A comment by a teacher:
“Young students in kindergarten are now labeled as having specific learning disabilities if they do not receive a certain score on district universal screeners(STAR, iReady, MAP), which are taken on computers. I watch this happen in my district. I’ve watched it happen in other districts in which I’ve worked. First graders are given Reading Improvement Plans if they do not receive a certain score on district universal screeners the first time they take the test in August, in the state of Ohio. Once on a Reading Improvement Plan (RIMP), they are expected to receive instruction from a prepackaged, “research based,” scripted program…with fidelity. Without real books. Kindergarten teachers talk more about close reading strategies, than they do about Eric Carle, Leo Lionni, Dr. Seuss, or Stone Soup. Even the interactive read aloud has become a thing of the past. What did you think would happen to unstructured play? Literacy is being systematically killed. The blood is on our hands.”
My view: This is Child Abuse. State and district education officials who mandate this spiritual and emotional abuse of little children should be reported to child protective services and referred for counseling about the developmental needs of children.
Shameful. I understand why my students arrive in class with a disdain for reading that they characterize with adjectives like “boring,” and “stupid.”
This is malpractice. There is no theoretical or research foundation to support it.
As a certified special educator with 15+ years experience in that field, in over 20 years teaching, I can tell you with certainty that this is also ILLEGAL. It is a violation of IDEA to determine eligibility (‘label’ as learning disabled) outside of a very specific protocol that includes individually administered tests of achievement and ‘ability’, and provides due process protections. A universal screener is NOT valid for this purpose. It may be one of many data points to consider, but it is useless for determining SLD eligibility.
Thank-you. Using a universal screener for SPED eligibility is education malpractice.
This trend will drive more parents out of the public schools. We are creating a threatening climate in schools at such a young age…why?
My fear is that parents will buy into this kind of thing.
They test them constantly because Ohio is wholly captured by the ed reform “movement” and the ed reform “movement” offers absolutely nothing to kids in public schools other than tests
They say it themselves: “it’s about CHOICE and ACCOUNTABILITY”
Accountability means tests. Since “choice” obviously isn’t about public school kids we’re left with tests
the Ohio legislature wouldn’t address public school children at all if it weren’t for tests. It’s literally all they offer. Tests and scolding lectures.
Start reporting and blare it to the news what is stopping everyone
Honestly this hyperbole is offensive to those of us who have worked with abused or neglected kids.
Also, have you fact-checked this claim Diane? Are you really thinking that an Ohio school district is giving a special education label of “specific learning disability” based on a single computerized test? There would be massive federal laws standing in the way of this, and I’d simply demand more proof before such an outrageous claim were made.
I have worked with abused and neglected kids and I’m not offended in the least. Yes, there probably needs to be independent verification that this is happening, but if it is, it’s just as much abuse as hitting or starving kids. There are many ways to abuse kids. In my view, this is worse, since it’s institutional, whereas physical abuse, etc. is a matter of individual disturbed parents. In the latter situation the family can receive treatment and/or the kid can be removed from a toxic home. But when the entire educational system becomes toxic, what can be done?
As an early childhood educator and having spent more than 10 years coordinating court-based child care centers, I have been saying for years that expecting more of children than they can deliver and labeling them when they can’t accomplish what they are not developmentally ready to accomplish IS child abuse. It induces stress and/or magnifies the stresses already in children’s lives. It takes the joy out of learning. It is responsible for thousands of children feeling like failures totally unnecessarily. It is responsible for parents feeling like failures and often blaming the children.
The push down curriculum, worse in some states, a little less worse in others, is toxic to the development of young children.
As research study after research study shows that play and hands-on learning is most suited to the development of young children, programs like this have NO RATIONAL BASIS.
Educators should learn from doctors- first, do no harm.
Programs such as this are harmful to young children.
