Defending the Early Years (DEY) was organized to fight for the rights and childhood of little children.
One of their current goals is to stop the pilot testing of what is called “Baby PISA.”
PISA is like a giant octopus that wants to test everything that breathes. It is sponsored by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.) It already has the nations of the world frantic that only one of them is #1 in test scores.
The expansion of PISA to include 5-year-olds is part of what Pasi Sahlberg dubbed “the Global Education Reform Movement” or GERM.
Five states have agreed to pilot testing of Baby PISA. But no one knows which states they are, and the OECD refuses to say.
DEY issued this press release earlier this year.
In 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development proposed an assessment of early learning outcomes called the International Early Learning and Child Well-Being Study. The proposal was made with little consultation with large facets of the early childhood community. In response to this international trend for increasing formal early childhood assessment that is gaining traction, Defending the Early Years releases the following statement:
Ignoring early childhood educators, researchers and scholars in making early education policy is not new, but the scale of this latest effort in the Global Education Reform Movement for young children is a frightening development. PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) has been used to test 15 year-olds since 2000. The new International Early Learning and Child Well-being study (IELS)- dubbed “Baby PISA” – will focus on testing 5 year-olds on narrow academic skills achievement.
The impact on the field of early childhood, already contorted by policies that push early academics and eradicate play, will be disastrous. If Baby PISA gains a foothold, we’ll see more of what we have already endured: more standardization, more academic drills, and more testing. And, we’ll see less of what we have already been losing: less of the arts, less play, less child choice, and less active, hands-on, developmentally meaningful learning. And we will see more children disaffected with school at younger and younger ages.
We early educators in the U.S. need to follow the lead of early childhood communities in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, and Denmark and speak up in protest against the IELS and advocate for appropriate and developmentally meaningful learning.
For more information on Baby PISA please see Baby PISA is Just Around the Corner. So Why is No One Talking About It?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Insanity!
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Channeling the SomeDAM Muse:
Is in utero testing the next thing?
Why not use the period of gestation for test indoctrination?
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I was thinking pretty much the same thing.
Or at the very least, test the newborns in the hospital nursery. Hold them back from leaving the hospital until they pass the tests. If the newborn test scores aren’t high enough, close the hospital labor and deliver rooms, the nursery, and the neonatal ICU. 😦
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I’ll play week-end sub:
The leaning tower of PISA
No longer can be propped
It’s made of tacky cheese-a
And with baloney topped
Let it twist in breeze-a!
Let’s sit with popcorn popped
Then yank its phony visa
And see that sucker dropped
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When the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development introduces a test for young children, you know GERM is not far behind. Resist!
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PISA is a central element in GERM. IT encourages every nation to believe that test scores are the goal of education. Their test scores.
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We should have a contest. I can’t name 5 states, but I’m guessing that MD and FL will be in the mix.
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Perfect timing: PISA grabs control of the emerging “universal PreK” movement. https://www.counter-currents.com/2012/11/spiritual-authority-and-temporal-power/napoleon-coronation/
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More money for testing companies, and a narrower curriculum for preschool! This is all wrong at this age when children need to explore and learn from their senses.
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Diane,
Good not on PISA – the following may be of interest:
Save Our Schools NJ and the NJ Department of Education are co-hosting three community meetings to collect feedback about PARCC.
PREPARATION
You may find the following questions helpful in preparing for the community meetings.
1) Which aspects of the PARCC tests need improvement? Are there any aspects that you believe work well?
Be as specific as possible and include your children’s or students’ personal experiences with PARCC.
You may want to address the following:
Is PARCC too hard or too easy?
How does PARCC impact instruction time, curriculum, and teaching approaches?
How much time is being spent on test preparation vs instruction?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of testing on a computer vs. paper and pencil?
How is testing impacting students’ stress levels and their feelings about school?
2) What kind of an assessment should replace PARCC?
Federal law (ESSA) requires annual testing in English Language Arts and Math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school grades 9-12. The tests used must align with state standards and must be consistent, to enable comparisons across the state. The test modality (paper and pencil or computerized) and duration (several hours or multiple days) are up to each state to decide.
You may want to address the following:
Should the test that replaces PARCC be similar to PARCC, such as the Smarter Balanced tests or the hybrid PARCC tests that are being used in Massachusetts and Louisiana?
For students in grades 3 to 8, should New Jersey purchase an “off-the-shelf” test such as the Terra Nova for grades 3-8 and the Iowa Assessment for grades 3-8, or should New Jersey create its own assessment? Creating an assessment generally requires multiple years of test development, field testing, and standard setting and would likely mean continuing to use an alternative assessment such as the Iowa or PARCC in the interim.
