Louisiana will begin testing large numbers of preschool children this fall to determine their academic readiness.
If they are found to be not ready, it is not clear who will be held accountable: their teachers? Their families?
“The goal, they say, is to create a grading system like the current School Performance Score reports for public elementary and secondary schools, which are ranked for student performance on standardized tests and progress made from year to year.
“But whether pre-schools will be rewarded for academic progress, or sanctioned for lack of it, like elementary and secondary schools are, remains to be seen.”
John White says that testing toddlers will promote equity.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Pretty sure every pre-k teacher gives a diagnostic test and an end of year report card already. Doesn’t seem to have been helping K readiness. Any ideas other than this to help this problem?
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This step to test pre-K is an attempt to press “objective” accountability down as far as possible. If you get a data point pre-k…you have axes to swing over the heads of your k teachers, your 1st grade teachers… In order to justify test based reform firings, you have to spread the illusion of valid data through the system from beginning to end.
An interesting question: Why aren’t we just getting to the logical conclusion of this approach: that economic and social policies and the supports coming out of them and the home are the most essential beginning point in this continuum AND to every single day of school. If we want valid data, we need to test those responsible back further.
Where are tests and accountability for policy makers/corporations/health-care, banking and finance industries…that all should be using huge profits to grow jobs and stability for our families and these children? Should we be making sure they do their jobs?
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Policy makers are usually held accountable at the ballot box, corporations in the market (did you buy a Microsoft Surface or Zune?), health care is more difficult due to a myriad of asymmetric and principle agent problems, and the financial system is also difficult because folks always take more chances with other people’s money but we need to have confidence in the stability of the financial sector. I think we are still trying to work out a reasonable regulatory framework for that one.
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Hard to hold anyone accountable at either the ballot box or the big box if there are no real choices. Do you want a Republican or a Republican in Democrat’s clothes? Do you want crappy expensive cell phone service from AT&T or Sprint?
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Pre and post testing of Pre K students has always served a useful purpose to assist in educational decision making and progress monitoring to meet the learning needs of children, as in any other grade. The problem with these new rounds of test mania is that they have become grossly developmentally inappropriate and no longer serve any real useful purposes for teachers or children. Anyone who works with young children knows that there is a short window of attention for direct “testing” and that observation during play is the best way to gain knowledge of what a child knows and can do. The creators of these new tests and those who advocate for their use seem to have no basic knowledge of what is developmentally appropriate for early childhood education. Standardizing has now hit PreK. Anyone surprised??? They will churn out standard students who will fit nicely the new global economy…NOT!
The problem is that the students this will affect most are our highest poverty, at risk students. Parents with means will send their children to private schools where their children will have access to an education free of standardization. The gap widens as we speak. Will we ever learn???
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Exactly. Parents with means will run from the preschools who have standardization.
I know the good preschools in my town pride themselves on their “rating.” Hopefully this testing will not play into rating.
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“Hopefully this testing will not play into rating.”
There’s that hope thingy again! Of course the testing will “play into rating”. That’s the object.
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I’ll help develop this test. On it we can test:
The ability to giggle.
The ability to turn sticks from trees into imaginary swords.
The ability to mispronounce the letter R with the sound of a W.
The ability to pick dandelions.
The ability to sing silly songs, clap, and spin.
The ability to flip the pages of a book randomly to look at the pictures.
We could continue all day. I just hope my assessment will be authentic and the littles won’t have to fill in a bubble to prove they are proficient in these skills.
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+1
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I love it, Amy.
As a parent, I’d want the preschool to be evaluated by whether my child was given the freedom to play imaginatively and was safe with loving teachers as guides. Can they test for that???
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There is a huge disconnect between best practice in Early Childhood Education and what is developmentally appropriate and pushing “academics”. Giving diagnostic tests that look at all areas of development are great for young children. They take several hours to give and score and present a report. What do the other tests look like? Children need to play in order to learn. Gross motor movement and activities are important for developing reading skills. When will best practice and common sense prevail?
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Yes, all kids will be equally disenchanted and miserable in school.
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And the sooner we can make them hate school, the better.
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Why wait until pre-school? We say test fetuses!
http://studentslast.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-tiniest-test-takers.html
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Ya’ gotta get em’ while they are young. Gotta prepare our children with an endless set of “tasks” that must always be “evaluated”. What better way to prepare the youth of America for a life of slave labor?
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Very frightening indeed, elitists creating an underclass of servants.
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The HUNGER GAMES reign in the United Stasi.
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Joshua and LaWanda,
What you are saying is a byproduct that will become an inevitability. I would not call it slavery, but it will become a class system akin to Edwardian England.
America will be a sharply delineated two tier system. . . .
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Unless, of course, we can make each student college ready.
