“I’m done Mrs Barton,” said one child who actually scored the highest on one of his standardized kindergarten assessments. He honestly looked as though he had completed a marathon.

The poor boy’s hair was everywhere and he was completely out of breath. No joke. He looked like I do after teaching on the first day of kindergarten.

With the passage of No Child Left Behind in the early 2000’s, more and more standardized testing started being implemented in an effort to raise achievement.

Testing slowly made its way down to the lowest grades where kindergarten teachers everywhere disagreed with the value and developmental appropriateness of these kindergarten assessments.

With good reason too, standardized kindergarten assessments do more harm than good, and here’s why.

Kids endure unnecessary stress.

An article entitled Scrap the MAP called for the elimination of the MAP test in the early grades citing severe stress.

In response to administrators having a protocol for students getting sick before testing, a comedian, John Oliver said, “Something is wrong with our system when we just assume a certain number of students will vomit.”

At a time when young students should be developing their innate curiosity to learn and develop a love for reading and writing, they are being exposed to teachers bribing them to do their best on inaccurate measures of achievement.

The school environment suffers.

When testing scores are our main goal, the entire classroom environment changes from a safe place where risks and mistakes can be made to a “Why aren’t you understanding this?” mentality.

So, administrators pass stress down to the teachers who are now often times evaluated based on student test scores. Yes, even in kindergarten.

Then, the teachers pass this stress down to the students.

The test score is valued and not the learning process.

Should we really pressure early elementary teachers to judge their effectiveness at a career they couldn’t wait to start by the results of kindergarten assessments that aren’t developmentally appropriate?

No.

Competition among teachers increases.

Teachers are at their best when they collaborate with one another. In contrast, they are at their complete worst when test scores drive teachers to want to outscore their colleagues.

If you don’t believe that teachers are competitive, watch a teacher-student softball game. There is no mercy.

I bought into this mentality that I was doing something wrong after our MAP scores were compared to that of other schools. Mine came out low.

Honestly, I should have known better. I am a veteran. But, we want our data to reflect our competence.

So, I actually started to change my teaching style to teach to the test in kindergarten. Then, I came to my senses.

The price was too high.

Behavior problems increase.

A recent study showed that a student’s social-emotional skills are highly predictive of their academic and social success all the way through adulthood.

Students with higher ratings in kindergarten were more likely to get a college degree.

For every one point decrease in the social-emotional ratings in kindergarten, students were 67 percent more likely to be arrested.

Also, late bloomers are often mistakenly identified as behavior problems because they are not ready for the instructional demands that the testing culture requires.

In addition, ADHD diagnosis is on the rise because kindergarten students aren’t developmentally prepared to sit for so long.

Parents are confused.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that students at age five aren’t going to perform up to their potential on kindergarten assessments.

At times, I have to repeat the directions twenty times on every instructional activity I teach. What makes anyone think kindergarten students can focus on a computer-generated voice from a standardized test?

In many states, parents receive letters when their child doesn’t meet the standards on the kindergarten assessments. Teachers bear the responsibility of explaining that there is no cause for worry.

Parents usually respond with, “Then, why do you test the kids? Isn’t that a waste of time if results aren’t reliable?”

Yes, yes it is.