When looking at children at testing within children, I do not believe that most assessments truly are based on the “the whole child”. When looking at the whole child and the idea of a whole child, I am looking at every single aspect of the child. This includes but is not limited to: gross motor skills, writing skills, emotional traits, temperament, cognitive thinking skills, application of problems, vision, hearing, the senses, how the child communicates, etc. Without looking at EVERY aspect of a child, it is not fair to assume their intelligence based on a paper/pencil test. I feel that in education we do focus on these types of tests. These tests are important for funding of schools and rating of schools. Is that truly fair? Some children do not perform as well on these types of tests because of the pressure and the stigma that goes with them. I wish that testing would include all types of a child to get better and more accurate scores of how a child learns and shows their intelligence. I think with the process to the common core standards for some states it will encompass more application and technology pieces into the test. Hopefully one day, every skill in some way will be encompassed into the test to show that child and the school what their strengths and weaknesses are as a individual and as a whole group. Funding and ratings should be based off of these aspects.
When looking at the country where I live and how we assess children, it makes me wonder how children in different parts around the world are assessed. I looked up England to see how the people their view assessments and what an assessment looks like over there. From the United States to England, there is not much difference on the pencil/paper tests. The students are given longer “holidays” but most attend school year round. They have four steps of education, just how we do in the United States. We have preschool, elementary school, middle school, and high school. They have nursery, primary education, secondary education, and tertiary education. They do have the same concepts being taught in school as well. Their funding is not based off of test scores though. Their test scores are needed for the students to get into other specialty schools that are not government funded and to go to college. Instead, as I read and found out, most schools are given the same money from the government, but the community tax is the most important when funding schools. The English also have a very big drive on children that are developing properly and on time with the norms. Their education website has great ideas and forms for this. Look at
for more information.
In conclusion, I would love to have children in the U.S. be academically based off of different tests that truly show every type of learning style to better interpret these scores and have a better understanding of the children in this country. I know this might be years away, but hopefully it will happen soon.
love your post and I agree I think there should be a better way to test children. You are absolutely right that some children don't perform well under pressure.I just hope one day there will be a better way to get a true score for all children especially since everyone learns differently.
ReplyDeleteI believe that development is so broad that one kind of testing can't tell you all. There should be different tests not just academics. Daily observations would be a good way to start because like you pointed out some children don't do well under pressure.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really great post. I personally think that the school system isn't realistically set up to handle the children of today. There is way to much testing.
ReplyDeleteFirst I would like to say that I really enjoyed reading your post. I agree with you 100% about how children should be looked at in every single aspect. The comment about the test taking skills should definitely not be looked at to determine the intelligence of a child. I know plenty of children who are very intelligent and smart, but there test scores show differently. I wish there was some other kind of way that could determine the intelligence of children other than looking at their test scores. This really could lower the self esteem of a child and make them feel like they are not smart as some children because of their scores. Overall, great job on the post.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to me that you mentioned children in England attend school year round. I feel that is something we could benefit from here in the USA. When I first began teaching I taught in a year round school for three years. We started the end of July had a break the first 2 weeks of September went back at the Wed. before Thanksgiving day and the Friday after off went back and had the last two weeks of December and the first week of January off then we went back had the first two weeks of April off went back and were done the first or second week of June, still leaving 6 weeks for summer. Having the calendar set up in this manner and having shorter time periods off allowed children to retain more information. I attended school on the traditional August to May calendar (in FL growing up) but prefer the year round calendar I taught on much better. I am also a strong supporter of another methods to assess children.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the beautiful comments.
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