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In NYC pre-k uses ESI-R, a “screening tool” created by Pearson. In fairness, we don’t start using it until October so the children are comfortable in a pre-k setting and it’s one on one in a very relaxed atmosphere between teacher and student. (at least that’s the way I try and make it) The results are ok, refer, rescreen (for those who simply refuse to respond to the questions). The grading is based on year/month of the child on the day of the screening. We have to send in the results to an online spreadsheet and so far, in all the years I have been doing the screening, that’s the last I hear about it. It’s supposed to provide a bit of insight for the teacher about where the child is at and in some cases it has helped me see a particular child’s skills differently than what I first thought. It’s also supposed to alert the teacher early in the year to a child who might need additional services. Since receiving services for pre-k children in NYC it no easy task identifying a child who might need additional support is helpful only to the teacher.
The results of the screening are not available to parents. No administrator has ever asked me for the results.
There is, however, a great deal of pressure to have the pre-k children “ready” for kindergarten. I have yet to have a kindergarten teacher complain to me that my students were not “ready”. Children are not coming off an assembly line. They’ll be “ready” when they’re ready. Anyone who has ever tried to grow flowers, fruit, or vegetables know that it is impossible to make it grow until it’s ready..ok..forcing bulbs is an exception and even then, they come up when they come up.
The push down into pre-k is nothing new. It has been a slow and steady assault on early childhood.
Last year I presented a power point on the flaw of push down in pre-k. We are building a Potemkin village.
I am sorry to read of Louisiana’s misguided belief that “testing” such young children will improve education. Those who know early childhood know how unreliable standardized testing is in 3 and 4 year olds.
I read this week a wonderful saying-weighing the pig every day does not make the pig fatter.
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Yep, Sheila, more money for Pear$on. When I taught E.C. Special Ed. in the 70s & 80s, “testing” consisted of a simple teacher-constructed screening, which lasted all of, say, 15 minutes, & involved play & movement (use of ball, jumping,etc. to check gross motor skills/coloring & drawing to check fine motor), plus a vision/hearing screening. That was it, the children were allowed to pick out a toy, and another teacher would very briefly interview the parent while the child was being screened. If the child qualified for E.C.E. enrollment, he/she was “tested” (minimal time) with either a teacher-made checklist or–in my later years–a BRIGANCE Early Childhood Inventory booklet made by Curriculum Associates (yeah, they made money, but it was a good tool, & you could use the consumable booklet over a period of several years by marking responses with different colored pens.
But the Pear$on education monoply (Pre-K, K-12, and NOW higher education!) keeps sharpening its greedy claws to continue the torture and child abuse as wrought by their co-conspirator reformers.
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That’s monopoly–sorry. And BTW–the screenings were done for a purpose–to HELP each child (not for a “rigorous curriculum”–that’s for sure!!) grow at his/her level and to her/his maximum potential. We also made home visits back then, bringing age-appropriate learning materials (such as books) for the parents (who often didn’t have any educational materials or even toys) to use with their kids at home. As my mom would say, “Them were the days, my friend!”
I hope–no, I KNOW– that you teachers will see them again, and soon!
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Who decided children needed learn to read in K?
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I agree; where are all the child development experts who should be defending children?
We have returned to “industrial revolution” practices where the sanctity of childhood no longer exists.
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I learned to write my name in kindergarten. Peter taught me and he wasn’t much further ahead than I. We both had rather weird scratchings on our papers for our names although they did look more like “Peter.” I went to kindergarten “tabla rasa.” The powers that be told my parents not to teach me the alphabet, so they didn’t. My mother said that practically every other kid knew it. I remember those flash cards. I liked them! I have no idea how high I could count. We didn’t do a whole lot of counting beyond how many days in a week, how many daffodils in the picture,…
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When babies are born the physician assigns an Apgar Score.Who is responsible for a low score? The parents or the doctor, or the future public school? Next, the parents will have to pay a fee for a baby with a low score?
This US obsession with assigning a number to absolutely everything, per baseball, is insane. I assumed this lractice in baseball was associated to all the hours of downtime while watching a game. Standardizing toddlers – can’t get more bizzar than that.
I am embarrassed for our country. Many think we are at the cutting edge of everything, but when it comes to human beings, we are so far behind the countries we compete against. It is our own doing and undoing. We act in such an adolescent way, we listen to no one, can’t tell us anything, disagree and disrespect highly trained and published experts and our ‘numbers’ reflect that things are not working. Then, we must blame it on someone else.
I have many concerns and fear with preschoolers joining in the ToxicTesting Mill. The giant combines are rolling and coming to a neighborhood near us. The CorpGreed$$Shmucks will never back off because Gates’ $$ will never run out and he will never back off. Suggestion, move to Finland!
