A reader shares this information with us. The state will administer assessments to children in kindergarten but parents have the right to opt out. Will the parents know? If you live in Washington, make sure you inform parents of their right to opt out their children from this unnecessary assessment. Let the children play.
So here in the Pacific North West, our legislature just finished a special session and they’re now into the third. One part of our legislature, the House, just passed Washington HB 1491…”Expand Early Childhood Education Across the State” and has nice fine print related to testing kindergarteners and 3-4 year-olds. That’s right. TESTING. FOR KINDERGARTENERS. Section 2, [2][a] “Improve short-term and long-term educational outcomes for children as measured by assessments including, but not limited to, the Washington kindergarten inventory of developing skills in RCW 28A.655.080. The only saving grace? RCW 28A.150.315 is in force WITH THE EXCEPTION OF STUDENTS WHO HAVE BEEN EXCUSED FROM PARTICIPATION BY THEIR PARENTS OR GUARDIANS. That’s right. The K-12 public schools will now HAVE to administer the test with all the attendant costs and time suck but, as a parent, you won’t be hearing how you can opt-out. Lots of more work to do. Then again, I’m so pissed about it that it gives me the energy I need to fight, fight, fight.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You can find out more here. And what you will find is that this initiative is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Department of Public and Instruction is looking for Kindergarten programs to sign on to the testing.
http://www.k12.wa.us/WaKIDS/About/default.aspx?printable=true
There is still a fight going on regarding House bill 1491. This bill is in the Senate today and with any luck will not pass – killing the bill for one more year as this is the last day of the Third Special Session. We will know more tomorrow. Even without this bill, testing of Kindergarten students is skyrocketing in Washington state – as our state has gone “testing crazy.” – thanks to Bill Gates and his friends.
David – it’s not the last day of the third special session unless they decide to finish their business today. Unfortunately, it’s just the beginning of the current special session.
Parents may *always* opt out. We need to keep that message front and center. It’s so odd how “freedom loving” Americans are so used to asking permission these days.
It is important to remind everyone that the SBAC, reflecting the Common Core “standards,” is the high-stakes standardized testing tool which these Kindergarten children must endure. The Early Childhood “standards” developing team included NOT ONE early childhood educator. Do the states really have to continue to enrich News Corp and Rupert Murdoch, via Amplify and Joel Klein? What a deplorable lack of intelligence on the part of Departments of Education, in the state of Washington and elsewhere. How can parents of these little ones tolerate this travesty?
Assessment is a critical part of all the instructional design models I’ve seen. Yes, assessment is a pretty inaccurate tool, but it’s the best we’ve got.
High-stakes testing implies that decisions are being made where there are winners and losers. Perhaps the problem is that high stakes decisions need to be made. After all, it is better for such decisions to be made using criteria that are seen to be transparent and relatively objective.
You’re kidding, right? Read back through prior posts and the comments – you’ve already been refuted. Many times. Too lazy to do it again.
How can you know what instructional design models I’ve seen? If you don’t know what models I’ve seen, how can you say I’ve been refuted. I’m sorry, but lazy criticism doesn’t do much for the credibility of your position.
You may be conflating assessment with evaluation, and the two are not the same in instructional design. ADDIE, for instance, which is probably the most famous instructional design model, is Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate. It does not say assessment. Evaluation can take any number of forms depending on if you are interested in the product or the process.
The iconic Dick and Carey model calls for both formative and summative evaluation, not assessment. Rapid prototyping is similar, and all are on iterative cycles, meaning the evaluative feedback comes in soon enough for changes to be made in the next cycle.
Assessment focuses solely on outcomes and is most often quantitative. Evaluation more often focuses on a number of factors, including how the users interacted with the content (or in the classroom – classroom participation), etc.
Thanks. Hadn’t picked up on it before.
In the 1980s, SC gave a first grade readiness test,my he CSAB, at the end of kindergarten. But it wasn’t all academics; both my kids each missed just one question: neither could skip. I certainly hope CCSS takes care of the skipping deficits.
