An increasing number of schools are now beginning to administer standardized tests to students as early as kindergarten, Reuters reports.
And the trend shows no sign of reversing. A new exam meant to make
sure that kids are on track to succeed in college or a career upon
graduation from high school is on the way as well.
At least Paul Weeks, who in his capacity as the president of ACT Inc
knows a thing or two about standardized tests, realizes that the idea of
testing kindergarteners for career readiness might sound odd at the
time when most aspire to be superheroes, since the exams the company is
rolling out are unlikely to detect incipient x-ray vision skills. Yet,
Weeks is very serious that the exam, which is meant to be administered
yearly between the ages of 8 and 18 will serve as a good predictor of
post-high school success, and which seeks to identify development in
skills vital to that success such as critical thinking.
“There are skills that we’ve identified as essential for college and career success, and you can back them down in a grade-appropriate manner,” Weeks said. “Even in the early grades, you can find students who may be at risk.”
More than half of states now require exams for kindergarteners, with
many localities even adding their own tests to the mix. Those who
support continuous assessment via standardized exams believe it helps
those kids who fall behind early because it can identify them and
provide intervention to get them back on track. Waiting to find those
kinds of students could mean that there’s a higher chance that they’ll
never catch up.
Opponents, on the other hand, believe that the stress that testing
places on kids who could be as young as 5 years old negates the
hypothetical benefits derived from the exams.
Formal tests give a narrow picture of a child’s ability, said Samuel Meisels, president of the Erikson Institute, a graduate school in Chicago focused on child development. He urges teachers instead to assess young children by observing them over time, recording skills and deficits and comparing those to benchmarks.
But Meisels fears such observational tests won’t seem objective or precise enough in today’s data-driven world; he says he too often sees them pushed aside in favor of more formal assessments.
“I am worried, yes,” he said. “We should know better.”
This isn’t the first time that enthusiasm for testing children has
taken hold. It was a common practice in 1980s to test incoming
kindergarten students to make sure they were ready for the work. This
eventually fell by the wayside after child development experts condemned
the practice as unreliable and unfair. Yet, it has been reborn,
especially after No Child Left Behind Act, passed during the presidency
of George W. Bush, directly tied student test scores to assessment not
just of teachers but of their schools as well.
With the stakes so high, many administrators have decided to start testing in the earlier grades, to give kids practice and to identify students who need help.
The Obama administration accelerated the trend in 2011 with a $500 million competitive grant to bolster early childhood education. States that pledged to assess all kindergarteners earned extra points on their applications.
