Believe it or not, Kindergarteners will take a variety of tests throughout the school year. Students will be assessed on letters, sounds, number identification, counting, shapes, sight words, writing their name, and other basic skills to determine progress.
Reading assessments will be administered two to three times throughout the school year. There are a variety of reading assessments available to school districts. The school district I work in uses the DRA2, while my daughter’s school district uses AIMSWeb Plus. Reading assessments are used to determine what reading level the student can independently read, as well as the reading level the teacher will instruct.
Depending on the district, some schools may have students take computerized tests to determine strengths and areas to grow upon. Teachers use data from these types of assessments to provide more individualized instruction for each student. Though these assessments can be beneficial in determining students’ growth throughout the school year, they can also be stressful for some students, especially at the Kindergarten level.
In my school district, grades K through 5 take a computerized test (NWEA MAP) three times a year in the areas of Reading and Math. While these assessments may provide useful data in the upper grades, this is not necessarily the case in Kindergarten. The Kindergarteners in my district are required to take this test the third week of school. Not only are many students not comfortable with the school environment yet, but some students are still four years old. The majority of students have also never used a mouse or a laptop before, and struggle with clicking on the correct answer. This usually results in students clicking any answer the mouse lands on. Due to all of the varying factors, scores are not only low, but may not a true indicator of a student’s ability.
Students then take the test again in the winter and in the spring, to determine how much growth the student has made throughout the year. While this seems logical, in reality it is not. Each Reading and Math test contains almost 50 questions each. Students quickly become overwhelmed by the number of questions, the difficulty of the questions (difficulty increases the more questions the student answers correctly), and their attention span usually cannot withstand such long assessments.
Depending on the school, some administrators will take these scores, especially at the Kindergarten level, with a grain of salt. Other administrators will look at these scores as the end all, be all for overall success in general. In my district, we analyze these scores for weeks after the assessment is given. We try to reiterate that such intense, computerized assessments are not developmentally appropriate for Kindergarten, but some administrators only care about the numbers, not the child as the whole.
I cannot emphasize this enough, always look at whole picture for your child’s progress in school. Look at the report cards and the progress reports. Discuss with your child’s teacher about the overall progress – strengths and areas to work on. Find out if your child is reading on grade level. All of this information combined will provide you with far more valuable information than the data from the computerized test. Take those results with a grain of salt. If your child did well, great! If your child struggled, but is doing well in all other areas of school, then do not be concerned. If you are speaking with an administrator about your child’s progress and all they focus on are the numbers, kindly remind that administrator that your child is more than just a number. In the grand scheme of life, these “huge” assessments are no more than just a tiny snapshot at a specific moment in time.