Isn’t it nice how Bill Gates has bought Washington? (State and DC)
If you get state money you have to show Sesame Street and not Sponge Bob, would get better results than trying to measure outcomes and data collection. Bravo to Rep. Elizabeth Scott speaking out against endless bureaucratic evaluation..
An “assessment” is done by a teacher, a “standardized evaluation” by the State.Those words have been loosely used.
Exactly! In-class assessments are vital & responsible, whereas standardized evaluations embodied by CCSS & the attacks on public education are a travesty. However, I worry about Diane’s ‘Let them play!’ meme because it might lead some to advocate for the trashing of valuable formative assessments as well.
Kindergarten, a children’s garden wherein they learn some of the basic tenets of social interplay.
What a TRAVESTY on a great idea.
Soon the reformers will wish to propagandize babes as soon as they are born
IF
they have not already propagandized the parents.
Where will it end?
LET THEM PLAY. THIS IS THE STRONGEST AGENDA FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT.AND LEARNING! SCREW FORMATIVE ASSESSMENTS. WHO IS THE GOD, WHO THINKS THAT THEY CAN MAKE THEM
Sounds like a very strong argument to get rid of all schooling
No it doesn’t.
We’ve gotten infected with it here, too: Massachusetts Kindergarten Readiness Assessment, complete with acronyms:
http://www.mass.gov/edu/birth-grade-12/early-education-and-care/mkea/
“Teaching Strategies GOLD is an assessment system for children from birth through kindergarten designed to help teachers: observe and document children’s development and learning over time; support, guide, and inform planning and instruction; identify children who might benefit from special help, screening, or further evaluation; and report and communicate with family members and others. Teaching Strategies GOLD also enables to teachers to (1) collect and gather child outcome information as one part of a larger accountability system and (2) provide reports to administrators to guide program planning and professional development opportunities. Teaching Strategies GOLD addresses the following Developmental Domains: (1) Social-Emotional, (2) Physical, (3) Language, (4) Cognition, (5) Literacy, (6) Mathematics, (7) Science and Technology, (8) Social Studies, (9) The Arts, and (10) English Language Acquisition.”
Cue – Señor Swacker.
from birth through kindergarten (and then thru all of school and into college)…. i mean, IF they (the oligarchs) are really interested in standardising everyone and controlling the ‘quality’ of the end product of education (our kids), THEN why don’t they just quit messing around and begin to control conception (matching eggs and sperms for maximum potential), grow those foetuses in stringently controlled laboratory environments and then warehouse all of our children to control their growth and development? Far fetched?
artificial wombs: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/feb/10/medicalscience.research
manipulation of eggs, sperm and fertilisation for particular traits: from Reproduction and Responsibility: The Regulation of New Biotechnologies, The President’s Council on Bioethics
Washington, D.C.
March 2004
Chapter Three
Screening and Selection for Genetic Conditions and Traits
B. Well-Being of Children
PGD typically requires the removal of one or two cells from a six- to eight-cell embryo. It is not known whether this embryo biopsy affects the development of the child later born.11 PGD has entered clinical practice after only limited trial experience. No comprehensive studies have been published on the effects of PGD on the physical well-being of those involved. Some prospective studies are currently underway in Europe, but it is unclear how well-funded or comprehensive they will be.
