Week 8 - Finishing EDUC6160!

As an ending quote for this course, I would like to leave you with the following words of wisdom.

You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing.  What!  Is it nothing to be happy?  Nothing to skip, play, and run around all day long?  Never in his life will he be so busy again.  ~Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, 1762

The next time you observe your children playing, remember, they are learning.  They are developing.  They are socializing.  The developmental domains your children are exploring are creating learning moments and memories.  Let your children play!

Mary L.

Week 6 - School Assessments

The PA Keys website is the resource I use for assessment in my daycare, and is the resource I feel comfortable recommending to any teaching professional.  This website provides a detailed summary of the measurement process for children’s development and learning.

PA Keys defines the purpose of assessment measurements not primarily as a tool for diagnostics, such as identifying deficits or delays in children.  Assessment measurements are used to provide information used to plan curriculum that will assist in the promotion of each child’s progress.  Assessments are not used to verify a child’s readiness or exclusion from an education setting.  Assessments are used to modify the setting to accommodate the child.    

 Often, when large groups of children must be evaluated, a screening tool is used.  These tools do not assess the whole child, but are easy to use with large groups of children.  Screening tools are often used in schools evaluating kindergarten readiness.  These screening tools are usually effective only for catching severe cases of children who need to be assessed at a more thorough level.

The ideal method for childhood assessment in through ongoing observations.  These observations should include a wide variety of activities which will give a thorough assessment of the whole child.  These activities should include, but not be limited to, social, physical, constructive, creative, communicative, mathematical, and scientific domains.  The use of portfolios, notes, observations, and checklists are a few ways observations can be recorded.  School age children can be evaluated in this manner, but teachers have problems handling the larger class size.  Therefore, to save time and consolidate paperwork, the school age teacher usually reverts to testing for scores.

I feel that our school system caters to children that excel in logical and linguistic learning.  However, the children that have problems taking tests, the children that know the school work but cannot produce a good test result, are labeled unsuccessful.  Large class sizes, and a lack of teaching using modernized multiple intelligences theories, creates an environment that is not conducive to learning for a large number of children.  I feel that all children can succeed at school, if they are taught in the way they are able to learn, in the way their brain shows strengths.

China is commonly known as our primary educational competitor.  China has the largest student population in the world, approximately 320 million students.  Some differences between China and United States educational systems are worth mentioning.  In the United States, a majority of our teachers are over 40 years of age.  In China, most of the teachers are under 40 years old.  In the United States, the accountability assessments focus on science, mathematics, reading and writing.  In China, assessments focus on the whole child, which includes their academic growth, their learning style, their emotional health, their values, confidence, and fine arts.  In China, the unit of analysis is the child, whereas in the United States, the unit of analysis is the school.  In China, the child evaluates themselves, the teacher evaluates them, and the teacher evaluates themselves.  In the United States, evaluations are by the teacher, concerning the child.  China evaluates school children using a much more comprehensive system than the United States uses.

I feel that school age children are not being assessed and evaluated in the most complete way in our school systems.  Teachers are often teaching children using boring, old fashioned methods.  Children that don’t fit in are being labeled, and often are being medicated!  How can we change the system?  We need some advocates to become interested in the situation, and attempt to make a change!

References

Case, B. (2005).  The age of accountability. Retrieved from http://www.pearsonassessments.com/NR/rdonlyres/9B951F2F-37A6-4508-A656-3EF8FE346B19/0/AgeofAccountability.pdf

PA Department of Education and Public Welfare. (2005). Early childhood assessment for children from birth to age 8 (grade 3). Retrieved from http://www.pakeys.org/docs/EarlyChildhoodAssessment.pdf