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“Next, the parents will have to pay a fee for a baby with a low score?”
Ssshhhhssssshhhhh! Don’t give em any ideas!
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Sheesh, didn’t Mr. Rogers say something a long time ago about a child’s work being his play?
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Beth, I think that was Piaget
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Play is the most important work produced by children. It is THEIR work, and we should respect it. Too bad the edu-crats and edu-craps don’t agree . . . .
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In my personal experience, I have yet to teach a primary student who was struggling but yet came from an intact family. I have taught students reared by grandparents, homosexual couples… so my definition of “intact family” is one in which there are loving, supportive relationships where addiction, mental illness, or joblessness are not a factor.
I taught at a Mother’s Day Out before I became a certified teacher. I taught Louisiana’s pre-kindergarten curriculum (as a choice). I found my students finished the year as reading four-year-olds. Here in Louisiana, we have victimized ourselves with a culture of low-expectations for many of our impoverished students.
I now teach in a public school. I have been surprised by how many beginning kindergarten students do not know their letters nor do not have much experience speaking with (not “to” and certainly not being talked “at”) adults. It is time that we identify in a non-punitive way what programs are working to prepare our students for formal schooling. We have to collect data to make good policy decisions. We just need to be careful as to the purpose of the data. And we as teachers must continue to share what we do and what we know with the public so as to counteract the heralds of the corporate “reform” movement.
Thanks, Diane, for giving us a “heads up” so many times!
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Mortifying.
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This is all about tracking students and creating a caste system where the masses will be tracked into low-paid jobs with no upward mobility allowed, while the handful of “gifted” children will be allowed access to higher education.
“Higher education” means high school, by the way.
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CASTE SYSTEM…And there ya have it. Right susannunes. I think we have a pack of liars steeped in situational ethics (MONEY and POWER trumps everything) in charge.
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susannunes & Yvonne Siu-Runyan: in other words, to order and rank to determine rewards and punishments.
The fix is in. Consider: do you think Cranbrook and Harpeth Hall and U of Chicago Lab Schools and Sidwell Friends and the other schools where the edufrauds send their own children will be part of this? Or need to be part of it?
Don’t bet your dwindling pensions and job protections on it…
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This seems like tracking at an earlier age. Tracking promotes inequity. Asian schools do not have it all right, however, I think we could learn a thing or two from them about holding everyone to the same standard when possible.
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When the execrable John White says that testing 3 and 4 year olds promotes equity, he is for once in his life being honest, although in this case it’s private equity investors he’s talking about.
Equityforeducation.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/following-the-money-in
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I’m OK with simple, play-based assessments – where it’s strictly OBSERVING a child in a natural play environment… but ONLY for the parents & teachers to use to get the gist of where their child is with development. It’s OK to know “where” children are developmentally to respond appropriately… BUT where the line should be drawn is when that information is used to “follow the child” by outside parties, when the information is used to punish/reward teachers & schools. It is private information that politicians have NO BUSINESS sticking their noses into!
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Hannah,
I agree with you. Great post.
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I am a Louisiana PK teacher, and we already do a lot of assessment on our poor students. I lose about two weeks of instructional time every year due to the two assessments we do at start, mid, end of year. I’m not in one of the pilot parishes, thank god, but I’m wondering if these assessments are going to be added on or replaced to other assessments already being given.
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Two weeks of “instructional time”? How much play time do you lose because of this “instructional time”?
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Instructional time is play time in prek!
I usually assess during centers, so I’m losing time to spend with students while they play in centers. I’m losing time to talk with kids about their puppet shows, eat their pretend food in dramatic play, dictate letters to their families in writing center, read and talk about books in library, explore magnets in science center, create shapes using manipulatives in math, build towers and farms in blocks, draw pictures in art, and sing in the music center. These activities promote social/emotional development, as well as motor development, and yes, cognitive development.
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Observation of preschoolers during play time is one thing. Anything else is ridiculous!Children have been turned into “miniature adults” by our government. I know my first graders learned more back in the days when first grade classes were allowed and even encouraged to have building block centers. I wonder how long it will be before play is taken out of preschool. I pray that early childhood education will one day go back to being early childhood education instead of older grades’ curriculum continually being sent down the pipes each time the standards are changed.
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If the tests were all diagnostic with a plan for helping students achieve up to a particular level and not used punitively, I wouldn’t be so adamantly against them. Diagnostic tests inform your teaching. Punitive tests only provide stress. We need to address the correct problems if we are going to solve this. But, the tentacles of Pearson have reached far into the process. Politicians and corporations are willing to invest in anything that makes money.
We have be “taught” that public service professions COST money, so they aren’t worth as much as the games played by the testing companies that produce false metrics.
