Florida has gone bonkers. State law requires children in kindergarten to take tests for every subject taught in kindergarten. Some counties will develop as many as 15 different tests, ranging from physical education to art. Most children will be required to take seven tests.
State Sen. David Simmons, a member of the education committee, said “For us to assure that schools do their jobs we can only test. If you don’t test, you don’t care,” said Simmons.
School districts will decide whether children’s performance on the tests will impact their grades and their ability to move on to first grade.
This must be another of former Governor Jeb Bush’s bright ideas. You can tell how much he cares because Florida students take so many tests.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Cray cray. Diane, can parents just start revolting to this revolting practice? Can you organize a means for parents to stop this craziness (I’m just a peon but you have real influence)? If the majority of parents simply refused to allow their children to be traumatized, wouldn’t that stop the traumization?
Safe Libraries, I think it is way past time for parents to stop the child abuse, such as testing in K-3, and high-stakes testing in every other grade. OPT OUT. NOT WITH MY CHILD. NO. NO! Testing should be used for helping or not used at all.
Thank you, Diane. What can be done to educate parents to do this and offer them guidance on how to defy the testing blob? If I do this in my school, I’ll be the only one and I’ll look silly for being the only one. Even my kid might think that. The bullies rely on that very thing to keep parents silent. Everyone’s afraid to speak up even though we all know what is going on is wrong. How do we get over that hump? Dan Kleinman (SafeLibraries)
My goodness. How sad. I have such warm memories of my kindergarten teacher, and she set the tone for my attitude toward school.
Nice: our cliches have evolved from “Sharing is caring,” to “Testing is caring.”
Michael Fiorillo: you wrote—
[start quote] Nice: our cliches have evolved from “Sharing is caring,” to “Testing is caring.” [end quote]
😱
An instant classic! This takes it place alongside a few others like Chiara’s description of the false ed rheephorm claim of “choice” as being “choice but no voice.”
That is why the real conversation is with the vast majority of people in this country, not with the edupreneurs and their educrat enablers and edubully enforcers and accountabully underlings.
They are resolutely and shamelessly for the “hard bigotry of mandated failure.” It has data points called $tudent $ucce$$.And when it comes to those kinds of figures, they’re in it to win it. No matter the cost—to us and public education and democracy.
They know the price of everything and the value of nothing. But that’s not what they say in public.
Hence the critical importance of this blog and comments by folks like you:
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” [Frederick Douglass]
Let’s get unfit!
😎
P.S. 14 million. Views. This blog. Now that’s a data point I can get behind…
😉
How are you doing Mike?
Children routinely are passed on after the 3rd grade. If they fail kinder—for whatever ridiculous reason—that could be it for their school career. This is ridiculous!
How the hell does one “fail kinder”???
Any assessment scheme that would “fail” a kindergartner is dead wrong to begin with and those who use it should be shot, well maybe not shot but at least lose their license.
If not shot, how about bringing back the stocks?
April — I am not sure what the connection is between being routinely passed on after third grade and failing kindergarten is. Did you use these examples to form a contrast –“How ridiculous that you can fail kindergarten but will be passed on matter what from fourth grade up?”
Thanks,
Penny
In the video, I could see photos of young children behind State Senator Simmons. Wish that the reporter had the presence of mind to ask if Simmons thought his babies should be subjected to this regime. Think I know the answer, though.
Yes, Florida has gone bonkers, all to foster a new attraction at Disney World, “The Magic Kingdom of Bad Education Policy” with all sorts of Kibuki characters serenading you as you enter the ride: Duncan on your right, Rhee on your left, Obama straight ahead, and Broad driving your gondola. . . . .
All aboard into the magic world of ersatz education policy makers and their Captain Hook capitalist cronies.
Love to give a constitution test to Simmons.
His overall constitutions may not be that well after taking it.
“If you don’t test, you don’t care,” said State senator Dave Simmons.
You may be interested in what Vote Smart.org reveals about Simmons:
A sample:
Support teacher testing and reward with merit pay.
Endorse voluntary prayer in public schools.
Support abstinence-only sexual education programs.
Provide parents with state-funded vouchers to send their children to any private or religious school.
School districts that accept vouchers should conduct background checks on people who have direct contact with students.
