Photo: Micaela Bedell for Strategies for Children
To evaluate teachers, school districts nationwide are considering how to use students’ test scores. It’s a complex process that gets even harder in what a new report from the New America Foundation calls “the untested grades†of pre-k, kindergarten and first and second grades.
States are eager to find appropriate child assessment tools that can be used as part of teacher evaluations, the report notes. “In all, since 2009, 36 states [including Massachusetts] and DC have passed legislation or made policy changes to develop new or update existing teacher evaluation systems.â€
The report — “An Ocean of Unknowns: Risks and Opportunities in Using Student Achievement Data to Evaluate PreK to 3rd Grade Teachers†— acknowledges how hard it is to assess young children, looks at current teacher evaluation practices, and offers a list of three recommendations and nine considerations that federal, state and district policymakers can use to design their own evaluation approach.
Report researchers looked at teacher evaluation efforts in five states (Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Rhode Island and Tennessee) and three school districts (Austin, Texas; Hillsborough County, Fla.; and Washington, DC). The report weighs the pros and cons of different approaches and offers recommendations for education leaders implementing teacher evaluation systems.
The report concludes that states have to find sophisticated, effective ways to assess early education. Regardless of the risks, “overhauling teacher evaluation systems must continue. The old way of doing things did not work for policymakers, principals, teachers and most importantly students. All students—especially at-risk students—deserve a well-trained, effective teacher who can challenge them, instill a love of learning, and help them develop the knowledge and skills they need for success in school and life.â€
“Overhauling teacher evaluation systems must continue…” What evaluation systems, after more than a decade of testing, has proven to accomplish anything? Perhaps the singular problem that underlies all of the testing is that the focus is on teachers, who actually are not responsible for the academic failures of low-income kids. If the best predictor of how kids will fare in school is the educational level of their mother (buttressed by 25+ years of research), maybe it is time for a rationally-based educational policy to be developed that would supplant the faith-based policy that has primacy in the country today.
And BTW, we’ve been looking at Kindergarten readiness assessments used by a variety of schools around Alabama and nationally. It isn’t rocket science to figure out that the actual tests which focus on familiarity with alphabet letters and counting, don’t begin to address the broader pieces of math literacy and emergent literacy, verbal communications, and behaviors that make up the universe of what kids need to succeed in school. However, every teacher we’ve interviewed uses these tests for a quick screening and relies on, gasp, their fleshed out observations of kids over the first some weeks of school. The K assessment instrument we have just developed is far more complex in what we are looking at, but still relies on a summary observation of the behavioral components over the course of our 16-Week classes by our Kids Program instructors. The notion that anyone can accurately assess a 4 year old captured in maybe 30 minutes to an hour of testing is flatly absurd.
Formative assessment based on the Ehri/Gentry five phases of early literacy development is an effective model for preK and kindergarten screening and powerfully identifies entering kindergarten students who need intervention from the beginning of K. Developmentally appropriate screening and ongoing monitoring can be implemented in preschool with four-year-olds beginning with a twenty minute interview. The child tells about a favorite book (or if able memory reads or pretends to read a book of his/her choice); draws and writes a story; engages with a wordless picture book read aloud including dialogue reading. This can be done in about twenty minutes. Watching a child’s attempt to write along with the other literacy-related observations reveals the child’s ability to communicate both verbally and in print, level of vocabulary, processes for word reading (if any), creative thought processes, level of alphabet knowledge, and provides important predictors of literacy success such as letter knowledge, sound/print awareness, concept of word, and print concepts. These observations also provide a good indication of exposure or lack of exposure to reading as well as concept development and vocabulary. Phase-observation formative assessments can be done in the context of everyday activity in preschool and are easily conducted by preschool teachers who embed literacy teaching in the context of play and exploration. The tools in their toolkit include reading aloud content-rich selections with dialogue reading; jumpstarting word reading; singing, marching, and physical movement as essential literacy tools; jumpstarting letter learning with children’s names; having fun with actions for targeting sound awareness; advancing literacy through art and fostering preschoolers who love to draw and write every day.
As a former early childhood educator I learned that it took several months of observation to assess a five year old. Why don’t we let children evolve and learn to love school before we burden them with unnecessary testing. Overwhelming distrust of teachers and overwhelming testing of children is not building a better educational system, it is only building generations of better test takers. And, even that is extremely questionable.