In Palm Beach County, FL, first- and second-graders might be gearing up to take junior versions of the FCAT:
School district officials are reviewing whether to require first- and second-graders to take a standardized exam that measures some of the same reading and math skills as the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
There's a lot at stake when students take the FCAT, starting in the third grade. If they fail the reading portion, they can be held back. Their test scores also help determine a school's grade and whether teachers get bonuses.
Proponents see early testing as a way to prepare students for the FCAT before the major consequences kick in. But the idea concerns some educators and parents, who say students in the youngest grades shouldn't be subjected to the pressure of standardized testing.
I see both sides of the story here. Certainly, it's not a good sign if there's really no pressure on teachers to teach reading skills, nor accountability for those skills, until they're going to be tested in the third grade. On the other hand, for a long time the conventional wisdom in psychometrics is that anyone younger than 9 or so shouldn't be tested with conventional standardized tests.
I also don't know of a great deal of validity or reliability research on children that young, although standardized tests like the Stanford Achievement Test do exist for first- and second-graders. From what I can tell from their website, the content is appropriate for kids that age, and there apparently are no strict time limits.
The district already requires a test called Reading Running Records for first- and second-graders. In this test, a student reads a book aloud to a teacher and then summarizes it. The grading is generally seen as subjective and doesn't prepare a student for the FCAT, district officials said.
Broward County has been giving the Stanford Achievement Test to first- and second-graders for years, said Anne Dilgen, Broward's director of student assessment. She said the district has found it a useful tool to predict how well students will do on the FCAT. But it's not an overly stressful test, she said. Students don't have to fill out bubbles, and they don't have strict time limits.
The usual stress-related incidents are what cause some to oppose the testing idea:
Ann Faraone, principal of Calusa Elementary in Boca Raton, used to be an elementary school principal in New York, where testing was given to first- and second-graders. She would rather not see that done here.
"I have to say it was very, very stressful for the kids," she said.
She said she has seen students who were so nervous about standardized tests that they got sick.
Yes, but some kids get nervous about recess, or math, or school in general, and the teachers try to help them through it. I don't want to sound uncaring, but the tests given to the first- and second-graders would not be as difficult or high-stress as the test for older kids, so I don't support the assumption that because a few kids get stressed, the tests shouldn't be used for any of them.
What's more, introducing them to testing as early as possible, and in as easy a way as possible, might help them later on.
Posted by kswygert at December 19, 2003 04:16 PM