D.C. charter schools to give standardized tests to young children
(By Matt McClain / FOR THE WASHINGTON POST)
The use of standardized tests to measure very young students keeps expanding. Now public charter schools in Washington D.C. will soon be giving new standardized tests to very young children — aged 3, 4 and 5 — for the purposes of assessing their academic progress and ranking schools according to the results. What will be optional for each school is whether to evaluate students in social-emotional learning, which early childhood experts say should be at the center of education for the youngest students.This move in D.C. charters is part of a disturbing shift in early childhood classrooms around the country, as they increasingly mimic what older students do academically. (Here’s a post on that.)
The following post explains the D.C. charter plan. It was written by educator and author Sam Chaltain, who began his career as an English teacher in New York City and who now writes about the intersection of education and democracy at www.samchaltain.com. Previously, he was national director of the Forum for Education & Democracy, an education advocacy organization, and the founding director of the Five Freedoms Project, a national program that helps K-12 educators create more democratic learning