Testing 5-year-olds

At a public elementary school in California, teachers are asked to sit  their kindergarteners down at a computer to answer questions on a standardized test to assess their academic growth.  Five-year-olds.

And the standardized testing frenzy never lets up from then on.  In high school, students not only have to take their CAHSEE to get out of high school, but their SAT or ACT to get in to college.

According to a power point from CSU Los Angeles, standardized testing “began in the United States in the early 1900s to determine one's individual intelligence quotient” and was used during WWI because “the Army needed a method to determine which soldiers were “Officer Material.”  Then the No Child Left Behind Act came along and, well, you know the rest.

Testing individual students makes sense if there is probable cause…a suspected learning disability, perhaps, or history of developmental delays or neurological problems.  But that isn’t how it works.  Every single student is tested, regardless of their age, effort, grades or native language.  And as teachers, we are asked to not divulge that parents may request a waiver excusing students from standardized tests.

Does standardized testing work as an evaluative tool of teacher effectiveness?  No more so than judging the effectiveness of a postal worker based on whether the bills he delivers actually get paid, or critiquing a doctor based on the number of miles his patients walk per week.  You can’t hold someone accountable for variables beyond their control.

In what other publicly funded government institution is annual testing mandatory for citizens?  Are Amtrak passengers required to submit to a yearly test on their ability to read a train schedule?  Do California sea lions have to jump through hoops for the Marine Mammal Commission?  Does the USDA Rural Development agency ask housing recipients to undergo annual inspections to be sure they have vacuumed and dusted adequately?

All this standardized testing leaves our children with the impression that no matter what they do, they will always be judged, and that their worth is measured by how far above the 50^th percentile a test reports them to be.  Average isn’t good enough, and any talent that can’t be measured by a standardized test must not be very important.