Head, Shoulders, Knees, and all that

Testing Young Children

The Washington Post started a series last week on The Rise of the Testing Culture in America.   

Along with painting and gluing and coloring and playing, Kisha Lee engages the youngsters in her day-care program in another activity: testing.

Three- and 4-year-olds take spelling tests of such words as "I," "me" and "the," as well as math tests, from which they learn how to fill in a bubble to mark the right answer.

There is a lot of pressure on all sides to prepare children for the tests they will take throughout their academic careers.  As the director of a school which has language classes for children as young as 2 years old, I've felt that pressure, both internally (amongst the educators at school, myself included) and externally (from parents and from media).  We ALL want to see the children excel.  There is a danger to thinking that adding tests will push everyone (teachers, students, parents) to perform better, but there are ways to assess progress and keep standards high without resorting to high-pressure standardized testing for young children.

Here are a few tips for educators and parents to keep in mind.

1.  Involve the parents both at school and at home.  Our classes for 2-4 year olds include the parents in class so that parents will learn ideas and strategies for learning at home and will be able to watch the progress their children make.  For the elementary school aged children, we have regular "challenges" students do with the teacher in class...things ranging from identifying the letters, days, months, etc.  to performing simple dialogues.  Before the students can do these challenges, they need to get a stamp from the parents showing they've practiced this together.  This not only ensures that the parents are involved in their English education, but it also allows the parents to regularly gauge the progress their children are making. 

2.  Understand that assessment does not necessarily equal testing.  Testing is one form of assessment.  You can assess progress with portfolios of student work, through observation, with video and audio projects, with school performances, etc.  Tests aren't necessarily bad and many students love the challenge of a test.  But tests need not and should not be viewed as the only meaningful form of assessment.  Tests can be particularly misleading when used with very young children who may fully understand the material on the tests but perform poorly due to lack of understanding of the testing procedure, lack of concentration that particular day, or any number of factors.  Assessment of young children needs to be broad...you can't rely on the snapshot views that occasional tests provide.

3.  You can introduce the test-taking skills that children will need in the future without actually making them take the kind of tests they will be taking in the future.  In other words, the best way to prepare children for multiple choice, fill in the bubble-type standardized tests is not necessarily to give them those kinds of tests.  There are a lot of multiple-choice type games you can play.  For example, set up four areas in the classroom (place signs with the letters A, B, C, and D in each corner of the room) and have an active quiz!  The teacher (or students) can read questions and the students have to choose a letter and go to it.  Speed the game up as you go along to introduce a pressure element, but in a fun way. 

4.  Communicate what the tests mean to the parents. One of the problems with testing young children is that their parents often view the testing process from an adult perspective.  As an adult, we think that if we perform poorly on a test it means we're not working hard enough.  We can solve that problem by working harder.  When a 4 year-old does poorly on a fill-in-the-bubbles math test, it's not reflective of her work ethic...it's not as if you can say, "well, she just needs to study harder."  Yet, that's exactly how many parents may react.  It's hard for some parents to understand that their child's math abilities will likely be improved MUCH more by playing with legos than by memorizing simple addition problems.

So teachers need to communicate with parents what the tests, or any kind of assessment, mean.  They need to be clear that test results aren't indicative of whether or not your four-year-old is studying hard enough.  It's a way to help teachers and parents choose activities and tools (age appropriate activities and tools) which will best help the child. 

Dancing in Elementary School

We danced a lot in elementary school.  Square dances, Mexican hat dances, ballroom dancing, even a bit of the Hustle.  It was fun, we got to get closer to the girls, and it wasn't math, so it was all okay with me.   I'm not suprised to see the kids at these schools are enthusiastic about dance...but I guess I am suprised to see that dance in elementary school is newsworthy these days.  I hope it's not that rare.

Catching reading problems early

You see it over and over again...giving children the help they need early saves everyone a lot of headaches down the line. The NY Times has a an interesting piece today on diagnostics being used to identify children who will likely have trouble reading, before they even begin to read. Very promising.

Foreign Language Classes in Elementary School

You know that kid down the block that went to a bi-lingual pre-school years ago and now speaks beautiful Spanish?  Did you ever notice that kid speaks English perfectly as well and had no drop off in his math or science skills?  I still occasionally hear the argument that kids shouldn't learn another language until they have mastered their first, but thankfully, it's rare.  I think just about everybody is on board here.  Kids learn foreign languages exceptionally well and language education should absolutely be part of their elementary education.  Good to see that's happening.