C. Increased Control over the Characteristics of Children
PGD gives prospective parents the capacity to screen and select for specific genetic traits in their children. For now, that capacity is limited. Technical limitations on the number of embryos that can be produced in a single PGD cycle and on the number of tests that can be performed on a single blastomere severely restrict the number of characteristics for which practitioners can now test. Similarly, the complexity of the relationship between identifiable single genes and phenotypic characteristics will complicate the development of genetic tests for many traits and characteristics of interest (for example, where traits have polygenic contributions or result from complex gene-environmental interactions). Moreover, one cannot select for genes that are not brought to the embryos by their genetic progenitors; efforts at positive selection will be limited. Thus, the capacity to use PGD to select for a “superior genotype”—a “designer baby”—is in our estimation not on the horizon.iii
The present, more modest, applications of PGD—screening for severe medical conditions, screening for genetic predispositions or risk factors for a given disease, elective sex selection, and selection with an eye to creating a matching tissue donor—do give rise to ethical concerns about possible impacts on children and families. PGD used for these purposes might in some cases treat the resulting child as a means to the parents’ ends. This concern would be amplified should the reasons for embryo screening move from “medical” purposes to non-medical or enhancement purposes, from preventing the birth of a diseased child to trying to “maximize” a child’s genotype for desired characteristics. (This line is, admittedly, hard to draw.)iv Because the prospective child is deliberately selected on qualitative, genetic grounds out of a pool of possible embryonic siblings, PGD risks normalizing the idea that a child’s particular genetic make-up is quite properly a province of parental reproductive choice, or the idea that entrance into the world depends on meeting certain genetic criteria. Even if the prospective parents are guided by their own sense of what would be a good or healthy baby, their selection may in some cases serve their own interests more than the child’s (as in the case, for example, of a deaf couple using PGD in an effort to produce a deaf child). The new technologies, even when used only to screen out and eliminate the sick or “deficient,” may change parents’ attitudes toward their children, increasing both the desire to control and the tacit expectation of certain qualities—an attitude that might intensify as PGD becomes more sophisticated. Children who are selected on non-medical grounds—such as elective sex selection or trait selection—may experience increased pressures to meet parental expectations.
The use of PGD to identify a prospective child as a tissue donor match (currently a very rare practice) poses an additional ethical concern: the deliberate creation and selection of a particular child as a means for the benefit of another.v It is, of course, likely that in most families such children would be loved by their parents and by the siblings who would benefit directly from their tissue donation. But even here there is a dramatic shift in how the new PGD-selected donor-child is conceived and regarded by the parents and family. Is it proper to assign to an unconceived child the burden of being a savior of a sibling, and then give that child life on condition that he or she fulfill that role?
A closely related ethical concern is that this sort of selection could reduce the scope of reproductive choice. As the aggregate effect of parental choices reshapes society’s understanding of “normal” or “acceptable” phenotypes, parents might feel social pressure to undergo PGD, as many pregnant women now are pressured to undergo amniocentesis. In addition, parents might feel pressured to use PGD for financial reasons; it is conceivable that HMOs or health plans that cover IVF might someday require PGD for selection against certain potentially costly diseases.
Some see these ethical concerns as unjustified or premature. They believe that expanding our control over human reproduction is an extension of the parental responsibility to care for one’s offspring, and that PGD will be used almost exclusively to prevent the births of diseased children. They argue that the prospect of using PGD for “enhancement” purposes is unlikely, since the burdens of undergoing IVF and PGD would outweigh the limited possibility of selecting an embryo that is genetically superior. The possibility of so selecting will be limited both by the genetic complexity of human traits like intelligence, and by the vast number of embryos that would be required in order to make the choice for a “better” genetic baby a meaningful one.
Whether and to what extent either the concerns or the reassurances about PGD are justified is in many cases an empirical question, surely worth considering and monitoring.
D. PGD for Late-Onset Disease
PGD can be used not only to identify abnormalities that would lead to certain and immediate diseases (like Tay-Sachs or Down syndrome), but can also be used to identify an increased susceptibility to particular diseases later in life. Is PGD justified to avoid the birth of a child who will be likely to live “only” thirty years? Is it justified to avoid the birth of a child who is especially susceptible to a late-onset disease like breast cancer or Alzheimer disease? Questions like these will need to be confronted as the ability to make biological and genetic predictions about unimplanted embryos continues to grow.
E. Eugenics and Inequality
For some critics, PGD calls to mind the specter of “eugenics”; it is seen as a technology that facilitates the selection of “better” children. Some worry that as PGD becomes more widespread, it will serve to further stigmatize the disabled and promote the notion that some lives are not worth living or are better off prevented in the first place. This is in a sense nothing new—amniocentesis and prenatal diagnosis are common and have already raised similar concerns. What is novel about PGD, though, is that it can be used to select “for” desirable traits, not just “against” markers for disease.
