In recent years, high-stakes standardized testing has been propagated so loudly and so often by its powerful supporters that it has succeeded in becoming a largely unquestioned fixture in education policy.
Now a decision by the New York City Department of Education that rings insane to rational ears--administering standardized tests to kindergartners-- is rolling forward like a juggernaut.
The New York Daily News reports:
Starting next fall, schools will give the Bracken School Readiness Assessment in all kindergarten classes to identify which children should be further tested for coveted spots in gifted programs.
But the standardized test, which gauges understanding of letters, numbers, colors and shapes, is also designed to identify learning disabilities and find out where kids stand when they enter school.
High-stakes testing--which this is, as it will slap labels on five-year-olds--is more than just casually popping in an academic thermometer on a given day to see how a kid is doing. It creates a culture that distorts curriculum, hijacks school resources, and robs young children of their precious days of discovery.
"Making testing a part of the curriculum for [kindergarten to second grade] is tantamount to child abuse," said Jane Hirschmann of Time Out From Testing.
High-stakes testing for young children does more harm than good. To bring this practice to kindergarten is unconscionable.
Dan Brown is the author of the new teacher memoir, "The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle."
Follow Dan Brown on Twitter: www.twitter.com/danbrownteacher
sooner you know about it, the better, that
way you can get them into special ed if needed
early on where it might do some good. How
many kids get flushed through K-12 today who
don't really have it 'going on' and the
teachers just flat don't have the time or the
money etc. to deal with it?
This may be fine for such subjects as math, which merely require the memorization of facts and numbers. . .but it is abysmal for subjects such as history, art, linguistics, and (possibly) English. One-size-fits-all testing accomplishes nothing, and does not help students to actually learn the material they're being taught.
In addition to testing them too much we are pushing them harder than we need to. Some pushing is of course required, but too much and they burn out before they even get out of elementary school....
So none of this is new, and it certainly did not harm me.
And I had to learn to spell words in the first grade and take tests! The horrors!