Schools districts that accept vouchers should demonstrate fiscal soundness before being approved to take tax dollars.
Redirect welfare funding to faith-based and community-based private organizations.
http://votesmart.org/candidate/political-courage-test/53795/david-simmons/#.U_N7C_ldWno
How about developing marriage partner suitability tests and minimal parenting standards tests?
“minimal parenting standards tests”
It would be a good thing to train young adults on the minimum standards of being a parent, but it will never happen. Suggesting that would be the death of a political career because of the numbers of parents.
There are only 3.3 million teachers so they think they can afford demonize and alienate teachers, but to go after 60 or 70 million parents with a standardized anything would be way too risky. The most dysfunctional parents would explode in protest and start burning down our cities.
“School districts that accept vouchers should conduct background checks on people who have direct contact with students.
Schools districts that accept vouchers should demonstrate fiscal soundness before being approved to take tax dollars.”
He certainly has his share of personal agenda items on his list of school reform ideas, but he does show that he recognizes that some oversight needs to be exercised. would I vote for him? Not on your life!
Watch to see that Sen. Simmons’ comment, “If you don’t test, you don’t care.” becomes the chant of the test and punish crowd. I expect to see those words at the top of Pearson, et.al. stationery. The opposite of Simmons’ stupid remark is what’s true: If you care about the development of young children, you won’t test the bujeesez out of them. When will the insanity stop?
I bet that the inquisitors for the Catholic Church who tortured alleged heretics during the Inquisitions said, “If I don’t torture them, it means I don’t love God.”
It’s a variation on “you don’t manage what you don’t measure”.
What he means is that teachers won’t care about the quality of their work unless their students are tested constantly, and the teacher is then measured by the test score.
To me it’s weirdly old-fashioned private sector management that relies solely on external motivation and then sanctions when the fear of test scores not improving doesn’t produce the behavior they want, but for some reason they all think it’s innovative.
I some ways ed reform manages to take the worst aspects of the private sector and the worst aspects of the public sector and combine them in this horrible stew. I think it’s because it’s fundamentally a POLITICAL coalition rather than a coalition where they agree on basic ideas.
This crazed testing is the “accountability!” part of the caucus getting their way. They win a lot. They must be a powerful political faction within ed reform 🙂
Now every moment of a child’s school day can be ruined with “teaching to the test. Kindergarten children mark their days by what special they have (Art, Music, Gym) .
Now they want accountability which means rigid specific lessons taught during specials. We can’t allow it. Art and Music teaches are very creative people. Let them share that with their students in their own way. There will be a mass exodus of excellent teachers from the schools if this is allowed to stand.
Teaching in general is a creative act of distilling information into understandable frames of reference and leading children to make important discoveries at their own unique pace. Neither classroom teachers nor specials teachers can be limited to teaching to a test. Nonsense.
omg – unbelievable!
Oh, it’s believable especially if it has something to do with a Bushie insanely inane policy/desire. The world would be a whole lot better place without that particular line of Bushie’s.
Jeb may be your next president Duane.
Seems very excessive to me. My older sisters didn’t even go to kindergarten – there was none at the time. I don’t remember taking any formal tests in kindergarten when I went, and I wouldn’t say the teachers didn’t care about us. That’s ridiculous.
New bumper sticker: “I don’t test therefore I don’t care”. Or “I care therefore I don’t test.”
No, Duane–the second bumper sticker is EXCELLENT!!! Can someone make these (“I care, therefore I DON’T test”)? Also, for parents,”I LOVE My Kids–I OPT Them OUT of Tests!”
Love the second one!
Also love the parent one mentioned too! Except that it should read “I love my kids so I opt them out of STATE MANDATED, STANDARDIZED testing.”
As a parent I have zero problem with teacher written tests that cover meaningful material covered in class.
The legislators need to take time to observe kindergarteners (and special education students too, for that matter). Let’s see now– kindergartners can’t read yet; they haven’t fully developed a symbolic grasp of mathematics; and they can’t write. Gee whiz let’s test them on reading, math and writing! And if they use computers for the test, the tech for kindergartners are usually the hand me downs, they work poorly and a class of 25 will be repeatedly shouting “mine doesn’t work” or “the screen went blank” and then the bathroom parade begins. From the words of the sage philosopher, Forrest Gump “stupid is a stupid does.” Andy Rinko, past president NJASA; p/t faculty Watson College of Education
Ridiculous. Our young are FOR SALE. Follow the $$$$$.
