Too much testing, too early in life

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/26/education/on-entrance-test-whose-days-appear-numbered-a-95-just-wasnt-good-enough.html?ref=education&_r=0


Every week we discuss testing in some form or another. Testing is something that seems to saturate our schools, with tests looming on the horizon and always having to prepare students for the various layouts of tests; often, we are teaching for the tests. In New York City, there has always been major competition about getting children into the best schools possible, whether it be public or private. Many parents would have their preschools take the ERB in order to get a score that would hopefully land their children in the academically elite and into the school of their choice. However, testing children, toddlers if that, is insane. It introduces the stress related to testing and pressures the children to perform at the highest possible level.

Many parents of these toddlers would brag about their children's scores to other parents. The highest scores were the 99's. The parents who was interviewed for this article was embarrassed about her sons getting 95's because this was seen as failure for not having achieved a 99, even though the score of 95 lands her sons in the top 5% of the US children's population. Schools are now urging parents to not have their children take the ERB tests because there was evidence of score inflation and that the score didn't accurately reflect a child's ability. Some parents supposedly coached their children on correct answers and had their children take classes so that the children's score would improve. Parents would see their child's score as a reflection on their parenting, and would think if the child hadn't done well, "What did I do wrong?" All this pressure that the parents put on testing inevitably affect the children, so this process is putting way too much pressure on them.

The reason that our society places so much emphasis on testing is because we always need to prove that we are better than other countries. We are so competitive that not only has testing infultrated our high schools and middle schools, we now have standards on what is good enough to admit into our kindergartens. Children shouldn't be tested before they know how to read and write, it transforms their academic experience into the score they produce. The child is only as good the score they can produce. The message that we are sending our children is that it doesn't matter what they learn, just how well they can perform on tests.