I completely understand why you would take offense to the use of “abuse” in this context. But when I watched my pre-k kids move next door to a kindergarten I was appalled at what was done to them and I would call a kind of abuse. “Educational malpractice” also works. I sent along five-year-olds who were not yet fluent in English. They needed to hear and talk about hundreds of books in order to learn English and to begin to learn about literacy. Instead, I watched in horror as k teachers took them out to the hall one by one and tested them on phonics!! Not only were my kids not getting what they needed, they felt like failures! At age 5! To me, that is abusive. And the poor, young, mal-trained teachers were just doing what they were told like sheep. They did not understand that there was a different way and did not advocate for those kids!!
edededucation,
This is an example of the policy-driven, institutional abuse of children, and while it may not compare to the physical/emotional abuse and neglect children suffer at the hands of parents/guardians/caregivers, it’s a valid term to use.
It is definitely abuse. Making a small child feel that they are retarded before they’ve even started school is disgusting and abusive. People who have a clue about cognitive development and child development know that there is a healthy window of time over which a normal child develops. Not all children are ready to read in kindergarten and children who start later are in no way handicapped or abnormal. Making a child feel that they are not normal or are retarded is extremely abusive and could do irreparable damage to their further development. Children are exceptionally vulnerable and therefore adults who test the very young children and announce these conclusions should lose their teaching licenses and not be allowed near children.
edededucation
I cannot speak to the issue of using test scores for special education placements, but you seem not to grasp how these tests do function as “screening” tests. The tests are not benign.
This post mentioned three tests: STAR, iReady, and MAP.
Here are some things I discovered.
STAR is marketed by Renaissance Learning. In Ohio students get classified for “interventions” by the STAR program. Star Early Literacy and Star Reading are marketed as Diagnostic Assessments to determine if students are on track for reading at grade level.
Ohio teachers can use the default benchmarks on the Star Screening Reports to screen students for remedial work. These reports identify students whose percentile rank is less than 10 (shown in the red, “Urgent Intervention” group) and students whose percentile rank is less than 25 (shown in the yellow, “Intervention” group). Students in either the “Urgent Intervention” or “Intervention” groups are eligible for a Reading Improvement and Monitoring Plan (RIMP). In addition a “Watch group” is identified ”for monitoring because those student may not be on track to meet Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee cut score.“ See the chart on page 2 for the kindergarten. results.“http://doc.renlearn.com/KMNet/R60623.pdf
iReady is from Curriculum Associates. Like STAR, iReady is an Internet data-gathering system purporting to predict student performance on state tests. The Kindergarten materials were developed for PARCC and SMARTER tests and the Common Core. The Common Core is widely viewed as a disaster for early childhood learning, because the CC standards are strictly academic in focus, require standardized tests, and were not developed by experts in early childhood education. http://www.curriculumassociates.com/products/iready/diagnostic-instruction.aspx
MAP is marketed by the global non-profit organization, “Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) based in Portland, OR. It is known for its “interim assessment, Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®)” used by more than 7,400 US schools.
MAP offers The Children’s Progress Academic Assessment™ (CPAA™) for pre-kindergarten testing in reading and math. Students independently use the testing platform (earphones in, eyes on the screen, fingers on the touchpad). The tests are recommended for use 3 to 9 times a year. Tests usually take from 20 to 30 minutes, about 10 to 15 minutes per subject.
These tests have a “Second Chances” component. “After each incorrect response, students receive a second chance. They see the question again, with scaffolding–prompts–that might produce a correct answer. “Researchers at Columbia University and MIT designed the test to be adaptive in this way to mirror a 1:1 student-teacher interaction and match the developmental needs of younger students. The CPAA scoring algorithm takes into account how much scaffolding each student required, and reports include item level information.” The software gives instant reports so educators “can get started right away with targeted recommended activities and parent reports.” https://www.nwea.org/cpaa/
There is more to MAP and other NWEA tests than meets the eye.