Is this not a form of state mandated child abuse?
Yes.
I weep for those babies…
This is utterly disgusting, but it could be readily expected from the many quacks who have been given power over public education today.
As it is, and as it should be, in order to be permitted to teach public school children, teachers are required to pass many tests in education (i.e., in child development, learning, teaching, content knowledge, assessment, etc.). Those same tests should be required of everyone who wants to determine education policies as well, in order to prevent charlatans like this from making decisions about a field in which they have no expertise, whether they are elected or appointed officials.
Anyone who is unskilled in a field should be denied the power to tell experts in that field how to do their jobs. Duh.
This Kindergarten teacher is in solidarity with Florida teachers. The amount of testing required for five year olds is a waste of time. Three years ago, I didn’t even instruct . . . no time with all the mandated testing required. They got a little wiser but 50% of my evaluation is still student scores . . . driving teachers to cheat or move to a “better” school. It guarantees that students and teachers will fail unless the students come to school already knowing the material.
This testing in Florida is idiotic of course. Whatever may happen in the Florida art tests will defy several generations of research that documents the strong and complex influence of culture and out-of-school experiences on the images and artifacts produced by children and their responses to these, including the imprints of popular culture. On the first NAEP art tests the early 1970s, ninety percent of nine-year olds could identify Mona Lisa.
There are, of course, brand new NATIONAL standards for the arts–music, dance, theater, and the visual arts. As in most states, teachers and students are caught in the middle of changing and proliferating standards and efforts to assess whether students pass muster in meeting them.
Here are the 25 state-approved Kindergarten visual arts standards for Florida (2010) stripped free of several tiers of rationalization and the stipulation that the some of the same standards are for grades 1 and 2. I have kept the ID numbers in the event that a reader wishes to see more at http://www.cpalms.org/Public/search/Search#0
I have also rearranged the order of the Florida standards to disclose which standards are really testing language skills (describe, explain) and to indicate which standards could be non-verbal if the test makers are really clever (identify, compare) and if translations were available, and if, and if. Unfortunately some of these could also be tested via fill-in-the-bubble or click-the-mouse responses.
VA.K.C.2.1 Describe personal choices made in the creation of artwork. VA.K.F.2.1 Describe where art ideas or products can be found in stores. VA.K.H.1.1 Describe art from selected cultures and places. VA.K.H.1.3 Explain how art-making can help people express ideas and feelings. VA.K.H.2.3 Describe where artwork is displayed in school or other places. VA.K.S.2.2 Describe the steps used in art production.
VA.K.C.2.2 Identify media used by self or peers. VA.K.F.1.2 Identify real and imaginary subject matter in works of art. VA.K.S.3.4 Identify artwork that belongs to others and represents their ideas. VA.K.H.2.1 Compare selected artworks from various cultures to find differences and similarities.
VA.K.H.2.2 Explore everyday objects that have been designed and created by artists. VA.K.S.1.1 Explore art processes and media to produce artworks VA.K.O.1.1 Explore the placement of the structural elements of art in personal works of art. VA.K.F.1.1 Experiment with art media for personal satisfaction and perceptual awareness.
VA.K.H.3.1 Express ideas related to non-art content areas through personal artworks. VA.K.O.2.1 Generate ideas and images for artworks based on memory, imagination, and experiences. VA.K.C.1.1 Create and share personal works of art with others. VA.K.O.3.1 Create works of art to document experiences of self and community. VA.K.F.3.1 Create artwork that communicates an awareness of self as part of the community. VA.K.S.1.2 Produce artwork influenced by personal decisions and ideas.
VA.K.S.2.1 Develop artistic skills through the repeated use of tools, processes, and media. e.g., media-specific techniques, eye-hand coordination, fine-motor skills. (VA.K.S.3.1 same as VA.K.S.2.1) VA.K.S.3.2 Practice skills to develop craftsmanship. VA.K.S.3.3 Handle art tools and media safely in the art room. VA.K.H.1.2 Follow directions for suitable behavior in an art audience.