More on the Universal Pre-K Debate

Here's a link to another article, this from the Washington Post, on the Universal Preschool debate playing out heavily in California and making noise in many other states as well. It's a complex issue, and one likely to be debated in your community soon if it hasn't been already. I don't have much to add this time, so here are some links to a few earlier posts I put up on the Universal Pre-school discussion, all of which have links to relevant articles for those interested.

Georgia's Universal Preschool

Universal Preschool

The economic benefits of early childhood education

This sidebar story (Governors and Pre-K) to the Post article indicates that more and more governors are making early childhood education a budget priority. In one of my earlier posts on funding early childhood ed, I made the case that it was not easy to do because the greatest benefits of early childhood ed to society may not show until the children have grown into teenagers and young adults, by which time the politicians who make the funding decisions will be long gone from office. But it sounds as if the voting public is really speaking up on this issue, and politicians are responding.

Babies and TV

The NY Times has a piece on the role the TV is playing these day in babies' lives (Babies and TV's Making More Sense to Parents) (seems to be a lot on babies and TV in the news these days, brought on in part by the introduction and success of Noggin, Sesame Beginnings, BabyFirstTV, and other baby-targeted media).

This particular story reports on the results of a new Kaiser Family Foundation report which suggest that 61% of babies in America under 1 year old watch TV for an average of over an hour a day. I wasn't surprised by that, but I was shocked to read that a third of children under 6 have a TV in their room!

To read the entire Kaiser Family Foundation report (The Media Family: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers, Preschoolers and Their Parents), and find links to audio and video of the presentation of the report and a roundtable discussion of the report featuring childcare experts and media folk, go to the KFF website.

Georgia's Univeral Preschool

In the run-up to Californians voting on Prop 82 (which would create free access to pre-school education to all children in California, paid for with a tax on the wealthiest residents) in June, people are looking to Georgia, which instituted a universal preschool program in 1995. The LA Times (registration required, I think) wrote about Georgia's program on Sunday.

It's a tough issue, to be sure. In California, there have been prominent conservative and liberal politicians and interest groups coming down on both sides of this issue...there is no clear political division. It involves not just gathering more public funds (through a tax hike in California or by appropriating other public funds like Georgia is doing by using State Lottery proceeds), but also having the debate over whether those funds are most wisely spent on introducing a new program or spending more to improve primary and secondary education.

The situation in Georgia raises some interesting questions. Children in the program have shown academic gains through 1st grade, but after that, studies have shown the gains start to fade. Results on reading tests have shown Georgia's 4th graders not comparing so well to the rest of the country.

What happens? Universal Preschool advocates (and I consider myself one, although how it is implented is a major concern) would argue that the fall-off is due to problems at the elementary school level which need to be addressed. Those who caution about spending public funds on Universal Preschool would argue that those gains don't stick, and even if that is due to poor elementary school administration, shouldn't we spend the limited amount of public funds we are able to generate for education on strengthening the elementary schools?

My feeling is that all states should at least be funding free pre-school for at-risk children (low income families and children with learning disabilities), while we continue to research the benefits of true universal preschool. If the electorate is willing to fund Universal Preschool, absolutely, but I think people have to understand that funding Universal Preschool is not the magic pill to solving education problems, and that it doesn't change the need to address problems in primary and secondary education.

The biggest shame with the program in Georgia is that researchers didn't follow any of the initial participants (who are now high school freshmen) past the third grade, so they only have data on how universal preschool affected these students up to that point. Unbelievable really. It's at the high school age, when students begin to drop-out, that I think you'll hopefully see the greatest benefits of universal preschool. I imagine simply following dropout rates in Georgia over the next 4 years should be somewhat revealing. Though you obviously could not correlate any gains or losses directly to the universal preschool program, if we were to see some new trendlines, it would definitely be worth discussing.

Let me know how pre-school is funded in your region and your thoughts on this issue...

Happy Birthday Mister Rogers

Fred Rogers was born on this day in 1928.  I, like most American kids, grew up watching Mister Rogers on PBS (America's Public Broadcasting System).  He was (rather is, even after his passing) a national treasure.  I'm sure he profoundly affected some of the ways I approach early childhood education...the way I talk with my students now, the respect I have for their intelligence and depth of thought, the importance of creative play...  I'm sure I learned a bit about empathy from Fred, and about understanding and communicating to kids that we are all special and important.   

