You know, I don't mind articles being written about the new Head Start exams, and I don't mind these articles being critical (as long as they're even-handed).
But does every reporter have to begin their Head Start article with a tale of a four-year-old's test anxiety? The New York Times used this as a lead in October, and the Portland Tribune did the same thing in December (albeit in a toned-down fashion). Now we have the SacBee weighing in with this oh-so-neutral opening:
Edward, with eyelashes nearly as long as the brush he was using to stroke blue paint onto a white paper plate, is usually a happy boy -- if a bit sensitive. When he was taken aside in November for a one-on-one test with a teacher, the 4-year-old's smile turned upside down.
"The whole time he was crying," said Karin Ramirez, site director of the Watt and E Head Start center. In between sobs, he wailed that he wanted to go back to class despite Ramirez's bribe of a SpongeBob sticker.
Sigh. I suppose I'm an ogre, then, for wanting to support the government's desire for accountability in the Head Start program?
"Head Start needs to be accountable," said Sharon Neese, manager of SETA Head Start in Sacramento. "We receive a tremendous amount of money. But an unresearched, thrown-together test is not a way to find out if Head Start is working."
What's the evidence that the test was "thrown-together"? And how can the tests be researched when Head Start managers don't want the feds to collect any data with it? For the test to be researched, four-year-olds have to take it.
...Horn, a child psychologist, said President Bush is trying to "manage by results," meaning whenever possible it is imperative to "measure what our good intentions are producing." Horn said the purpose is to identify local programs where more teacher training is needed. Federal administrators suspect some local programs are doing great and some not so well.
Probably a wise suspicion. The test required 18 months for development (that's "thrown-together"?), and the concept of measuring Head Start kids did not start with the Bush administration - only the standardized assessment format(essential for comparing federally-funded programs) and the federal reporting requirements (ditto) were recently added.
The exam was field-tested, and a 15-20 minute battery of questions was devised for the first go-round this fall. The results will serve as a base line. At the end of the Head Start academic year in May or June, the test will be repeated.
Okay, so not even the claim that the exam has not been "researched" is valid. Sigh, again.
Head Start's goal is to help economically disadvantaged children begin kindergarten on a level playing field with their more well-to-do peers.
Local Head Start leaders say parents of low-income children generally don't have as large a vocabulary as middle-class parents. So it is unrealistic, they say, to expect Head Start children to match their middle-class counterparts.
But, if the goal of Head Start is to put these low-income kids on a level playing field, then isn't it reasonable to measure whether Head Start kids learn a lot of that vocabulary? I mean, if the rationale is that their parental influence prevents them from learning anything, then why fund a program that is going to be ineffective?
Horn dismisses the notion: "What is astounding to me is that some who claim to be advocates say this is too high a goal. The president says that is nonsense. He says 'No Child Left Behind' does not mean just no rich child left behind. That is what the president is talking about when he speaks of the 'soft bigotry of low expectations.' "
Horn said Head Start has always been about developing rich vocabularies, and that entails knowing words that are not part of a child's immediate environment. "Just because there are no swamps in Sacramento, should we hide it from them? Should we only teach them words in their own environment?
"No 4-year-old has ever seen a live dinosaur, yet my guess is that there a lot of children who know what a dinosaur is."
He also said that worries about stressing young children are baseless: "My experience is that most 4-and 5-year-olds love to show off what they know."
In the right environment, I think that's as likely as the behavior of the otherwise-happy kid who becomes hysterical when confronted with a test item. So why not give us examples of both types of children? Or should we do away with anything that ever makes a four-year-old cry? This would include vaccinations and refusals to buy giant Barbie playhouses, I think.
Posted by kswygert at December 31, 2003 10:16 AM