First, NWEA offers “solutions” to schools, not just tests. Among these solutions are “Instructional Connections” with so-called partners. Partners use MAP test scores and reports to market their wares as MAP-aligned. Currently these partners are: Learning A-Z, Otus, Curriculum Crafter, Odysseyware, Compass Learning now part of Edgenuity, Silverback Learning Solutions, Edmentum for Study Island, Achieve3000®, and Classworks. All of these are vendors of online learning systems marketed as if personalized.
Second, in September 2015, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sent NWEA—the Northwest Evaluation Association— $602,521 ”to support MAP testing in the 29 schools launching in Fall 2015 across the six Next Generation System Initiative districts for the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years in order to enable impact analysis of these schools in a manner similar to the RAND personalized learning study.” Gates is paying NWEA to get MAP tests into 29 schools.
Third, that Next Generation System Initiative from Gates is rationalized this way: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation thinks “personalized learning is the best way to reach its goal of having at least 80 percent of students complete their K-12 education prepared to succeed in college.” MAP testing is part of the plan.
Fourth, Phase I of the Gates Next Generation System Initiative has inserted personalized learning programs into five school districts willing to participate. The Gates bait (for three years of cooperation) was significant: Dallas Independent School District, TX $2,745, 234; Denver Public School Foundation, $1,807, 534; Henry County Schools, GA, $4,392,400; Lake County Schools, FL, $7,024,822; Pinellas County Schools, FL,$3,384,626; and Riverside Unified School District, CA, $3,559,196. Add $817,823 for two intermediaries.
Cat Alexander Consulting, LLC (CA Group) was put in charge of moving this Gates-funded project along http://catalexander.com/project-summaries/next-generation-systems-initiative-phase-i-design
The CA Group also enlisted Blueprint Education Consulting Co. as a “partner”for this Next Generation Systems Initiative. This small consultancy, based in Shanghai, offers test-prep for SAT, ACT, SSAT, and counseling services for students in China who want to attend elite boarding schools in the US (e.g, Choate Rosemary Hall, Phillips Exeter Academy, Phillips Andover Academy). I was unable to determine the contribution these consultancy made to the Gates project.
The Gates Foundation has found another BEST way to do things, aided by computers and software systems and MAT tests that will drive de-personalized learning and make it possible for “at least 80 percent of students complete their K-12 education prepared to succeed in college.” So far, the Gates Foundation has awarded 210 grants worth $23,731,635, to promote this one BEST way to educate students–screen-based and test-driven. This is the tip of the iceberg in funding screen-based test-driven instruction beginning in pre-school. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is only one of 30 non-governmental organizations, organized as the Education Funders Strategy Group, hell-bent on controlling pre-k to 12 education.
Laura, I have a fairly in-depth knowledge of assessment & screening procedures, including several of the ones you mentioned. I’m not sure what your main point is here – you’ve described a number of different assessment & screening systems, but not really offered any real critique of the assessment systems themselves – are you saying that you don’t support identifying children in more need of academic support?
To be sure, I’m not saying that I support all assessment systems, or that any of them are perfect. MAP (NWEA), for example, I don’t support at all, but it’s not because of the idea that they identify kids who may be in more of support.
There IS a massive federal law that prohibits this. It’s called IDEA. The fact that IDEA explicitley prohibits using screening tests for eligibility is meaningless unless there is enforced compliance.
IDEA compliance was de-reguleated under Arne Duncan in 2011. This reveals the long term damage to children when our DoEd is captured by Wall St profiteers &silicon valley pirates.
It’s also possible that the school personnel are grads of these fast track education programs that mass produce teachers as if they are training to be cashiers at Walmart. Many states allow anyone with a college degree to teach if they pass a test. Dumbing down the profession hurts kids.
This is emotional child abuse. Until you see how early school failure scars a child’s self-efficacy for life, you would agree that this is abuse.
