Assessments/Accountability
I am not against assessments but I am against the way our education system is using them as a basis of accountability. I think results of assessments should be used by the teacher as a means of planning instruction. Early childhood children should never be assessed just on the cognitive domain. There are many assessments and screening tools that measure the social, emotional, and physical domains. There are also tools that measure any family stressors. All of these factors have an affect on the development of early childhood children. In fact, a problem in one domain could cause a delay in another. In our assignments, we are always asked to define or explain an interplay between domains. This task was rather easy because all the domains are so reliant on the development of the others. Assessments in the early childhood years should be comprehensive enough to include all domains. The results should be used to determine any delays or potential problems a child may have or to plan instruction. The results should NOT be used to put labels on children or to hold a teacher or program accountable.
Finland
When I began my search for assessments used in other countries, I came across something very interesting about Finland's education system. I read an article that spoke about Finland's successful school system. Based on the Programme for International Student Assessment(PISA), Finland has one of the highest performing school systems in the world. The schools are bright and cheerful and are designed with the academic, social, emotional, and physical need of the students needs in mind.
Children are not held back to ensure that they don't lose motivation or feel like failures. So you probably wonder as I did as I read this article, how is their school system such a high performing system? Finland's strategy for education reform does not involve results from standardized testing or holding teachers accountable. Their reform begins with the teacher preparation program. There are only 8 universities that prepare teachers and only 1 of every 10 people that apply are admitted into these elite teacher education programs. Therefore the teaching profession in Finland is a very well respected and prestigious profession. Teachers are given the independence to teach what they want and how they want to teach it based on their own student's ability. There is absolutely no standardized testing in Finland. The article stated that teachers would walk off the job if scores were ever used to judge their abilities. "Finnish education is based on the development of a child as a thinking, active, creative person, not the attainment of higher test scores, and the primary strategy of Finnish education is cooperation, not competition."
Ravitch, D. (2012).
Schools we can envy. The New York Review of Books. Retrieved from
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/08/schools-we-can-envy/?pagination=false
Education reform
As I am typing this, there is work being done as a result of our Governor's education reform. ACT 3 is legislation that pertains to the reform of early childhood education programs including private child care, head start, and the public pre-K programs in the schools. Our governor wants assessments done in all of these programs to determine school readiness. A letter grade will be placed on each program based on the results of the assessment. At this time, I do not know what the assessment is going to be. I work for the state's Quality Rating System and I am unsure how our program is going to fit into this new reform. On Nov. 1, we are supposed to attend a meeting where we will be presented the draft version of ACT 3 and I guess I will find out then who, what, how, when or where these reforms will be phased in to our programs. For those of us in the early childhood field, we know the importance of social emotional development. However, our state's public school system looks only at literacy and mathematics to determine school readiness. Hopefully, the stakeholders in child care have been able to collaborate and educate the dept. of education on the importance of social emotional development in school readiness. Whatever is decided, will go through the next legislative session in the Spring and all programs including private child care will have to abide if they want to continue receiving any public funding.