How long should the replacement test be? Should it be administered over several hours or multiple days, as is the case with PARCC?
Should the test that replaces PARCC be given via paper and pencil, or should it be given online, as PARCC has been administered?
For high school students, should the SAT or the ACT replace PARCC for federal accountability purposes?
Should New Jersey join states like New Hampshire, which are working to replace standardized tests with performance-based assessments that enable students to demonstrate mastery of material through applications of their knowledge? The federal law provides an option to replace standardized testing with performance-based assessments. Doing so would require New Jersey to adopt an interim assessment such as the Iowa or Terra Nova for 5 to 7 years, while the performance-based assessments are developed and validated.
3) What, if any, high school graduation testing requirements should New Jersey require?
New Jersey is one of only 13 states that still require a high school exit test. Multiple studies have confirmed that such exit tests do not improve students’ academic performance and have substantial negative consequences.
New Jersey state law requires that students pass a basic-skills test in 11th grade in order to graduate from high school. In August 2016, the State Board of Education adopted new regulations put forth by the Christie Administration that require students in the class of 2020 and beyond to take PARCC exams in order to graduate and students in the class of 2021 and beyond to receive a 4 or higher on the 10th grade English Language Arts and Algebra 1 PARCC exams in order to graduate.
These regulations would hurt many students and threaten New Jersey’s graduation rate. They also violate New Jersey’s state law and have been challenged in court by the Education Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union of NJ.
During last fall’s campaign, Governor Murphy promised to get rid of the PARCC graduation requirements. However, Governor Murphy needs the NJ legislature’s cooperation in order to eliminate the underlying law req
uiring high school exit testing.
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“The new International Early Learning and Child Well-being study (IELS)- dubbed “Baby PISA” will focus on testing 5 year-olds on narrow academic skills achievement. But…
If you go to the links beyond this headline, you will see a more complete description of the tests and surveys that are part of the package. This is not to say that I endorse the internationalization of tests for five-year olds and related surveys of parents and staff. I do not. The computer interface is a bummer. These tests and surveys will end with international stack rankings, just like everything else from OECD. Here is more information about the tests in the International Early Learning Study (IELS), officially administered in the US by the National Center of Education Statistics https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/iels/study_components.asp
Because this blog post indicates there was no consultation with experts from the US, I have spent the afternoon poking around to find more information. The short story is this: Around 2001, OECD enlisted high profile US experts in the early stages of work on early childhood, but for research not clearly related to test development. By 2015, only two US experts were listed as contributors to the project and the tests were being field tested–a fact announced in one session of an OECD conference titled: “Data Development for Measuring Quality in Early Childhood and Education and Care: International ECEC Staff Survey and International Survey of Early Child Outcomes” (p. 29). https://www.oecd.org/leed-forum/activities/Brochure-fpld2015-web.pdf
In 2015, the contact person for the tests was Arno Engel, a consultant for OECD’s Directorate for Education and Skills. Engel was also an Associate Lecturer with the University of Bayreuth, Germany. At that time six other scholars, were also working for OCED on early childhood research and assessments. Brief bios are here, none based in the US. http://www.oecd.org/education/school/international-early-learning-and-child-well-being-study.htm
This OECD project seems to have originated in 1998-99 with a series of commissioned papers under the title, Starting Strong, with the first publication in 2001. That publication summarized “themes” in papers from 12 OECD countries—Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States http://www.oecd.org/newsroom/earlychildhoodeducationandcare.htm
I found the 2001 “Starting Strong” report from the United States, with “themes” that suggest the authors could not have imagined the current computer-based tests. Here are the topics (themes) and contributors.
I – DEFINITIONS, CONTEXT, AND PROVISION
Introduction and Definitions, Policy and Program Context, Overview of Current Provision—Sheila B. Kamerman: Compton Foundation Centennial Professor for the Prevention of Children, Youth, and Family Problems at the Columbia University School of Social Work, Co-Director of the Cross-National Studies Research Program at the School, and Director of the Columbia University Institute for Child and Family Policy and Shirley Gatenio a PhD candidate and Adjunct Lecturer at the Columbia University School of Social Work
II – POLICY CONCERNS
Quality—Debby Cryer: Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Access to ECEC Programs—Edna Ranck: Director of public policy and research for National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, early education historian and independent consultant for early childhood
Regulatory Policy and Staffing—Gwen G. Morgan: Coordinator of the Advanced Management seminars for Day Care Directors, Chair of the Social Policy Committee of the Day Care Council of America.