I felt like Mister Rogers understood that even very young children thought in sophisticated ways about some pretty deep ideas, but communicating with them about those ideas required some simplification in your communication style.   The idea is not necessarily to always simplify what you communicate about, but to simplify how you communicate about it.  He dealt with themes as complex as death, divorce, adoption, body awareness, anger (as well as many, many lighter topics)...yet always in a positive, empathetic way that reached children in a way most adults can't. 

I felt like he understood that kids want to participate, not just be entertained, but you've got to allow them to.  He spoke directly to the camera, encouraging a dialogue.  His songs are welcoming and simple enough that kids can sing along, can make the songs their own, even when they are about complex issues.  In arranging his songs simply, and in creating lyrics even toddlers could follow and sing, he was able to communicate about sophisticated and simple ideas alike.  He communicated with children, he didn't perform for them. 

The Grammy Award for Best Children's Musical Album this year went to the Mister Rogers tribute album.  I had mixed feelings about that.  I would have been thrilled if an album of Mister Rogers performing his songs had won, but this album was kind of an adult contemporary tribute to Mister Rogers, made for adults more than kids.  The simplicity of his songs (the arrangment and the lyrics, not necessarily the topics) is what makes them so great and so timeless to me, so I felt like it was kind of missing the point to line up the best singers and producers to perform his music.  I honestly felt the 4 other albums were much better children's albums, but I understand that it would have been hard for any adult to vote against Mister Rogers.

To hear some Mister Rogers classics performed by the man himself, check out PBS kids.  How's this for a wonderful, simple children's song? 

The Archive of American Television's 4 1/2 hour interview with Fred Rogers has recently been posted at Google video.  Obviously, that's an awful lot of interview to sit down and watch in one sitting, but try watching one half hour segment a week.  Or better yet, just let the interviews play as you do your work throughout the day or do some housecleaning...whatever.  He talks about everything from his childhood to his thoughts on kids to insights on the TV and recording businesses. You are sure to be a better person for having listened.

The powerful impact of Early Childhood Ed. programs

330,000 children annually are born premature in the U.S.  Children born prematurely often have learning difficulties and many end up in Special Education or being held back a year, which, besides being less than ideal for the children and their families obviously, also costs the state a lot of money.    And that's not even considering the additional individual and societal costs of failing students dropping out and falling through the cracks or into the prison system.

Last week, National Public Radio had a story (Early Education Boosts Prospects of Premature Children) on a study published last week in the journal Pediatrics. The study, lead by Maureen McCormick (no, not Marcia from the Brady Bunch) of the Harvard Public School of Health, focused on the long-term effects on early childhood enrichment programs, following 1,000 prematurely born children through the age of 18, half of whom received special educational care in their earliest years (0-3).  Most of the kids who received the early education had higher reading and math scores.  The exception was the smallest premies, who lost some of the initial gains they had shown in earlier reports on this study (higher IQ scores in their first years of school). 

Dr. McCormick argues that if early childhood education programs can have such a positive effect even on children who are born at a developmental disadvantage, then they can help all children.

Putting aside moral implications, from an economic standpoint, the question is, does the investment required to provide early childhood programs to everyone, or even just to biologically disadvantaged kids like premies or economically disadvantaged children, pay off in the end?   I would argue the evidence has been stacking up that early childhood education makes a significant difference, and even if you figure from a purely dollars and cents POV that it's cheaper for the state to build more prisons to deal with the kids who fall through the cracks, you are not taking into account the benefits of innovation and productivity that a well-educated society brings. 

Aside from that, it's just the right thing to do.  It's hard to look at a study like this which clearly shows the positive impact of aggressively funding early education and then have a discussion over whether the richest country in the world can afford it.  (No, I'm not talking about Luxembourg.)

If you'd like to stay up-to-date on what you can do to encourage government support of early childhood education, visit zerotothree.org and sign up for their eNewsletter.

How about your SAT scores?

The competition to get into a good school increases...a good preschool that is.  There is an interesting piece in the New York Times today about a growing number of children applying for a relatively static number of slots in Manhattan's private preschools and kindergartens.