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Testing for Kindergarten
February 20, 2013
This is the best — to laugh with someone because you both think the same things are funny.
-Gloria Vanderbilt
-Gloria Vanderbilt
"When the New York City Education Department announced that it was changing part of its admissions exam for its gifted and talented programs last year, in part to combat the influence of test preparation companies, one of those companies posted the news with links to guides and practice tests for the new assessment," reported the New York Times (February 17, 2013)
"Assessing students has always been a fraught process, especially 4-year-olds, a mercurial and unpredictable lot by nature, who are vying for increasingly precious seats in kindergarten gifted programs. In New York, it has now become an endless contest in which administrators seeking authentic measures of intelligence are barely able to keep ahead of companies whose aim is to bring out the genius in every young child.
'It's something the schools know has been corrupted,' said Dr. Samuel J. Meisels, an early childhood education expert who gave a presentation in the fall to private school officials, encouraging them to abandon the test. Excessive test preparation, he said, 'invalidates inferences that can be drawn' about children 'learning potential and intellect and achievement.'
Contributed by Zvia Dover
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Comments (3)
Displaying All 3 Commentsece consultant
Dallas, TX, United States
Testing 4yr. olds is like herding cats. It's develipmentally inappropriate.
NJ, United States
Rather than increasing the number of slots as suggested. I would like us to treat each child as gifted. Let us ask "HOW each child is smart" and do away with this silliness.
New York, NY, United States
Rather than spending so much time wrangling about the test, the obvious solution is to open many more spaces in the program. Obviously, whatever means they use to keep out most of the gifted and talented children from their programs isn't working. By most definitions of giftedness, it's the top 1-3, 2-4, 5-10 percent of the population. I don't think they have enough spaces for the top half of 1 percent. For some reason, when there are lots of special needs children at the other end of the continuum, they make more classes. But when it comes to gifted, they keep cutting the spaces. These are the children who will grow up to solve so many of society's problems, yet they get so few appropriate educational opportunities. It makes no sense to me.
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