Most of these standards are really “opportunity to learn standards.” Some describe tasks or assignments that might produce tangible products. For a number of reasons these would be difficult to score.
Some standards also function as admonitions to administrators and kindergarten teachers on curriculum —should be exploratory, allow for experimentation, cultivate ideational fluency and perceptual acuity, have multi-cultural artifacts and images for study along with “artist-designed every day objects,” and so on. In this respect, many standards are wishful thinking. In the olden days we used to write standards as “if-then” propositions (in order to include the requisite conditions for “expected outcomes”). Now standards are supposed to assert outcomes only.
Of course, rating work products produced by kindergarteners is not a best practice, least of all in a testing environment with proctors…. PROCTORS!!!.
In any case, ratings of work samples from students are time intensive and require human judgment, plus a lot of experience to discern what’s happening in the work of any kindergartener.
You can bet that the time-limited and cost-limited and proctored requirements for large-scale tests, together with the total number of tests envisioned in this program, will result in “tests” that are easy-to-score with educationally unsound and/or trivial content. The real assessments ought to focus on the character of the kindergarten program.
At best, these standards are an expression of yearning for a kind of kindergarten program not often found in schools, but yearned for by a community of art educators enlisted to write the standards.
Laura, curious as to your take on the new national visual arts standards. Our art educators reviewed them this summer and felt they were intended more for students planning on a career in visual arts than as standards appropriate for the general population of students. As a result, they are drafting local standards that draw on what they like the best from the old and new national standards and our state’s model art standards.
Stiles, I have not given the new national arts standards a “close reading” but the flow toward vocational prep was my first impression as well.
There doesn’t seem to be any expectation of formal study by all students beyond the 8th grade. That seems to me a case of accepting a longstanding pattern of making studies in the arts an elective in high school, not leading the way into a 21st century cultural milieu where image-making and the arts of aesthetic persuasion are deployed for purposes ranging from state-craft, to entertainment, to misleading various publics on a grand scale, and so on.
The international standard for excellence in education, and in our own elite k-12 schools, is a balanced program of studies in the arts, sciences, and humanities, including foreign language. The opportunity to assert that as the model and mode of thinking about arts education was lost.
I am not sympathetic to the unquestioning references to the CCSS. The CCSS definition of the arts as a “technical subject” is insulting, simplistic, and reflects a distain for studies and engagement in the arts for reasons other than entering the arts as a trade or career.
I am also troubled by the ready acceptance of the meme of 21st skills propagated by Ken Kay, a lobbyist for the tech industry who twice failed his clients in a quest to have federal legislation acknowledge his “rainbow” and jargon borrowed from personnel managers and corporate talk.
The only thing 21st-ish in Ken Kay’s skills list pertained to information technology skills. Unfortunately, the fact that his list of “skills” included “creativity” and “innovation” make a lot of people swoon and clap hands–not examine the history of the meme, the tissue-thin reasoning, and really old-fashioned ideas presented as if brand new.
It is easy to be critical of the standards as a work product. The were developed by persons who have earned my respect from their work on other issues, but by a process that was too sequestered,with public comment constrained by an online interface that was less then hospitable to readers.
It know that it is much harder to invent a common linguistic and conceptual structure that is suitable for communicating about the educational significance of “all the arts,” not quite, but in this effort the visual arts and the performing arts of music, dance, theater, and now the hybrid media arts as well. Too bad that the literary arts were excluded and left to a subordinate role in the CCSS.
The sciences manage this conceptual problem better, or at least in a fairly straight-forward way by making incremental changes and inventing hybrids from a long-standing knowledge-transmission/creation structure. It is rooted in the triad of earth, life, and physical sciences. That structure, together with distinctions between basic and applied inquiry in sciences, eases the way for hybrid forms of organizing knowledge for the purpose of thinking about education, the latter exemplified by STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math).
I think the whole standards-setting process of this era has devolved into a series of exercises conducted in the false hope of gaining more time in the curriculum and the false premise that you can and SHOULD backmap from college and career readiness to Kindergarten.
