Before each school year begins, teachers spend hours prepping to make their classroom fun and relevant, so students can learn.
This is a difficult task because students learn at different paces, through different methods.
I recently came across an article that N.Y.C. schools are considering math tests for kindergartners.
It is part of a $400,000 program from the Department of Education that 12,000 students throughout the city’s 1,400 schools would participate in.
If implemented, there are five variations for a school to choose, from workbooks to face to face sessions with the teacher.
The length of the test could be anywhere from ten to ninety minutes.
Below are excerpts from the article, both for and against the program.
Read the entire article by clicking here.
FOR
The scores on the new tests would not affect pupils' grades or teachers' evaluations but would yield a better picture of children's progress than current tests do, he said.
"There's nothing about (the tests) that is designed to create anxiety or create a sense of evaluation or create a sense of being compared to someone else," he said (James Liebman, state education accountability chief).
AGAINST
The school grades and stress on test scores anger some parents and teachers, who say classes are being drained of creativity and reduced to drills on how to ace standardized exams. Critics fear the proposed assessment changes could turn even kindergarten into test prep, despite the city's insistence that the intent is only to guide teachers' and administrators' efforts.
"We're teaching kids how to get the right answers, not how to find the knowledge," said state Assemblyman Mark Weprin, a Queens Democrat with sons in public middle and elementary schools.
Ultimately, students grow up and as adults, will be evaluated in everything they do in the workforce and I understand the need to prepare them through testing. Many careers stress testing (accountants, lawyers, and teachers) in order to obtain certification. My concern is that when “prepping” students, especially kindergartners to take a standardized test, schools may be neglecting the fundamental skills needed to be successful with their future careers. Skills such as creativity, problem solving, time management and coping. Testing kindergartners who are still adapting to the school process may or may not be a good idea. I will be following this program with much interest.
