Standardized Testing
In the last post we looked at how the seeds of self-doubt can be planted in the minds of children from the time they begin school. This seed is often watered and nurtured very quickly in many schools. Let’s look at the impact that standardized testing can have on the confidence of young students.
Many states such as California have begun implementing standardized testing at alarmingly early stages, with many of these tests now beginning as early as kindergarden. This trend is concerning for a number of reasons. For one, how are the results of these types of tests going to be used? It certainly seems plausable that schools and school districts could use these scores to determine class placement for the following grades. This would mean that a child could be “tracked” into a less demanding curriculum simply because they didn’t test well as a 5-year-old. Furthermore, since students are in such a nascent stage of their development as kindergardners how trustworthy would the results of standardized testing at this age really be? The whole trend has the possibility to exacerbate many existing problems in early childhood education.