Kindergarten used to be a place to paint pictures, play with clay, make friends, and learn a few social graces. Now it is a place to be assessed and started on the path to be molded into human capital. What has happened to common sense?
Some teachers are beginning to speak out in defense of their students. Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post writes about a Florida teacher who refused to administer one of the Florida kindergarten assessments, the FAIR test. See the article.
Although she feared she would be fired, she just couldn’t bring herself to subject her students to the assessment. Her gutsy stand led to the principal’s decision to drop the assessment. Read the follow up story.
This trend of early assessments started before the appearance of the Common Core Standards and Assessments. Now that data collection through the Race to the Top and other mandates has become a priority, the assessment machine starts in kindergarten or earlier, giving rise to such non-governmental organizations as the Early Childhood Data Collaborative. The assessments drive the curriculum and facilitate the data collection. It isn’t even clear whether the assessments reliably or validly measure what they’re supposed to be measuring, or whether constantly assessing students actually improves education. We appreciate people like this brave teacher who speak out against them.