Other commentators worry that widespread use of PGD (so long as it is not covered by insurance or subsidized by taxpayers) could widen and worsen the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” in society, as access to PGD, like access to IVF itself, is restricted to those who can afford it. Furthermore, techniques that permit parents to screen and select their children’s genetic make-up might produce a new kind of inequality between parents and children. Such techniques would allow parents not simply to give life to their offspring, but to choose (or try to choose) what kind of offspring they have. Of course, through education and upbringing parents have always had an enormous influence on the lives of their children, but inasmuch as the consequences of genetic screening and selection are imposed before birth and are biologically permanent, the inegalitarian effects of the new technology are novel and potentially significant. Biology is not destiny, but one’s genetic make-up is surely crucial to one’s life; if selected deliberately in advance by others, it might shape or limit a child’s self-understanding and sense of future possibilities. The ability to affect the genetic make-up of the next generation may also exacerbate the tendency to assign too much importance to genetic make-up, and so may promote an excessively reductionist view of human life. These new practices may lend undue credence to the notion that human characteristics and conditions are simply or predominantly genetically determined—a too-narrow understanding of human freedom, agency, and experience, and a simplistic understanding of human biology.
F. Parents and Children
The introduction of rigorous genetic screening into childbearing might set a new standard for what counts as an acceptable birth. The attitude of parents toward their child may be subtly shifted from unconditional acceptance toward critical scrutiny: the very first act of parenting could become not the unreserved welcoming of an arriving child, but the judging of his or her fitness, while still an embryo, to become one’s child, all by the standards of contemporary genetic screening. Moreover, as the screening technology itself is further refined, becoming better able to pick out serious but not life-threatening genetic conditions (from dwarfism and deafness to dyslexia and asthma) and then to distinguish genetic markers for desirable traits, the standards for what constitutes an acceptable birth may grow more exacting.
and from/about the father of ‘behaviourism’ John Watson:
Watson and his contemporaries came of age as the Industrial Revolution and other social upheavals were laying waste to the moral vestiges of the Victorian era, creating a vacuum in the new social order….. When Watson promoted his new ideal–and coined the term behaviorism–he rejected the idea of consciousness. … According to Watson, scientists could best study the human mind by noting what humans do. And he meant “to gain experimental control over the whole range of emotional reactions.”
“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select–doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors,” he wrote in 1924…. Watson’s research, and later his advocacy of behaviorism, would leave a mixed legacy: part historical footnote, his views were dismissed within decades as too narrow by cognitive psychologists who used a less mechanistic approach to study the mind. Yet his aggressive push for objectivity within psychology (along with other advocates) helped solidify and legitimize the field. His research on human conditioning also lay the groundwork for the radical behaviorist movement led by Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner in the 1940s and 1950s. Watson’s writings popularized psychology in the public mind.
“I shall never be satisfied until I have a laboratory in which I can bring up children from birth to three or four years of age under constant observation,” he wrote in a June 1920 letter to Johns Hopkins University President Frank J. Goodnow.
… At first, he focused his studies on animal behavior. He published research on the trial-and-error learning process in animals (and later studied the same in infants), research he hoped could make human learning more efficient and easier to control…. With the help of graduate student Rosalie Rayner and others, he expanded his classical conditioning research to the study of babies. Watson tested his theories on how to condition children to express fear, love, or rage–emotions Watson conjectured were the basic elements of human nature. Among other techniques, he dropped (and caught) infants to generate fear and suggested that stimulation of the genital area would create feelings of love. In another chilling project, Watson boasted to Goodnow in summer 1920 that the National Research Council had approved a children’s hospital he proposed that would include rooms for his infant psychology experiments. He planned to spend weekends working at the “Washington infant laboratory.”….
… At times, his view of the future depicted a terrifying dystopia. In the industrial world, where efficiency and science were godlike, Watson advocated the outlaw of religion, which he said excused “failure and weakness.” Poets and artists would be retrained to be productive citizens. Physicians would recondition “conduct deviations” in children to eliminate “unsocial ways of behaving,” biographer Buckley points out.
Watson’s advocacy of behaviorism in child rearing was harsh and influenced more than one generation of parents afraid of coddling their children, a practice he called “mawkish and sentimental.” He declared that infants should be brought up by a rotation of “parents” and nurses, saying that family life destroyed the child’s individuality and independence. A bit of his advice on children from his 1928 book: “Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning.”