As long as the bottom line looks good, I don’t believe any of the private school supporters will truly care about education.
Sometimes, I think “the end” must be here … and I am not one that buys in to the Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, Jack Van Impe philosophies. But … how much lower can we sink? Of course, we can’t be ethnocentric. What happens in the U.S.A. isn’t indicative of the end of anything but our economy.
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This is out of order and does not take into respect a child’s developmental readiness. Kindergarten is now taught like first grade which is just as inappropriate because many children are young (age 4) when they enter. Some children are not ready to count to 20 or beyond, know every letter and sound etc until they reach five or six. A good early childhood program stresses the social/emotional aspect of growing up, PLAY, early literacy (the love of and care for books), conversation and building vocabulary, giving a child prior knowledge through hands on activities and trips, learning one’s name (how to recognize, write and know the letters), pre-math skills (beginning to count, number recognition, knowledge that numerals are different from letters, block play, use of manipulative to name just a few skills. We are not giving our children a chance to grow and mature. We are not instilling a love for learning and inquiry if we shove knowledge and skills that children are not ready for down their throats. We will turn them off from education earlier and defeat the purpose of why we educate. We need to get back to Piaget and his research into how children learn and how this comes in stages.
Pre-school children do not need to be tested; they do need to be assessed without applying stigmatized labels. Teaching Strategies Gold (a program schools have to pay for) is one suggested program to be used in NYC at the pre-K level along with a host of other “suggested” programs. They all have online components linked to them, which at present the DOE is not enforcing. But given time, I can foresee the day when 3-5 year olds will have this data following them. Children in the early years (Pre-K to grade 2) go through many growth changes -physically, mentally and emotionally. They think concretely and they can be emotionally outward or withdrawn, depending on the day or hour. Testing and adding labels does more harm than good. Portfolios are a useful tool to see how students are progressing. Any assessments should be to guide teachers and parents into next steps, to see what may be needed: interventions, encouragement, more challenges depending on each child as an individual. Everyone should be up in arms protesting the harm being done to one’s so young who cannot defend themselves.
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Preschool readiness, developmental growth, actual age of the child being taught, environmental factors, allergies, nutrition, parental attitudes and responsibilities, poverty and extreme poverty, inability to synthesize, lack of interest, lack of support from home, lack of communication, inability to understand what the teacher is communicating, and poor rapport with adults … all of these things and many more go into the personality and learning ability of the child.
The reformers seem to specific goals in mind, namely, undermining every last vestige of public education, devaluing our degrees, trying to debunk developmental educational theory, blaming public education for all the problems they may have, placing income for privateers above actual education of students. They choreograph this by playing to the weakeness of people who are looking for a solution to their own financial woes and who think we live in Lake Wobegon, USA. No, everyone isn’t above average. No, everyone isn’t going to have the same test results. No, we can’t spit out clones like worker bees and expect our society to ever be middle class again. But, by grasping onto certain beliefs or disbeliefs, people have voted for something that they believe is good for their goals in life, and if others don’t agree, then they dismiss them as non-persons. In this way the charter and private schools thrive. Some of those people do so for religious reasons, too. It is difficult to push back against anyone whose religious beliefs are ingrained into them weekly, daily, hourly.
Forgive my thoughts here, but there is a segment of well-meaning people who have been bought and sold by various theoriists who talk about what it takes to raise a child, what a society should be, and where we are “headed” at this point in time. This drives their decisions. They attend meetings which reinforce their beliefs. They read books by “authors” who lead them to feel assured in their beliefs. This fuels many of the home-schooled choices made by people. They don’t want their children “contaminated” by the world and they want to insulate them from anything outside of their world view. These “authors” are viewed as if they are delivering the messages of Moses to the world. Rick Warren, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Joyce Meyer, Hal Lindsey, the VanImpes, and the late D James Kennedy. Even Joel Osteen imparts “knowledge” about how life “should be” if only we follow the advice each of them claims to know because “God told them to write this” to be saved, happy, and wealthy. Instead of living by the addage “the love of money is the fruit of evil” they have bought into a “prosperity gospel” that guides their every decision.
If and when public education addresses these issues, some of these people may stop pushing for the change that educators know is hurting everyone. The inability to get outside of one’s own mindset is what is driving this cognitive dissonance in much of our society: education, political, medical, scientific, social, and spiritual.
Also, many people “glaze over” when they see charts and graphs and data points. Either they don’t understand them or they have been convinced that all charts are manipulations of the facts.
We have to delve into this situation with full knowledge that we are only looking at the tip of the iceberg when we focus on the privatizers taking the tax dollars out of circulation. It is way deeper than that. I hope people won’t continue to be fooled.
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