I believe that this concept of reverse engineering was among the conceptual tools offered by some consultants for the standard-setting process in the arts. Backmapping works for creating training materials for adults. I do not think it is an appropriate way of think about educating children and teens. There is much more that life requires, and may reward, beyond getting a job and going to college and acquiring strickly “academic” knowledge on an arbitrary annual timetable. “Academic” not a term of praise in much of the artworld, even if it is useful as a stylistic label.
If you have freedom of action in your district and state, go for it. Try to make standards function as guides, not hurdles in a race.
“VA.K.F.1.2 Identify real and imaginary subject matter in works of art,” leaves me scratching my head.
Even asking adults to do this would be asinine. eg is Picasso’s ‘Geurnica’ real or imaginary subject matter?
Art is predicated on the use of the imagination to translate the reality (which everyone sees) into a singular vision (which you see). You can close your eyes and picture an apple and it will be different for everyone. 30 people can look at one apple and 30 different drawings will result in 30 different forms of media used, if given the preference and skills.
It’s like telling child that only sometimes you use your imagination when you create something, and that someone will decide when that happens. . .Oppressive in a “fall-in!” kind of way.
But, hey, maybe I’m just over-thinking this one.
You are most definitely NOT over thinking this!
Not overthinking at all. The vice-grip of this sloppy language can be broken by a some study of Magritte’s painting “This is not a pipe.” It offers a tutorial on conflating the image and the thing.
I actually flunked kindergarten. My father was sent off to the Korean war and we moved to Colorado to wait his shipment out. My birthday falls in the last week in the year. So I was 4 when I entered a strange school, knowing no one, with my family under pressure. I can still remember crying my eyes out in the coat room and my brother having to come to come get me and calm me down. My point, kids are soooooooo sensitive and vulnerable at that age. Their little faces just get crushed with criticism and harshness of any kind. I simply can’t believe we will test them and place them and push them around. They aren’t stupid neither was I, I was confused. I graduated from UC Berkeley for goodness sakes. It has nothing to do with intelligence it’s a time when kids are developing AT DIFFERENT RATES;;;; vastly different rates, and that’s why it has always been a gentler kind of curriculum helping kids get adjusted. I’m overwhelmed with the insensitivity of this ruling. They are well meaning no doubt, but they are wrong, about testing kids so young so much, dead wrong. I shudder at the consequences to the kids, just cringe.
I kinda doubt they’re all well-meaning.
Very sad. It would be parody but for being real.
They clearly don’t know that you can’t always measure what matters…
Diane – My husband and I are very seriously considering opting our 8th grader out of state ISTEP testing here in Indiana. This testing causes her major anxiety and stress to the point of tears and has for years. My only concern is how this is going to reflect on her teachers and school. It is truly not them that I have an issue with! I lover dearly her school and teachers! I would not have stayed in the district for the last 13 years with all of her older siblings had I had a problem with the schools! Especially since we are right on the line between two districts and can choose which schools our kids will attend. So by opting her out are we going to cause problems for her school and teachers?
Write a letter to the principal, her teachers, and ccGlenda Ritz explaining why you are opting out and how much you respect the school and teachers. It is not a reflection on them but on high stakes testing, which is child abuse.
Thanks for your input!
Check your local laws. In Utah, a law was passed last year that does requires that opting out students not count in school ratings.
Use the Florida FOIA to shine the sunshine on the kindergarten testing profiteers. Could the FCRR be involved? How about some of Jeb’s contributors? Follow the money!
http://www.nfoic.org/florida-foia-laws
Up to answer SafeLibraries at 4 PM, as well as others fearful for their jobs: you have LOTS of retired teachers in FL. Contact your FL retired teachers groups/assns./unions (or any retired teachers you know), & ask them to get a movement started to inform parents about opting their kids out of testing. Some districts affiliated with the Florida Education Assn. (FEA) would have a retired branch (FEA-Retired), as would Florida Federation of Teachers (FFT-Retired). Write to Ken Previti in one of the comment sections of his blog, “Reclaim Reform.” (He is a retired ILL-Annoy teacher living in FL, & they have an active assn. of retired teachers in his neck of the woods–sure he can help!) Honestly, THIS plan works–as I’ve written in this blog before, a group of retirees in Rockford, IL were instrumental in getting rid of their destructive Broadie superintendent by attending board meetings, taking notes, speaking out, printing informative newsletters, talking to parents, filing a F.O.I.A,–having the time and the ability to do all those things that active teachers can’t (no time, & that they would most likely be fired). Yes, WE can…yes, we DID…& yes, we WILL!!! Save your kids & make the schools STOP.THAT.TESTING.