Program Content and Implementation—Lilian Katz: Professor of Early Childhood Education, Director of ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Family Engagement and Support—Barbara T. Bowman: Erikson Institute (a graduate school based in Chicago specializing in studies of child development, named for Erik Erikson developmental psychologist).
Funding Issues—Steve Barnett & Len Masse: Both from the Center for Early Education at Rutgers, Graduate School of Education, Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey.
Evaluation and Research—Kristin Moore: Social psychologist with Child Trends and
Jerry West, National Center for Education Statistics
Noteworthy innovations—Victoria Fu: Professor of human development, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Virginia Tech; co-author Teaching as Inquiry: Rethinking Curriculum in Early Childhood Education
III – CONCLUDING ASSESSMENTS
General shifts in ECEC policy—Richard M. Clifford: Senior scientist emeritus at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (No bio in original report).
Future trends Moncrieff Cochran—Professor Emeritus in Human Development in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. (No bio in original report).
Issues for further investigation—Sharon Llynn Kagan, Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Early Childhood and Family Policy, Co-Director of the National Center for Children and Families at Teachers College, Columbia University, and Professor Adjunct at Yale University’s Child Study Center
Click to access 27856788.pdf
In the 2015 paper, Starting Strong IV: Monitoring Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care, I found only two contributors from the United States. They were Sharon Lynn Kagen: who contributed to the first report and Mr. Steven Hicks: a Nationally Board Certified Teacher in Early Childhood and former Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Early Learning in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education (Obama Administration). He is now Assistant State Superintendent for the Division of Early Childhood Development at the Maryland State Department of Education.
https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/starting-strong-iv_9789264233515-en#page1
In the most recent report, Starting Strong 2017: Key OECD Indicators on Early Childhood Education and Care (189 pages), I found not a single contributor from the United States. The absence of any contributor was conspicuous.
By 2017, NCES had outsourced the US testing contract to Westat, an employee-owned statistical services corporation in Rockville, Maryland. The NCES description of this IELS project says: “ an international consortium was contracted to develop the study measures and fine tune the study design…” but there is no information about that “consortium.”
I am trying to get a list of the members of that international consortium and the names of the experts who were enlisted to “fine tune the study design.” Perhaps someone reading this blog knows who these unpublicized members are. It is no wonder that the test looks as if it came from nowhere known to current workers in early childhood education. The test will produce national rankings and these will make headlines even if the sample sizes are small (and they are).
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From what I’ve heard, I think Iowa is one of those states. Any verification from Iowa readers/educators here?
Just have to say: having taught Early Childhood Sp.Ed. for 13 years, & administering screening for the program for more than 13 (in addition, working w/kids in summer school developmental kindergarten, teaching general ed. K for a semester & being interim {summer} director of a neighborhood pre-school), I have observed these children having difficulty w/diagnostic {used to ferret out strengths & weaknesses in order to really teach to the individual} tests (those used in a good way, & given in a more relaxed situation). Do K-aged kids have the eye-hand coordination, visualiszation, & many other skills needed to operate a mouse/computerized test, moving back & forth from choices a., b., c., etc., having to read &/or do math/manipulate #s on a pad or a keyboard in the process? Lots to think about & to do…probably too much for children that age.
Could result in lots of…crying.
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To be clear: those were rhetorical questions I’d posed; of course these little ones don’t yet have the integration skills to successfully complete tests given in this way, & they should be playing (where children learn social integration skills–how to get along w/others; sharing, etc. Not every child goes to preschool.), not testing.
“Play is the work of children.” Vivian Gussin Paley
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Also, if anyone has an interest in how liberal NPR is not, I did a search recently because I’ve been waiting for anyone on NPR to interview Frank about his latest book and NPR seems to be intentionally ignoring the book. It’s that good and it really exposes what the DNC has become.
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Sadly, NPR takes funding from Walton. So does Education Week.
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Below are some additional international resources on ‘Baby-PISA’:
Moss, P., Dahlberg, G., Grieshaber, S., Mantovani, S., May, H., Pence, A., . . . Vandenbroeck, M. (2016). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s International Early Learning Study: Opening for debate and contestation. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 17(3), 343-351. doi:10.1177/1463949116661126
Moss, P., & Urban, M. (2017). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s International Early Learning Study: What happened next. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 18(2), 250-258. doi:10.1177/1463949117714086
Urban, M. (2017). We need meaningful, systemic evaluation, not a preschool PISA. Global Education Review, 4(2), 18-24.
Urban, M., & Swadener, B. B. (2016). Democratic accountability and contextualised systemic evaluation. A comment on the OECD initiative to launch an International Early Learning Study (IELS). International Critical Childhood Policy Studies, 5(1), 6-18.
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