High-Stakes Testing in Pre-K?

Proposed rules for this year’s Race to the Top competition for early-childhood education aid focus on creating standards and assessing pre-K students.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, winning states of the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge awards will be required to: devise early-learning/development standards and assessments for pre-K student, develop/administer kindergarten-readiness tests, develop systems for assessing early-education programs, collaborate with various agencies providing non-education related early-childhood services, establish statewide standards for what pre-K students should know, and incorporate said data into the state’s longitudinal data system (Reported by Education Weekly on July 1, 2011).

These requirements have several apparent benefits and pitfalls. On the plus side, developing standards for kindergarten readiness would prevent students from entering kindergarten already behind their peers. Many parents struggle with the decision of when to send their children, especially boys, to kindergarten. A kindergarten readiness test could help determine whether or not children are developmentally ready for the kindergarten setting. Establishing statewide standards for what pre-K students should know could decrease the wide variability in pre-K programs. If all pre-K programs were required to teach certain developmental and kindergarten readiness skills, there might not be such a range in skill set and exposure to content among the incoming kindergarten class. Moreover, the requirement to collaborate with agencies dealing with early-childhood issues, such as health, encourages states to take a more holistic approach to early-childhood education.

Now for the pitfalls. I realize that assessment does not necessarily mean filling in a bubble sheet, but I cannot help fearing what could become of these kindergarten readiness or other pre-K tests. So much of early-childhood education involves exploration, motor skills, creativity, social skills, and other performance-based tasks that are hard to measure and assess without careful observation. Will the state create a rubric and send examiners to observe children for a day? Or will pre-K students actually have to sit and take a written test like their older peers? I can see how it would be easy to measure whether or not a child can recognize numbers and letters, but what about the other essential skills that children develop in pre-K and kindergarten? Have we become so obsessed with data and assessment that we could lose the very essence of what early-childhood education is all about?

We know that the achievement gap begins at a very young age, before children even enter pre-K. Thus, creating strong pre-K programs and ensuring that all students enter kindergarten with certain developmental and academic skills could create a strong foundation for students once they begin school. However, I worry that applying the same pressure for data and assessment to pre-K as NCLB did for older grades will result in focusing on “test prep” in the early-childhood environment rather than cultivating young, thoughtful and imaginative learners.