Thanks for sharing. I can’t read all of the comments, so perhaps this has already been discussed.
This story only talked about kindergarten, but ALL students in EVERY grade will have a standardized test for EVERY class. Art, music, PE, foreign language, drama, public speaking, personal finance, etc.
This is part of the Florida’s 2011 Student Success Act. It was enacted in phases. This is not a complete summary, so you’ll have to look elsewhere for better details.
Phase 1: Deny anyone who didn’t have Professional Service Contracts (commonly misunderstood as “tenure”) prior to July 1, 2011 to ever getting one in Florida. (This is the real purpose of the law.)
Phase 2: Implement a Value-Added Measurement of teacher performance. This involved judging everyone on the basis of state reading and/or math scores, whether or not you taught those subjects or those students.
Phase 3: This school year is the first year that districts have to award teachers for “merit.” Only teachers on annual contracts qualify. PSC teachers have to give up their contracts in order to receive merit pay. This is also the year that a slew of end-of-course exams have to be administered for all subjects in order to calculate the “performance” of teachers who don’t directly teach reading and math.
When I shared the link to this story, I noted that the commenters on the news channel’s Facebook page were upset about this, but they took it out on the school systems instead of reform. Could this be the reformers’ original intent? Place so many regulatory burdens on public schools that parents uninformed about education policy get disgusted and want to leave, falling right into the hands of charter schools, private schools, or even a parent quitting his/her job to home school? And of course, the ultimate dream would be to have a voucher waiting for all of those disgruntled parents.
This has Tony Bennett all over it.
May I add that in Fl students with significant disabilities must have “some form” of end of year exam? Unbelievable!
We did these asinine tests here in Dallas ISD last year and it was a nightmare. Kindergartners took EOC tests in P.E., math, reading and writing. These tests were given both semesters and we also had ITBS testing. It was ridiculous. The math test was so developmentally inappropriate. For example, the test required students to add up money–they had to identify the black and white pictures of coins and then assign correct values to them and then add them up. The EOC tests are solely designed to assess teacher performance for the new “merit” pay system in Dallas. We lost 13 days of meaningful instruction due to testing. I am a parent and I saw kids crying and holding their stomachs and absolutely losing it by the end of the testing weeks. They are 5 year olds!! My 1st grader had to assemble an art portfolio for submission and evaluation. My 2nd grader had to sing a solo on pitch for the performance part of her EOC in music and then answered multiple choice questions about reading music. My 5th grader had to listen to different excerpts from pieces of music and identify them by composer or title or type of music. This is what is driving the middle class out of public schools.
“This is what is driving the middle class out of public schools.”
Like I mentioned earlier, I wonder if this is part of the design. Many of the public seem to be taking out their frustrations on the schools instead of the state governments. So, the very reforms say supported 5 years ago ends up being the thing that drives them out of the public school system.
And WHY are you subjecting your kids to this abuse? Stand up and be a parent. Get your kids out of the system.
He is an idiot
Kindergarten art tests? On what? The eight colors of crayons they are allowed? And, are they using the “right” end? Give me a break….I taught kindergarten art (in fact, K-12 art and French for 35 years). At K level, mostly everyone’s really really happy to do something artsy without having to have a bathroom crisis. Oh, excuse me, reality has nothing to do with reform. Thank God I’m retired.
UPDATE:
http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/9-investigates-only-some-tests-be-taken-kindergart/ng6HL/
Now the state senator is claiming that districts are misinterpreting the law. He says that this only involves teachers sitting down with students and asking a few questions in maybe 1 or 2 subjects.
NOT TRUE.
What the report didn’t say is that there will be end of course exams in ALL grades on ALL subjects not currently tested.
That’s art, general music, PE, band, chorus, orchestra, drama, foreign language, etc.
How are districts and the state to calculate VAM scores based on a 2-3 question verbal test?
This is a mess.
Gotta just keep saying it. If you care at all about the children YOU brought into this world you will get them out of the system. Home school is the only answer at this point.