This Is How Out of Control Testing Has Gotten in Schools

For anyone who doubts that education in the U.S. has become overrun by testing, consider this. My daughter's first day of kindergarten -- her very first introduction to elementary school -- consisted almost entirely of assessment. She was due at school at 9:30, and I picked her up at 11:45. In between, she was assessed by five different teachers, each a stranger, asking her to perform some task such as cutting, coloring in the lines, reciting her address and phone number, identifying letters and their sounds, and counting. She then had to wait two days, while all the other incoming kindergartners were assessed, to learn of her teacher and begin the school year in earnest.

From an educator's point of view, this approach makes good sense. Determine what it is that kids know. Then use that baseline knowledge to assemble a class.

But this was an intimidating initiation from a child's perspective. Usually an outgoing and independent girl, my daughter was clingy and nervous on her first day of kindergarten. When I asked how she was feeling as we approached the front door of the building, she said she did not want to go to school. She did not have any friends yet. She did not know her way around the building. She worried that there would be too many people. What if her teachers were mean? What if kids made fun of her when they heard her name? What if she had to use the restroom? She was a bundle of nerves. I'm sure this testing scenario did little to quell her concerns. I have no doubt that however she was assessed, she did not perform from a place of confidence or comfort. Even under less trying circumstances, such one-shot assessments are of questionable validity.

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Indeed, by the time I picked her up, she had not relaxed at all. She did not want to talk about what she had done in school, but she did say that she did not want to go back. She did not know the teachers' names. She did not make any friends. Later that afternoon, as she played with her animals in her room, I overheard her drilling them on their numbers and letters.

My husband and I will do our best to help her unlearn what she learned about school on her first day: that it is a place where you are judged for what you know -- not how eager you are to learn; that performance matters more than understanding or inquiry; that schoolwork is hard and uninteresting. We will work with her teacher (whomever he or she is) to ensure that the strengths she brings to kindergarten -- curiosity, compassion and creativity -- are recognized and nurtured. We will encourage her love of learning and her self-confidence; I just wish we did not have to work against the school system in doing so.

Our educational system's drive to assess, to label and sort kids, to make decisions on the basis of data of dubious quality has gone too far, and it is time for a course correction. We must remember that "data" are social constructions, shaped by the circumstances under which they are obtained. And just as these circumstances affect the nature of the information we collect, they have bearing on other things that matter, such as a child's first impressions of school. I submit that these impressions matter more than any purported snapshot of a child's abilities.

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Yes, it is good for teachers to get a sense of what their students might know at the beginning of the school year, but there is no reason such formative assessments cannot wait until after the first week of school, once students feel more settled and comfortable -- once they have learned to trust that their teachers care about them, that school is a safe place to be and that learning can be fun. Waiting to assess would also give teachers time to contextualize test results, weighing scores alongside everything else they have seen a child do and say that week. They may learn that their students are more capable than the test results seem to suggest, that Johnny's test anxiety masks his true abilities or that Jessi's scores really just reflect her lack of interest in the test questions, which caused her to fly through the assessment so she could move onto a more stimulating and appropriately challenging task.

Certainly, there is value in creating heterogeneous classes -- what one of the kindergarten teachers described as "an even distribution of ability levels across the classes," but it is vital to remember that "ability" is not the same thing as ability to perform on command in an unfamiliar environment under stressful circumstances; nor is it the same thing as ability to learn. All children are able to learn, yet all do so at different paces and in different ways. Thus kindergarten teachers will inevitably find themselves needing to differentiate instruction, even if their students seemed to start the year at the same level. Maybe the first day of kindergarten would be better spent trying to get to know students on a personal level -- their interests, passions and personalities -- and helping them get to know one another, rather than on trying to place them into an arbitrary ability group.

It may be cliché to say that all the important things in life are really learned in kindergarten, but what my daughter learned on her first day -- how to get through testing and evaluation -- will only prepare her for a long career "doing school," not a lifetime of delighting in learning and discovery.

Jerusha Conner is an associate professor of education at Villanova University.