Is it cute?

Post date: Sep 24, 2017 12:59:56 PM

Beginning of the year in an elementary school is a beautiful thing. Teachers come back from vacation (possibly a summer job). Students come back with new haircuts, new clothes, new heights, new maturity, and hopefully new beginnings. New students arrive at our school for the first time for transfers and to the idea of school for the first time as kindergartners. These fresh-faced children have a lot to get used to as they adjust from the freedom of home life to the constraints of school. Some are excited and some are crying in despair.

As I walk the hallways supporting colleagues and giving hugs and high-fives to students during the second week of school I pass our cluster of kindergarten classrooms. There they are: 26 five-year-old children sitting at their group tables with...wait for it...cardboard dividers providing a private space for each individual to take their first "Show What You Know" (aka test/assessment/data collection). I stand there looking at the site before me not with bewilderment as I have come to expect this reality of paper and pencil tests even at the youngest grades. Then it comes. One staff member walks by with a big smile on her face, leans over the window to see what I see, and says, "Isn't it so cute?!".

"Cute?" I say, now bewildered. "What's cute about a five-year-old taking a paper and pencil test?"

"It's only four questions. It's so cute. They are so cute!" she says in complete joy.

"I have to disagree with you on that." I walked away to peer into another grade level.

Assessment has and will always be an important part of the educational environment. Well, any entity that expects to produce results needs to know both where they started and where they are now. This is how we are ultimately held accountable to our stakeholders. The age of accountability and testing is not new nor is the argument that the kind of assessments normally given do not translate into practical knowledge and skills...being able to do something with what you know. Particularly true for the latter argument would be the developmentally inappropriate nature of such a test.

So what is your answer to the question...is it cute?

ML 9/17