[RSCT] Testing of Kindergartners Is Out of Control

[Monty Neill]

http://www.healthnewsdigest.com/news/Children_s_Health_200/Testing_of_Kindergartners_Is_Out_of_Control.shtml

Testing of Kindergartners Is Out of Control
By Alliance for Childhood
Mar 31, 2009 - 12:14:36 AM

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(HealthNewsDigest.com) - College Park, MD, — Molly Holloway, a mother
of twin kindergartners in Bowie, Maryland, can’t understand why her
children must take standardized tests every month in math, reading,
social studies, and science.

“One of the teachers has told me that the kindergarten curriculum is
what used to be the first-grade curriculum,” Holloway wrote. “What
evidence do we have that this pushing is beneficial? While some
children can handle the pressure, others cannot. One of my daughters
struggles to keep up and hates school.”[1]

A mother in Illinois writes, “In order to prepare kids ahead of time
for the state tests, hard core curriculum must start in kindergarten.
Our kids are not actually getting smarter. The scores are not
increasing. And the rates of children with anxiety issues are
increasing rapidly.”[2]

Recent studies in New York City and Los Angeles confirm what these and
other parents have observed: standardized testing and test prep have
become daily activities in many public kindergartens. Teachers say
they are under pressure to get children ready for the third-grade
tests. The 254 teachers surveyed in the studies said they spent an
average of 20 to 30 minutes per day in test-related activity.

The findings are documented in a new report, Crisis in the
Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School, released on March
20 by the nonprofit Alliance for Childhood
(www.allianceforchildhood.org). The authors, Edward Miller and Joan
Almon, say that kindergarten testing is “out of control.”

High-stakes testing and test preparation in kindergarten are
proliferating, as schools increasingly are required to make decisions
on promotion, retention, and placement in gifted programs or special
education classes on the basis of test scores. In New York City, for
example, kindergarten children take a standardized I.Q. test to
determine whether they qualify for “gifted and talented” classes. The
city is also implementing a plan to test kindergarten, first-, and
second-grade children as part of schools’ performance evaluations. The
test scores are used to assign letter grades, A to F, to all of the
city’s public schools. The grades are then used to determine rewards
and punishments, including cash bonuses for teachers and principals
and whether principals will be fired and schools shut down.

“Rigid testing policies do not make sense in early childhood
education,” states the Alliance for Childhood report. “Standardized
testing of children under age eight, when used to make significant
decisions about the child’s education, is in direct conflict with the
professional standards of every educational testing organization.”

Young children are notoriously unreliable test takers. They can do
well one day and poorly on the same test on another day.

“A major problem with kindergarten tests is that relatively few meet
acceptable standards of reliability and validity,” says the National
Association for the Education of Young Children. “The probability of a
child being misplaced is fifty percent—the same odds as flipping a
coin. … Flawed results lead to flawed decisions, wasted tax dollars,
and misdiagnosed children.”

The National Association of School Psychologists agrees, saying that
“evidence from research and practice in early childhood assessment
indicates that issues of technical adequacy are more difficult to
address with young children who have little test-taking experience,
short attention spans, and whose development is rapid and variable.”

It’s not just parents who are up in arms over the tests for tots.
Anthony Colannino, a Waltham, Massachusetts elementary school
principal, is upset that his kindergartners are now required to take
fill-in-the-right-bubble tests. “Now we’re all the way down to 5- and
6-year-olds taking a pencil and paper test,” he told his local
newspaper. “My students and others across the state are being judged
on reading material above their grade level.”[3]

Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor early childhood education at Lesley
University, said,
“The vast majority of kindergarten teachers now spend some time each
day on testing and test preparation, an activity that would have been
considered irrelevant and even harmful in the past.”

In Las Vegas, Nevada, kindergarten teachers report that last year they
lost more than 30 days of school to mandatory assessments. They have
organized to lobby the county school authorities to reduce the number
of tests and “return to the implementation of developmentally
appropriate standards.”[4]

And a kindergarten teacher in Zanesville, Ohio, wrote to her local
paper, “All we are doing is stealing childhood from innocent children.
Shame on our government for making us be thieves. Shame on them for
not listening to what children really need.”[5]

Crisis in the Kindergarten calls for the use of observational and
curriculum-embedded performance assessments in kindergarten instead of
standardized tests. The argument that standardized testing takes less
time and is therefore more efficient is called into question, argues
the report, by the new data suggesting that teachers are now spending
time each day prepping children for standardized tests.

The combination of unrealistic kindergarten standards and
inappropriate testing results in two to three hours per day being
devoted to teaching literacy and math in many of the kindergartens in
the N.Y. and L.A. studies. As one Los Angeles teacher said, ““Our
students spend most of the time trying to learn what they need in
order to pass standardized testing. There is hardly enough time for
activities like P.E, science, art, playtime.”

These practices may produce higher scores in first and second grade,
but at what cost? Long-term studies suggest that the early gains fade
away by fourth grade and that by age 10 children in play-based
kindergartens excel over others in reading, math, social and emotional
learning, creativity, oral expression, industriousness, and
imagination, write the authors of the report.

The report makes the following recommendations to educators,
policymakers, and parents for ending the inappropriate use of tests in
kindergarten:

1. Use alternatives to standardized assessments in kindergarten, such
as teacher observations and assessment of children’s work. Educate
teachers in the use of these alternatives and in the risks and
limitations of standardized testing of young children.

2. Do not make important decisions about young children, their
teachers, or their schools based solely or primarily on standardized
test scores.

[1] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2009/03/extra_credit_damaging_changes.html

[2] http://www.themotherhood.com/post.php?sid=339832

[3] http://www.dailynewstribune.com/news/x1537600536/Waltham-educators-not-happy-about-new-test-for-kindergartners

[4] http://uktlv.org/about.html

[5] http://www.journal-news.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/lakotaschoolsnews/entries/2009/03/19/more_play_needed_in_school_do.html

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-- 
Monty Neill, Ed.D
Deputy Director
FairTest
15 Court Sq, Ste 820
Boston, MA 02108
monty at fairtest.org
857-350-8207; fax 850-357-8209
www.fairtest.org