Susan Ochshorn, founder of ECE Policy Works, surveys the harmful impact of Race to the Top on early childhood education.
It was bad enough that No Child Left Behind turned into a Frankenstein:
“…narrowing curriculum, inspiring fear, trembling, and depression in the U.S. teaching corps, not to mention test anxiety among a growing — and ever younger — population of students.
“Today, kindergarteners, their fine-motor skills still wobbly, are darkening the circles of multiple-choice tests. Time for blocks and play is diminished. First and second graders are prepping for exams, exploration and skill-building sidetracked. Assessment in early childhood is hardly a recent concern, notes Kyle Snow, Director of the Center for Applied Research at the National Association for the Education of Young Children, in a paper on kindergarten readiness and other large-scale assessment systems. He cites Samuel Meisels, former head of the Erikson Institute, a Chicago-based graduate school of education, whose vociferous criticism of standardized testing goes back decades. He’s the father of work-sampling, the early childhood equivalent of portfolio assessment — collections of essays, lab reports, research projects, and other student work, with nary a bubble in sight. Snow also warned of the “great need for additional research and development of assessments appropriate for young children.”
But the train has already left the station — sans Thomas the Tank Engine. As states have applied for Early Learning Challenge grants, as part of the Race to the Top initiative, assessments of children’s kindergarten readiness are par for the course. Teachers are also administering standardized tests in the early elementary grades — the better, some argue, to meet the demands of increased accountability.”
Ochshorn describes the growing movement among parents to opt their children out of inappropriate testing. At one school, Castlebridge in Néw York City, most parents boycotted the bubble tests for the K-2 grades. The children love to learn through play. They love school.
Ochshorn writes:
“Isn’t that the point? And isn’t that worth preserving? It’s time to turn the tables, and assess the damage of Race to the Top. If we delay, we risk turning out the light for another generation of students.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“No child Left Unscathed”
“No Child Left Unscathed”
“Race to the Mental Illness”
Kindergartener’s bathed
In bubble-testing drill mess
Here is a brief piece that also speaks to the damage RTTT and children:
http://www.schoolleadership20.com/profiles/blogs/in-defense-of-childhood
What happened to the enlightenment of a Montessori or Waldorf education for the very young? My son loved his Waldorf art classes and what I wouldn’t have given to have my other very creative son in a Montessori school….ahhh the days when the ‘child’ in the child came first.
As Maria Montessori said:
“The greatest sign of success for a teacher… is to be able to say, ‘The children are now working as if I did not exist.’ ”
..and Arne Duncan has taken those words quite literally to heart.
“Teachers are also administering standardized tests in the early elementary grades — the better, some argue, to meet the demands of increased accountability.”
This makes it sound as if it’s a teacher choice, which is, once again, blaming teachers for something they have no control over.
I’m so sorry you took that away from what I wrote. If you read my work, you know that my sympathies lie squarely with teachers. As you say, they have no control at all–and it’s a travesty. The “some” I’m referring to are those who adhere to the the status quo, and are foisting these demands upon teachers.