Assessing Young Children

Testing young children may be cruel, has not worked out well in the past, often provides unreliable scores and therefore invalid inferences about the abilities of children are made too often. Potentially more valid information, at least as reliable as the tests themselves, and unlikely to elicit anxiety on the part of teachers or students can be obtained from professional educators much quicker and for drastically less money. The funds saved, of course, in any sane world would be used to help the children that teachers identify as needing help......... Valerie Strauss

Considering any form of standardized testing for young children offers nothing more than stress on the children and their educators.  Developmentally inappropriate instructional practices, requirements of long periods of seatwork, high levels of stress, worksheets, placed many children at risk by setting standards for attention span, social maturity, and academic productivity that could not be met by many normal 5-year-olds.  Going from the early childhood world in to the Kindergarten classroom can set children up for failure.  With many early childhood programs assessing social emotional health, family dynamics and culture we have a more holistic view of the child.  Arriving at the kindergarten door you need to leave all of those external pieces behind and begin core standards and standardized testing. 

In West Germany, education is the responsibility of the states, rather than the national government. Standardized tests are not used on a population-wide basis, and the use of standardized tests is largely restricted to counseling centers and similar specialists in the schools. Neither achievement nor intelligence tests are often used in the schools. The Netherlands created a national curriculum development center in 1975 and has created national examinations, although they are not yet widely used. Achievement tests are used by teachers only, and intelligence test use is similar to that in West Germany. In Sweden, national standardized tests based on objective techniques are used above the primary levels. In summary, it was generally found that teachers do not use standardized tests of their own accord, mostly because tests are not tailor-made for what the teachers have been teaching. (Education Resource Information Center)

Readiness testing also raises serious  concerns. We assess all children the same and don't consider the influences of each child's past opportunity to learn, many poor and minority children tagged as unready and are identified as behavioral concerns.  Changing a curriculum that doesn't meet their needs is never considered.  Many of those same children haven't had a preschool experience and parental support and are given the same support as other children, when something more is needed.