The latest proposal from Duncan's Department of Education is to expand testing of children to preschool age, especially for children in poverty. Stephen Krashen, a retired but distinguished educator, addresses this in a guest posting in Anthony Cody's Living in Dialogue blog for Education Week Teacher. Titled Stephen Krashen: Race to the Top for Tots: Don't Measure the Temperature of the Fire - Put it Out!, I recommend that those interested in the topic read it. Krashen provides well-documented arguments against the approach, which on the surface might seem to make sense - after all, more than 20% of our young people live in poverty and screening them as to their cognitive, emotional and physical development appears to be a necessary first step to determining how to address deficiencies. Krashen notes the requirements:
The standards and tests include "all (sic!!) of the Essential Domains of School Readiness" (Selection Criteria, section B (3)). This means setting detailed standards and testing children in mathematics and literacy, and as well "a progression of standards for ensuring children's health and safety, ensuring that health and behavioral screening and follow up are done, and promoting children's physical, social, and emotional development across the levels of its Program Standards" (section B (1)).
then tells us why this is a bad idea:
We already know that millions of children from high-poverty families suffer from the effects of poverty: We already know that they are behind in academics, suffer from food deprivation, are exposed to dangerous toxins, and lack health care. All this has been carefully documented by a number of scholars (see, for example, the work of David Berliner and Richard Rothstein, cited below).
We also know which children are in need and we know what to do about it.
He offers a number of approaches already being used with success and then says bluntly
We don't need more precise data. The US Department of Education's plans for extreme and detailed testing make no sense: The house is on fire. Fire departments do not spend time determining the exact temperature in each room. Instead, they rush to put out the fire as soon as possible.
I suggest you read the entire piece, which is relatively brief. I want to add some additional thoughts.
The words I am about to share I wrote as a comment on Krashen's piece.
Perhaps it is worth remembering why the already excessive testing of No Child Left Behind did not begin until 3rd grade. Prior to that level, which for most children means around age 7, tests cannot provide reliable results, and if the results are not reliable, you cannot draw valid inferences (remember, just being reliable is necessary but insufficient - a scale that registers my weight regularly at 170 pounds is reliable because it is consistent, but I weigh 190).
We also need to recognize that the intent of the testing now pushed by Duncan's Department of Education totally ignores the issue developmental differences between children, and developmental differences across domains (eg: language and math) within individual children.
In the old days of data processing punch cards, IBM at least had sense enough to label them "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate." Our increasing insistence on standardizing how we deal with children is treating them as if they were punchcards. We may not be folding or spindling them, but we are surely mutilating them, destroying their childhood, their natural love of learning, and in some cases their mental health.
I have taught from 7th grade through 12th grade, albeit primarily as a high school teacher. I have taught language arts and reading as well as a variety of social studies courses. I am increasingly seeing students arriving at our school turned off to school because they are getting burnt out by the testing. By middle school they are already beginning to ask "is it going to be on the test?" because if it is not, why should they bother to learn it? Children who come from poverty settings are having their learning experiences narrowed, to test prep in language arts and math, because they are the ones who tend to test lower and we obsess about their test scores. This is wrong, and this harms the children. In harming them, in turning them off to learning, we harm our society.
We should test all children for physical disabilities, especially of vision and hearing, which can greatly impact school performance and learning. Krashen reminds us of what we already know - that teaching families to read to their children is an important preparation. OF course that presumes that the parents are not themselves illiterate. I have students from refugee families whose parents came from settings of civil disturbance and war where they got little schooling of their own, and in some cases are not functionally literate in their native languages, much less English. We know that we have a substantial proportion of our adult population which is not fully literate and that there is a high degree of correlation with the lack of meaningful literacy and the chances of being incarcerated.
We would be far better off devoting resources to ensuring nutrition, medical and dental care, protection from environmental toxins (especially lead-based paint, which is still too common in the homes of many of our poorer families), as Krashen notes.
Krashen's final paragraph is very much on point, and speaks to the misdirection of resources the proposals by the Department of Education represent, so let me end with his words:
The problems faced by children of poverty are obvious and we know how to solve them. Let's not waste money measuring the problems to unnecessary levels of precision. Let's get busy solving them.
Indeed: Let's get busy solving them.