Folks, the point here is that you’re using excessive hyperbole. Personally, I don’t believe that labeling is helpful even IN appropriate special education protocols, but the point I’m making is not that it’s not hurtful. It’s that we should first strive to be accurate and specific. Your arguments against certain educational practices are not made better or more effective by making those arguments as extreme as possible. Most people simply roll their eyes and move on.
On a more broad level, our society is now inundated with polarized, hyperbolized, and fact-skewed arguments. We’re not in a better place. People are listening to others more than they were before. People are just more entrenched in their positions than before. If the goal is to sound good to the people who already agree with you, fine. But if you’re wanting to genuinely invite people into conversation to reconsider how things are done, constant hyperbole is detrimental.
Not everything that produces harm to kids is abuse. If the above situation is true regarding identifying kids as SLD based on a screening assessment (and I HIGHLY doubt that it is), I’d go along with you that it’s educational malpractice. I also very much agree that – in aggregate – it could produce “more units of harm” than some traditional forms of abuse. However, it isn’t – by definition – child abuse.
Teachers are mandated reporters.
So are administrators.
And what is being done in the name of “reform” surely are malpractices that cause multiple harms, multiple levels of harm to those most vulnerable of society, the children.
When, oh when, will this country wake up. When will the GAGA good german teachers and adminimals shake off their own mental shackles and begin to speak up?
When oh when will this madness end??
My grandson in Texas has traveled a similar journey. As a retired teacher and certified reading teacher, I brought many boxes of books and encouraged my daughter to read to him. To make a long story short, my smart college educated daughter is also neurotic with occasional panic attacks. She loves her son and wants what is best for him. While I visit four times a year, I do not have control over my grandson’s exposure to books. I read to him when I visited, and I did see that he was not terribly interested. My grandson attended a pre-school that emphasized play.
My grandson is smart, curious and very active. He entered K last year and had a teacher that was in her second year of teaching. Classroom management was an issue. While my grandson was not a behavior problem, he was not paying attention and was declared ADD over my wait and see protestations.
In first grade my grandson continued to lag in reading in !st grade, and his fine motor writing was poor. In math he was the the “mathlete” of the school. He was at the top of the math assessments, and he has inherent number sense. He was also the tech support for his class and helped other students get into their Chomebooks. At this point he was progressing in reading at a steady pace, but he was still behind. By the end of the year the school tested him for learning disabilities. They decided he is learning disabled because there is a large disparity between his math, reasoning, language and his reading.
I disagreed with my daughter’s decision and urged her to give him more time and have him spend the summer with me. Once again I was overruled.
As an ESL and reading teacher, I have taught many students to read in English, even when they didn’t read in their native language. Nationally there is an over representation of students that are declared LD, which should be at about 10%. In my district we rarely classified anyone before 3rd grade due to developmental variation in children. I think there is a confusion between students that are “hard to start” and actual LD students. Early classification results in over classification. Our test crazed schools seem to be eager to classify in order to provide testing modifications to students. I don’t know if my grandson is truly LD, but I have my reservations. Next trip I will visit the school and ask to see how they arrived at this determination. I don’t blame the school or my daughter as the school and teachers have been lovely, but we have to take the pressure off our young children.
“Nationally there is an over representation of students that are declared LD, which should be at about 10%.”
Where does that stat come from, RT? How do we know that that stat is anywhere near correct? TIA, Duane
I learned that 10% of the population has LD in one of my grad school courses. I have also read this figure elsewhere. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130418142309.htm
Thanks for the link RT!
Child abuse in the name of rigor and grit. Stupid.
Maybe this is tied back to another discussion from several months ago? Hedge fund managers investing money in education and promising cash for the schools that got a % of students off the IEP track and no longer labeled learning disabled? I can’t remember how the scam worked, but it seems that if you want to partake in the scheme, it pays to label as many kids as possible as LD so that when the kids naturally catch up, the school system can collect money? It is abusive though any way you look at it. ADD and ADHD diagnosis’ have risen dramatically and I’m not a teacher, but some of these kids don’t seem to have anything wrong with their attention spans when they are reading something that interests them or they are doing projects that hold their interest. Boredom makes lots of kids inattentive.
