An Excellent School System with No Testing

...I finished the film feeling a bit angry – angry that for all the talk of school-choice in our current education debate, the choices available to me and to my children (not to mention the countless people far less fortunate than myself) are really false choices. No matter whether you attend a public school or a charter, you are really bound to the modern testing regime....

The problem, I think, with the current conception of charter schools is that they create even more losers and winners than the status quo. In Finland there is a certain base-level of quality that every school is require to meet. Teachers are treated as professionals and teaching is an exclusive, competitive field. All students have free transportation and free meals.
- E. D. Kain

I really want to see this film.

Slow Schools

In yesterday's New York Times Magazine Peggy Orenstein wrote about the rise of testing and academics and the demise of play in kindergarten. Her article, Kindergarten Cram makes a strong case for the restoration of play.

“Maybe the current economic retrenchment will trigger a new perspective on early education, something similar to the movement toward local, sustainable, organic food. Call it Slow Schools. After all, part of what got us into this mess was valuing achievement, speed and results over ethics, thoughtfulness and responsibility.”

Standardized Testing Out of Control

First they started eliminating recess so that they could concentrate on increasing test scores. Now I read that many schools are testing Kindergartners! I think this kind of pressure is really bad policy. Kids can naturally learn to read. Forcing tasks that they are not ready for is detrimental.

...the kindergarten curriculum is what used to be the first-grade curriculum,” ...“What evidence do we have that this pushing is beneficial? While some children can handle the pressure, others cannot. One of my daughters struggles to keep up and hates school.”

...“In order to prepare kids ahead of time for the state tests, hard core curriculum must start in kindergarten. Our kids are not actually getting smarter. The scores are not increasing. And the rates of children with anxiety issues are increasing rapidly.”

...standardized testing and test prep have become daily activities in many public kindergartens. Teachers say they are under pressure to get children ready for the third-grade tests...

The findings are documented in a new report, Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School, released on March 20 by the nonprofit Alliance for Childhood. The authors, ... say that kindergarten testing is “out of control.”

...“Rigid testing policies do not make sense in early childhood education,” states the Alliance for Childhood report. “Standardized testing of children under age eight, when used to make significant decisions about the child’s education, is in direct conflict with the professional standards of every educational testing organization.”

...“The vast majority of kindergarten teachers now spend some time each day on testing and test preparation, an activity that would have been considered irrelevant and even harmful in the past.”

...a kindergarten teacher in Zanesville, Ohio, wrote to her local paper, “All we are doing is stealing childhood from innocent children. Shame on our government for making us be thieves. Shame on them for not listening to what children really need.”

...Long-term studies suggest that the early gains fade away by fourth grade and that by age 10 children in play-based kindergartens excel over others in reading, math, social and emotional learning, creativity, oral expression, industriousness, and imagination....

NCLB Testing vs Portfolios

An Education Week article says Obama, doesn't want to dump the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) testing, but wants to reform it and include alternative testing, such as "Portfolios". If you are like me, you are asking, what is a portfolio? Well this is their description:

...portfolios ..and other forms of assessments that may be a little bit more expensive ...are allowing us to make sure children are getting the proper analytic kinds of tools. ...we're talking about tests that require children to assess their entire year ... to put together through writing and through speaking...we're looking at language skills as well as writing skills to get a sense of how well they've learned their lessons.