This makes my heart hurt. I have a 3 year old, and I can’t imagine subjecting her to this kind of abuse. As a high school teacher in my district, we waste 46 days of our year in standardized testing. On a related note…I woke up to Yahoo news reporting this story: Now you can get a teaching degree over your lunch hour or while you sip coffee! Wow, apparently I went to University for 7 years for nothing.
http://education.yahoo.net/articles/college_degrees_within_reach.htm?kid=1MOI4
This is definitely a form of child abuse. And to make matters worse, children that are unable to sit silently will be forced to take medication that will supress their growth so that they will be able to sit silently.
http://ilraiseyourhand.org/content/testing-testing
A Chicago mom helped monitor the classroom for her child’s kindergarten teacher during testing. Read her chilling account of what happened to her daughter.
Do you suppose any of the idiots who mandate this crap would experience an epiphany from reading this blog?
Not really and only if it were their children or grandchildren. Everyone else is just a statistic and a potential profit. Sick society we live in.
Like her daughter, I cried upon reading this.
Every CPS consultant, privatizer, charterite, and their grumpy billionaire backers should be forced to eat hard copy of this mother’s entire article.
Without condiments. Sans liquids. Without complaint. And best of all: for up to one third of the entire school year.
Let’s see what those “hard-liners” are like when tables are turned. After all, if a five-year-old has to go through the gauntlet, then turnabout is fair play.
Any takers, ArneRhee& Co?
Here is the conundrum: since how children do in school is really predicated on their kindergarten readiness, it is imperative that all kids be tested when they start kindergarten. This is crucial to fairly assessing where they are in later grades. Which cannot be valid without knowing what kids knew at the start of the year when tests are administered. This is the fundamental reason why using tests to evaluate teachers are totally absurd. They are, if you will, the fruit of the poisoned tree. What makes this particular issue so complicated is that academic achievement isn’t solely based on knowing the answer to a question – rather the ability to concentrate or focus, to comply and behave appropropriately also contribute to achievement.
And whenever tests are given,at any age, there is little research that correlates doing well on those assessments is an accurate gauge of how well students will do as adults. The SAT’s, for example, have only been proven to be a decent predictor of how well students will do in their first year of college. Inspiring, isn’t it.
When we tease out every thread of education, so much of what is taken as a given turns out to unravel.
“Academic achievement” this achievement that. Pure deformer vocabulary. As a teacher I am not the least bit interested in “academic achievement”, a bogus educational term if I’ve ever heard one. I’m only interested in student learning and the teaching and learning process, all other things-test scores, achievement, etc. . . , are tertiary at best.
Why is it imperative that we test kindergarteners? Teachers used to make pretty accurate assessments of a child’s readiness using their professional judgement. So we don’t have a number attached to a child. Big deal! This love affair with standardized metrics is insane.
What no one has mentioned in this thread is that is only children of the poor who are being subjected to this insanity. Those children in elite private schools are not being tested to death. They are learning to play the violin, to dance, to sing, to play, to investigate, to experience. Affluent parents would never allow this kind of abuse for their children.
We are creating a sub-culture of worker bees just able enough to do menial work for those in power.
I have seen the destruction of early childhood education slowly over the years. I am sneaking in real learning where I can but I’m not sure how long I can continue to squeeze it in when every year more suits come and demand more inappropriate activities. They have already taken away rest time in my pre-k class. This has caused several children to become super restless in the afternoons.
At the end of last year, a suit came into my room and announced “no playdough next year
The kids should have all thrown their blocks at him!
Pre-K revolution. Get lost Mister! Take you bubble sheets and get the hell out of my classroom!
Anne, in Chicago every last one of CPS children are forced to take these tests.
The middle class kids who had to test in the top 2% just to get into the gifted centers, classical schools, and selective high schools, too.
Read the above link to the CPS mom’s experience as a test aide, for a clear-eyed view of the awfulness of a computer-based test for a 5 year old. It’s worth it.
I read it. I was horrified. The testing of the sand bags at the amusement park as an example of not using our kids as guinea pigs was a perfect analogy. I say we test the wealthy kids first.
And her daughter said to her, “Mommy, I am not good at kindergarten.”
Just rip our hearts out now please.
This testing frenzy has spread throughout public schools. It is not just restricted to the low economic communities although the frenzy is greater there because they are usually on academic watch. Parents have bought into the magic of metrics and everyone wants a number to attach to their child’s teacher even in the most elite of suburbs.
You write: “This will encourage their parents to find a charter school or leave for the suburbs.”
In my state (Missouri), the charter schools and the suburban public schools are under the same common core and assessment mandates as the kindergarten class to which you linked. Parents need not flee to charters or suburbs in Missouri in search of a locally/individualized education. It doesn’t exist. They will find the same type of kindergarten class whether they are in the city or suburbs, public school or charter school.
Welcome to the “one sized fits all” common core world of education..and assessments. I’ve already heard from parents/grandparents/teachers in Missouri about the testing nightmare and data collection for this year.
Well, Gretchen, wait until next year when the state mandated VAM approach is implemented.
Tell me more, Duane. (Do I really want to know?) What will a kindergarten class look like next year in MO?
Bill Gates has spent billions to get to this point in the dismantling of American public education. An American hero.
Or a narcissistic sociopath with too much time and money. Get a job Bill.
As a l teacher of 28 years I heartily agree. I firmly believe the agenda is to do away with public education even if it hurts kids. Shameful! New common core standards call for teaching 5 year olds about nouns verbs prepositions and adjectives. To what end? They should be playing. European kids do and it pays off down the line with no fourth grade slump
It’s not just that the tests have become abusive…it’s the entire curriculum. I used to have kindergarten children cry that their hands hurt from writing so much. The only day I had no behavior problems is when we went on a field trip and I let them play on a playground the entire day. For these and many other reasons, I left the inner-city public school I taught in and now face an uncertain future. I refuse to play into the abusive curriculum that is being promoted.
Ooops–I think the quote from Jon Awbrey is, “With a whole lot of Pinocchio mixed in.”
Apologies to Jon.
Wow, I didn’t know it was so bad. I’m going to tell my friend who has a kindergartener about this. This article and all the comments are the best argument for homeschool that I’ve seen in a long, long time. Homeschool isn’t required to do standardized tests. And rich or poor, homeschool kids are shown to do equally well.