Springtime in the United States means it’s time for standardized testing. In California, STAR testing begins in the second grade, despite recommendations from the National Association for the Education Young Children (NAEYC) that this is too young. NAEYC explains:
- Standardized tests for young children must be valid and reliable for their purposes and must be used only for those purposes for which they were designed.
- Standardized tests may be used only if and when they bring benefits to young children (through more individualized planning, more appropriate instruction, a better match of curriculum and instruction with individual needs, and clearer communication with parents).
Of course, assessment is an important part of education, but it must be authentic and developmentally appropriate. According to the NAEYC position statement:
• Assessment evidence is gathered from realistic settings and situations that reflect children’s actual performance.
To influence teaching strategies or to identify children in need of further evaluation, the evidence used to assess young children’s characteristics and progress is derived from real-world classroom or family contexts that are consistent with children’s culture, language, and experiences.
Unfortunately, the practice of giving standardized tests to the entire school population is not in the best interest of children or education. Teachers across the pond agree. The Guardian reports:
Ministers are stripping primary school children of their basic human right to a well-rounded education, a teachers’ leader warned today.
Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said national tests for 10- and 11-year-olds, formerly known as Sats, contravene the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Under the Convention, which Britain signed in 1991, children are entitled to a broad education which develops their “personalities, talents and abilities to their fullest potential”.
Blower told the NUT annual conference in Liverpool that Sats only gave children the right to pass exams, not the right “to be educated in the round”. They reduced children to “little bundles of measurable outputs trained in a mechanistic model of education,” she said, repeating words used last month by the children’s commissioner, Maggie Atkinson.
One secret schools don’t tell parents is your child does not have to take standardized tests! As a parent, you have the right to opt your child out of such testing. I did it last year, and all it took was a written statement to our school administrator. Schools can get in trouble if too many parents make such requests, but I believe it does send a message to state departments of education that standardized tests don’t benefit our children, schools, or environment (think of all that paper and number two pencils!).
We are having the same issues over here in Australia – and our government is also keeping it a secret that kids don’t have to sit the tests.
Our little progressive school is one of 2 in our state that don’t do the testing at all.
I agree – if more parents knew about this and responded by writing their own letters then maybe it would send a message to the governments.
I don’t have much faith though – our teachers speak out against the harmful effects of standardised testing on the children and they system but sadly it seems to fall on deaf ears.
I just got the notice from my daughter’s school on the upcoming tests. I’ve been debating not having her take it (2nd grade), but in many ways I think the biggest harm comes in all the focus on being ready for the test. Her school already doesn’t please me on many levels, and we’ve discussed homeschooling for next year.