Standardized Testing the Whole Child without biased assumptions
Making an allowance for an obligation
to observing young children holistically. We as educators, school
administrators, and early interventionist must evaluate the whole Child not
just pieces of the child. I do believe the child which may have a delay, should be assessed, and evaluated, but sometimes it is a catch 22 because for
one thing, the child may not have a delay, but on the other hand, if they do
have a delay. It can be caught early in life, and then again being done too
early may sometimes be done with biases depending on who is doing the child’s
assessment.
Furthermore, assessments first need
to be done in an environment that is comfortable to the child and many
instruments should be used for testing, and several interventionist, teachers
and school administrators’ should meet with families a few times before the
actual evaluation is completed. In my opinion if we do this we can be sure the
child is being evaluated properly and without biased assumptions not all educators
are honest.
As a matter of fact, I have
witnessed this with my own eyes, and so have many of my colleagues, and it is
still being pushed under a rug as if it never existed. However, I have my lead
teachers keep a paper trail in the beginning of the school year, each child put
something they wrote or tried to write in their folder. After four months have
passed, we go back to the folder and compare the last four months with the
folders contents. In doing this we look for red flags and example would be a
four year old who is still scribbling after four months of learning activities.
However, before we go any further with this child, we alert the parents and
then back up and see where we might have went wrong in our activities. I may
suggest switching the child from Creative Curriculums to the High Scope
Curriculum. For instance, I believe a child’s learns at his/her own pace and as
educator’s or caregivers we must be very patient, but before I suggest early
intervention I am going to go above and beyond to work with these type children
because the child may need a little push in a new direction, and just little
help from family members because it takes a village. The world is working at a
rapid pace. Children need to know at least 50 sight words, know all of their
shapes and count to a hundred before entering Kindergarten, so now Kindergarten
is the new first grade, Pre-school is Kindergarten. Parents help us prepare
your children, so that they have a smooth transition into primary education. If
you are working let us know, but keep you can always send another family.
Educators are here to help you not hinder you or your children.
Getting back to standard testing, non-biased
testing helps teachers know where your child is educationally for instance some
children excel in reading and math skills but have very low social skills it could
be they are of different culture, a broken home, or maybe even a hostile
sibling. These are issues that need to be evaluated too, so that we can help
the whole child. I would like to share with my colleagues, in addition, the
best tool to use is observation. It is now my best friend when unsure of a child’s
ability. It has been the greatest evaluation tool, especially since I am
getting better at it, and there are many different ways to observe as well as
tools to use to observe.
The
Finland-Singapore Solution to Public Education in the U.S. – Part 1/3
“American teachers did not fail the
system. The system failed the teachers, and the proof may be found in Finland
and Singapore where teachers are trusted and supported. Smithsonian Magazine’s
September 2011 issue reported an A+ for Finland where “kids aren’t required to
go to school until they’re 7, standardized tests are rare and yet the Nordic
nation’s success in education is off the charts.”
Yet, more than 97% of Finland’s
children attend public schools and the teachers belong to a strong union. If
you read the piece in Smithsonian (link provided above), the elements of that
success, which are missing in the US, are spelled out in detail. There is a
reason that the U.S. public education system appears to be failing (at least
according to its very vocal idealistic and fanatical critics).
From Smithsonian Magazine’s A+ for
Finland, we learned Finland’s teachers are trusted to do whatever it takes to
turn young lives around.
However,
in America, few trust or want to hear advice from school teachers. Instead,
each state has a curriculum for teachers to follow and standardized tests to
make sure teachers are doing as they are told. The unspoken message to most of
America’s teachers is to say nothing, do what we say and if you do not like it,
quit. In addition, if you stay and do not succeed, it is your fault. Well, half
do quit in the first five years of teaching and very few come back. Conditioning
learning, which is still practiced successfully, regardless of what American
critics say, in other countries such as China or Singapore, was rejected in the
U.S. because it was decided during the rise of the self-esteem parenting
movement that conditioning learning was boring and no fun, which explains why
this method of teaching was tarred, feathered, tortured and burned at the stake
in the U.S.
When
it was discovered that the Whole Language approach to teaching reading failed,
instead of admitting they were wrong, the idealists behind the theory blamed
America’s public school teachers. To punish those teachers, what followed was a
movement for school choice designed to allow parents to select the school their
children attends. Although voters have rejected this theory in many states, the
fanatics behind this movement refuse to surrender.
The
next debacle was when President G. W. Bush signed the No Child Left behind Act
into law, which ignored reality while blaming teachers again for the failure of
a theory that many teachers were the cause of failure.
The Singapore element to the solution of this
educational fiasco in the United States may be found in Civil Disobedience and
No Child Left Behind, which says, “Meritocracy is a basic political ideology
and a fundamental principle in Singapore’s education system, which aims to
identify and groom bright young students for positions of leadership. The
system places a great emphasis on academic performance in grading students and
granting their admission to special programs and universities. “As for
discipline in Singapore’s schools, corporal punishment is legal (for male
students only), and fully encouraged by the government in order to maintain
strict discipline.” In addition, Singapore has a law that makes it a criminal
offense for parents of children that cut school. To learn more of the details
behind the success of Singapore’s public schools, I suggest you see SG
Box.com’s post about Singapore Education. Unless the United States is willing
to trust teachers and implement some of what Finland and Singapore have done,
education in the US will continue to flounder regardless of laws such as No
Child Left behind or failed theories such as Whole Language’s against, but were
forced to implement (Loyd Lofthouse, 2014) .
Walden University M.S. in
Early Childhood Studies
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Updated: 1.3.12
pdated: 1.3.12
An interesting article a good read
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