Remember the Néw York Times story about the tech executives in California who send their own children to a no-tech Waldorf school?
Look at this:
“Please comment on this and help stop before it starts. This has to be stopped before these are turned into laws. This is how bad it is getting in Connecticut.
“HIGH-STAKES testing BEFORE Kindergarten…..Keyboarding instruction in Kindergarten. God help these children:
“AN ACT CONCERNING THE KINDERGARTEN ASSESSMENT TOOL. (given in preschool!!)
AN ACT CONCERNING COMPUTER KEYBOARDING INSTRUCTION IN KINDERGARTEN AND ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. http://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/cgabillstatus/cgabillstatus.asp?selBillType=Bill&bill_num=HB05015&which_year=2015
“
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m think it’s time to change the moniker of this misbegotten movement from Corporate Reformers to Psychopatic Control Freaks or maybe Sociopathic Obsessive Businessbodies, no offense intended to any other class of SOBs.
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Definitely control freaks. Just think of Bill Gates and how Microsoft is managed. That’s the vision for public schools.
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I think if moms do a lot of keyboarding while they are pregnant, it should help infants learn keyboarding sooner. After all, we should be able to look a two year old in the eye and tell them whether they are career and college ready.
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Jon Awbrey: I never miss a comment by you but you’re getting me in hot water…
I have just been asked—for the umpteenth time—by an aggrieved organization to proclaim on this blog their lack of connection to, support for, or approval of, self-proclaimed “education reform.”
This time I have told that if I don’t comply that I will be getting a, let’s say, “visit” from some folks that call themselves SPASSes, pronounced “spazzes.”
Not what you think or the dictionary says.
The terms refers to the members of the Sociopaths&PsychopathsASSociation aka SPASS. Evidently not too close knit a group defending their image and rights since, uh, they, uh, lack some of the social graces when two or more of them get together.
😯
In any case, they are offended and disturbed that they would be associated with folks that no self-respecting sociopath or psychopath would consider sharing a cell with in an insane asylum or prison facility.
I am writing this completely of my own free will and—yes?—know that you will refrain in the future from making any such associations.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Rheeally! In the most Johnsonally sort of way…
😎
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That’s a good one! Where’s that barf thingy again?!?!
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I don’t think they can stop. I believe they cannot self-police or show restraint on testing. They need rigid, enforceable limits or they’ll go crazy- again.
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Nothing surprises me anymore. Just when I think I’ve seen it all…
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Well, just wait until the refuse the tests movement becomes stronger. I’m sure we’ll see legislation to require these tests. It’s starting now.
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Why not test in the womb. See if the baby is up to standards. If not abort. The way things are going this may be the next test.
These people make out t he tests. They can set standards. Who cares if those on the firing line who should know are circumvented. The politicians have the power, ergo the “wisdom”. If our children cannot make the grade, tough … They seem not to care if there is sufficient food, housing et al. This is “logical” to their mentality.
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Hence my reference to The Matrix …
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I wrote Sherrod Brown to see if there was any real debate on this in DC.
Nope:
“In addition to federal testing, many states and local school districts implement additional mandatory annual assessments. Many of these local assessments can be duplicative or outdated. That is why I was an original co-sponsor of the Support Making Assessments Reliable and Timely (SMART) Act. The SMART Act would help states ensure local and statewide assessments are aligned to college and career ready standards as well as reliable and timely. The SMART Act would also help them eliminate duplicative and outdated tests and provide states funds to quicken the delivery of assessment data to teachers and parents to better inform instruction.”
They all say the same thing. Now they want to mandate schools count the tests and ensure they are “reliable” and “timely”. It’s just more testing focus.
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“Now they want to mandate schools count the tests and ensure they are “reliable”. . . ”
Well that’s the easy part since Wilson has already shown that the tests are COMPLETELY INVALID. And since they are COMPLETELY INVALID, then by definition they are COMPLETELY UNRELIABLE. So much for the reliability problem.
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This is strictly business. Kindergarten tests often have to be administered individually by teachers or trained teaching aids and in less than 30 minute sessions. There are typically several pretests and of course, there MUST be posttests to determine if kids are college and career ready.
Now, to save money and get some proctored tests on the cheap, you just raise the bar and force all the kids to learn keyboarding in preschool, or ASAP after entering Kindergarten. Of course, there are a few costs, for hardware and software, but these investments are less per student than any human who has to spend time reading test questions to tikes one-on-one.
Now add some “incents” —incentives for compliance, carrots along with sticks.
How about some penalties if performance is not “fluent” by some date certain.
Parents might pay a fine that would cover the cost of a tutor to get the wandering arms-hand-fingers in the right place (mouse, touch pad, screen), always in the correct order, with the right touch…not too heavy, not too long on the key.
