Is Kindergarten a Place of Joy or Data Gathering?
Parents don’t need data sets to know that if a young child is not ready to learn a skill (but is pushed to do so) or if learning that skill becomes extremely stressful, that child may very well shut down. Parents also don’t need data retrieval to know that every child has unique developmental growth. A ‘non-proficient’ kindergartner is not doomed to being a poor reader the rest of her life unless her early experience is so dreadful she refuses to engage in that activity again. That will teach her to ‘hate reading’ and the love of reading may be lost forever. Or, perhaps in the current educational reform environment students are experiencing, this stressful experience will determine that she needs to develop more ‘grit’ and resilience. If she can’t deal with stress at age 5, then point her toward the social emotional goals she should strive to attain to persevere through her non-proficiency status at a young age:
If she’s developmentally not ready to read, how will she be tracked when the proficiency level is set for what all 5 year olds should be doing? What happens to a child who understands that her abilities at age 5 are not up to par with other children? How do children internalize the Is Kindergarten a Place of Joy or Data Gathering? » Missouri Education Watchdog: