What Should Smarter Testing Look Like in the Early Grades?
Blog Post
Oct. 30, 2015
The proper role of testing in our nation’s schools has been a hot topic of conversation this week. It all started last Saturday when the Council of the Great City Schools released a study of 66 urban school districts that found students take about 112 mandatory standardized tests between pre-K and 12th grade. That averages out to about eight tests per year and consumes about 2.3 percent of students’ total class time. The study found a great deal of redundancy and overlap among the tests that students take each year. Perhaps most importantly, the study pointed out that there is no correlation between the amount of mandated testing time and student test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as “The Nation’s Report Card.”
Prompted in part by the release of the Council’s study on Saturday, the Department of Education released a Testing Action Plan on the same day, while President Obama emphasized the need for smarter testing in schools. Most notably, the Testing Action Plan calls for a two percent cap to be placed on the amount of classroom instructional time that is dedicated to test-taking. However, this cap doesn’t address the large amounts of time schools spend on test preparation prior to students actually taking the tests. The plan advocates for fewer and smarter assessments by ensuring that any tests administered be high-quality, time-limited, and properly aligned to the content and skills students are currently learning. The Department wisely points out that a well-designed test is not used only to assess what students know at one point in time, but is part of a broader strategy to inform and guide additional teaching. The Department has promised to issue clear guidance by January 2016 on best practices for using testing as a learning tool.
While much of the recent conversation about testing has been focused on the third grade and beyond, it’s important to take time to reflect on the proper role of assessment in the early grades. As my colleague Laura Bornfreund and members of School Readiness Consulting pointed out earlier this year, assessment-generated data are one of the most valuable resources a teacher can use to improve instructional strategies in a way that boosts student achievement.
But appropriate assessment can and should look different in the early years of a student’s academic career. Because young children are at a different developmental stage than their older peers, it’s critical that teachers and administrators who are making assessment choices for these students have a proper understanding of children’s development and age-appropriate methods of assessment. Age-appropriate assessments can be standardized and should cover multiple domains of a child’s learning and should generally take place through observations, one-on-one discussions, and small group activities. The assessments should generally be ongoing to allow for the measurement of student growth throughout the school year. For example, as a pre-K teacher I would administer a standardized vocabulary test several times throughout the year in order to track the process that my students were making in developing their language skills. This test, which was untimed, was administered as a one-on-one game in which the student would point to a picture of each object as I read the name aloud.
One example of the use of assessments for young students is the growing popularity of state kindergarten entry assessments (KEA). These assessments, generally given within the first few weeks of a child’s entry into kindergarten, cover multiple of domains of learning, including language and literacy, cognitive, physical, social, and emotional. The assessments should be aligned with a state’s early learning and development standards.
Findings from the KEA can be used to help teachers adjust their instruction and work towards closing the kindergarten readiness gap. These assessments can also serve as great tools for sharing information with parents about specific areas of improvement for their child. When the assessment is common across all the school districts within a state, the results can be used as a tool to help inform officials’ policy decisions and future investments. Currently, a majority of states are using or are in the process of developing KEAs, including 19 of the 20 states that were awarded grants under Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge. It’s important to note that states are prohibited under Race to the Top from using KEAs as a means to prevent a student from entering kindergarten or as a single measure for making high-stakes decisions.
With all of the recent debate about the proper role and amount of testing in school, it’s easy to forget that assessment can actually be an extremely valuable tool for improving instruction for our youngest learners and for connecting them to extra support when they need it. But it's also important to remember that too much testing can do more harm than good."