And of course, all that may also require some accelerated lessons in way-finding for entries– learning left from right, top from bottom, whether a bubble is also a circle, how to scroll up and down, why a click or touch might mean “yes” or “no.” Add some carrots or sticks in relation to skill in spelling, using a space bar to separate words, and such.
Add perks and discounts in local stores for any kid who enters school certified as keyboard-ready–first leg of the college and career-ready thingy–at the head of class in the Race to the Top.
Another “improvement” in education from people who do not have to live with the consequences of putting an absurd idea into practice.
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I cannot imagine why they think such small children need work-ready skills. It’s nuts. They push keyboarding down to earlier and earlier grades as it is. It’s not enough they need to know it for the 3rd grade CC test? They’re now planning on ramping up the kindergarten pressure?
These adults should thank their lucky stars they didn’t have to grow up with adults like them in charge. They were given all the time in the world yet they deny that to others.
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Is requiring screen time for Kindergarten kids for any set duration of time what we really want to be encouraging?
There should be zero screen time before the age of 2 – medically.
After that, there’s a MAXIMUM of 1-2 hours per day.
Do kindergarten kids have either the attention span or the dexterity to manage a keyboard? Except maybe a really huge one?
And aren’t we teaching them a shorter attention span by getting them into software so early in life? There’s certainly research to suggest that.
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Obviously they don’t care about child development or children. They want to exploit a “new market,” and that happens to be toddlers.
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Maybe we should read kindergarteners books.
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Yes, a while ago Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said his office was working on a literacy initiative (not a keyboarding initiative).
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Coming soon to a superstore near you: Baby Mavis Beacon and Your Baby Can Type!
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CT has some of the dumbest politicians on the planet.
…and some of the dumbest public for (repeatedly) putting in office some of the dumbest politicians on the planet.
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So they want to require a kindergarten assessment tool and allow districts to teach the tots how to keyboard. Requiring the development and implementation of an assessment is bad enough. We already know that legislators have their brains in their pocketbooks/wallets. Why does someone feel the need to legislate allowing districts to teach keyboarding? Is it against the law now? Do they have a law allowing kindergarten teachers to teach kids how to tie their shoes? How about putting on jackets? Have they mandated the correct procedure for teaching the little tykes to put on those coats and zip/button them up? If someone would bother to print this stuff in the major media, perhaps these yoyos could be laughed out of office. Don’t they have anything more important to do?
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I just had my kindergarten computer class today. I teach students K-8th. Today most of my students were able to click on a few links and play a few games by themselves. Mind you there were still constant questions and hands up from most of them. This wasn’t always the way, my students used to be much further along by this time in the school year. It’s just that none of them have computers any more…they all have iPads. So instead of my classes getting better at computers they are actually getting much worse. I don’t see how they can expect students to do keyboarding when most of them (and I mean the more affluent of them) don’t use computers…they’ve gone beyond that.
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And barely anyone learns script/cursive anymore. So, lets mandate all children learn their alphabets, small and cap letters, and find them on a keyboard of tablet or device of some sort. Writing alphabets will be replaced with pecking them out on a keyboard. Do kindergarteners even have the dexterity to do more than henpeck at a keyboard with pointer fingers? Nothing against the kids, you see, just wondering if physically they’re capable. Perhaps the wave of the future is no one will use paper/pen, and no one will need to know how to shape the letters, just locate them on a keyboard. Already, by eliminating script, people do not have a signature. Truth.
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If I were in kindergarten today, I would almost certainly be a failure.
I never learned to type with anything more than two fingers and spent my career as a software engineer coding that way, though I must admit, I spent far more time thinking and planning the code than typing it in, which is something that many software engineers would do well to take to heart.
I had the distinct displeasure of working with with some very bad programmers who were very fast typists and often typed in the first thing that popped into their head which, more often than not led to all sorts of nasty bugs which it then took them hours, days or even weeks to hunt down and extract from the code. So no real time saved there.
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Now this is more than INSANE! Follow the money.
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it was frequently the case that students , by 4th grade, would be needing eye glasses even though we didn’t notice much with the third graders. I am assuming more and more of these issues will become apparent as the children stay involved with constant “machine and screen”…. My own eye doctors tell me to limit computer time to 1 hour per day. I hope the pediatricians and ophthalmologists will be able to speak up to say how wrong this is ….
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The good news is this proposed law is DEAD, according to my state senator. It’s just unbelievable that some clueless legislator even proposed it.
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CT BATs have checked this out and this bill appears to be Dead on the CT Legislator. Thankfully!
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Have any of these people met a real live four- or five-year-old?
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