“Watsonism has become gospel and catechism in the nurseries and drawing rooms of America,” noted philosopher Mortimer Adler despaired in 1928.
(Though Watson-inspired behaviorism today is a stepchild in psychology, Hulse, of Hopkins, says “it has been absorbed into the times.” The study of consciousness is hot, “but the techniques behaviorism fostered have become part of the common language. ‘Time-out’ is used by almost every parent.”)
Watsonian behaviorism, however, created a troubled legacy in his own family. Physical affection was taboo. He used his children as study subjects. Later, he publicly regretted much of his child-rearing advice. (His granddaughter, actress Mariette Hartley, wrote a 1991 memoir, Breaking the Silence, about surviving her dysfunctional upbringing.)
In the end, even her grandmother had her doubts. In 1930, Rosalie Rayner Watson, who raised two sons in the behavioristic pattern, wrote an article “I Am the Mother of a Behaviorist’s Sons,” for Parents’ Magazine. She died five years later from pneumonia.
“In some respects I bow to the great wisdom in the science of behaviorism, and in others I am rebellious,” Watson’s wife wrote. “I secretly wish that on the score of [the children’s] affections, they will be a little weak when they grow up, that they will have a tear in their eyes for the poetry and drama of life and a throb for romance . . . . I like being merry and gay and having the giggles. The behaviorists think giggling is a sign of maladjustment.”… all from the John Hopkins Magazine, April 2000 edition….
Please do your homework. TS GOLD, which is the observational assessmt tool used in WaKIDS, is not a high stakes assessment. It is an observational assessment that teachers use to learn about incoming kindergarteners development from a whole child lens. Teachers interact and play with children over a 4 to 6 week period observing them before completing a checkpoint at the end of October. It is not a direct assessment. This same tool is used in many early learning programs across the state and so there is great alignment to be able to assess the effectiveness of the instruction so that teachers are equipped to individualize and support all children in their learning.
I have been doing the homework and have to agree with the link below. TS GOLD/WaKIDS seems to be a cumbersome burden with the guise of helping teachers, students and families. I have yet to find a teacher who is finding the extra time, energy, and effort of inputting data for WaKids and TS GOLD more useful than what they are already doing. Teachers have been effectively using formative assessment/observation looking at development from a whole child lens for a very long time. Good teachers continued to do this even during the dark times of NCLB. Yes, we can always improve and get better but inputting loads of data and gathering huge amounts of “evidence”‘ will not make us better or help children. I ask for Who and Why? WaKids/Bill Gates..follow the money)/TS Gold (for profit company) are now mandating teachers to be data inputters and managers for their own monetary and data gain at the expense of teachers, children, and families. I find it an intrusion of student privacy, professionalism, and a drain on precious time and resources.
http://www.pegwithpen.com/2013/09/do-not-go-for-gold-teaching-strategies.html
YES!!! it is totally draining, stressful and burdensome. I am a kindergarten teacher who has been very highly evaluated and I am ready to change grades because of this assessment/evaluation tool. It is a sad time in education when teachers spend more time preparing assessment activities so the state can evaluate our preschool programs than working on rich, differentiated and developmentally appropriate lessons. Thank you for speaking out. The teachers appreciate it!!!
In my homework on TS Gold this is the kind of information I keep finding.
“Many teachers in Massachusetts report that TS GOLD disrupts their classroom and duplicates their classroom-based assessments, providing teachers with little or no new useful information about their students. They also express concern about the security of personal information about their students that is being uploaded to this private company’s website.”
http://www.massteacher.org/mkea
More information from my homework. This is the master plan to have Birth to 3rd grade aligned with CCSS. Really????? Aligned to the CCSS from BIRTH????
Click to access Teaching-Strategies-GOLD-Expansion-Press-Release-07-01-2013.pdf
Do you know there is a senate bill that will effectively Washington State from Common Core. It has bipartisan support. We need to contact our legislature and get this bill passed. SB 6030 https://stopcommoncorewa.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/sb-6030-to-withdraw-wa-from-common-core/