Social impact bonds I believe?
A social impact bond is a financial product. The money goes to the investors not the school. The aim is to reduce the number of students who may have ” minor” learning problems, correct these before the kids move on. The investors place a bet that a specific program will produce good outcomes. SIBS are financing preschool programs in Chicago and Utah. Profits, returns on investment, can be as high as 5% to 7%. The investors hire managers to make sure the program stays on track,also an outside evaluator. Cohorts of students are tracked for reading and/or math test scores to at least till the third grade.
Blame David Coleman and his Common Core standards for close reading in kindergarten. The standards prescribe this. Allegedly this is the only way to make world-class readers. Nevermind that this has never been tried anywhere on planet Earth. It’s a giant experiment. I understand how lay people might fall for this hoax, but it’s shameful that so many teachers and administrators have too. It’s an indictment of our profession. The profession is in a new Dark Age.
We live in the age of, not just the “hurried child,” but the hurried teacher and school. Schools are on the defensive because politicians and privateers are eager to declare them a “failure.”
You are correct in your assessment of “an indictment of our profession.”
Are there any brave souls in the teaching profession any more who refuse to implement the malpractices which harm so many children?
Are they all too afraid, to timid to “just say no”?
It certainly appears so.
Yes, indeed it is a new Dark and Sad Age.
Here’s some common sense about making good readers: teach about things. Incidentally you’ll be teaching words. By teaching words, you’ll be teaching reading comprehension. It’s that simple. That’s how it used to be done, and that’s how it’s done in any country with intelligent leadership in education.
Instead we have: have kids struggle with texts. Don’t teach them things, just a handful of metacognitive reading strategies. By struggling with texts they’ll build reading muscles in their heads. These strong reading muscles are much more important for comprehension than knowing things and the words that describe things. Kids will be ignorant, but that’s OK because they’ll be great readers. An extremely dubious hypothesis, yet most teachers believe it because it comes from “authority” on high. Studies show comprehension breaks down if you don’t know 95% of the words on the page. When and where are kids learning the words? They’re not learning them at school; if they’re lucky, they have well-educated parents who transmit verbal knowledge to them. That’s why poor readers remain poor readers even after 12 years of reading intervention. The principles that underlie that intervention are wrong. Kids need knowledge –not “struggle” or metacognitive skills –to read.
Amen.
Thank you ponderosa for the truth in “They’re not learning them at school; if they’re lucky, they have well-educated parents who transmit verbal knowledge to them”. However, I must emphasize that the summation of one’s choices and actions directly determines the consequences that one experiences. Thus, a child born into a smart family could ruin this opportunity by progressively choosing not to learn. Back2basic
And your last thought, May, points to one of the paradoxes of the teaching and learning process. Try as a teacher may, not all students choose to learn while at the same time there are many who want to, and try hard to learn, who end up struggling mightily to learn and end up being punished, sometimes even crushed by the standards and testing regime now in place.
Tis, indeed, a dark and sad time for students.
And the adults supposedly in loco parentis, in charge of the teaching and learning process on a daily basis are too timid, afraid, and worried about their own hide to challenge and protect and properly support the students in their charge.
Tis, indeed, a dark and sad time for students.
Hi señor Swacker:
I complete agree with you that “21St century is indeed, a dark and sad time for students”
I wrote to express that Trump has his lifetime opportunity to be a better person, but he chooses the wrong path and wrong choice. Yes, the material world is impermanent. When time comes, he must endure or suffer whatever he did to his supporters, American people, and the world.
In short, in our golden age, we will enjoy our contentment for we always do good deeds to our students, community and people in general. Please take good care of your health in order to to witness the law of causality. May. XXX
I am an early childhood professor and every fall I receive desperate calls from parents around the country who have been told their kindergartner is at risk for learning how to read. The calls come in October and November. This needs to STOP!