Gesell Test for Preschoolers Is Under Assault but Still Has Many Fans

Diane Jackson calls it “the gift of time.” For Beth Bradley, it was “the theft of a year.”

Jackson’s daughter, Jennifer, and Bradley’s son, Shane, are among thousands of 2 1/2- to 6-year-olds each year who take the Gesell “school readiness” test designed to assess physical, social and emotional maturity.

The Gesell is, in effect, a kiddie board--as crucial to school success as the college board exams taken years later.

Determines Pace

The outcome can determine whether a child attends regular kindergarten or first grade, or is consigned to an extra year in slower-paced “transitional” or “developmental” kindergartens for the less mature.

The Gesell Institute, located here in two Tudor mansions next door to Yale University’s divinity school, estimates its test is used in 18% of U.S. school districts. But educators and psychologists have lately criticized it as biased, scientifically baseless and prone to abuse.

“A loose cannon,” says education professor Samuel Meisels of the University of Michigan, speaking of the test. “It’s being used to hurt kids, in the name of beneficence.”

Such criticisms have taken a heavy financial toll on the 78-year-old institute, acting director Laura Freebain-Smith told a reporter. Early last month, following a second consecutive year of deficits, the institute decided to put its New Haven properties up for sale and reduce its teacher training staff from 10 to 2.

Gesell leaders, meanwhile, acknowledge the abuses and say the test is being updated.

Praised by Many

Nonetheless, they stand by its basic soundness and point to legions of teachers and principals who praise it as a valuable tool to help them assign children to appropriate classes.

“Fads come and go, but the Gesell work is correct,” said Freebain-Smith.

Jennifer and Shane got the same verdict from Gesell: they tested immature, and school authorities advised an extra year.

Jennifer’s mother now says the extra year worked miracles. She just finished first-grade with a B-average at Golfield Elementary School in Rockledge, Fla.

But Shane’s mother says the test made her son a wreck. He was so unhappy in what he called the “dummy class” in Denver City, Tex., that she took him out two weeks early last spring.

Published in 1929

The Gesell test is not new. Its author, Dr. Arnold Gesell, a pediatrician and school psychologist, first published it in 1925, mainly as a tool for doctors rather than educators.

Now school districts across the country use it. It’s especially popular in Florida, Connecticut, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Michigan, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and California, according to Susan L. Sweitzer, who runs the workshops where teachers train to administer the test.

But never have it’s merits been so hotly challenged by educators, psychologists and parents.

“I think every test maker bears the burden of proof that their test does what they say it will do. They have not demonstrated that. They resort to faith,” said Meisels.

“There’s a lot of truth in the criticisms,” said Freebain-Smith. “It’s forced us to take a look at how our test is used.”

Unlike Standard Tests

The Gesell is unlike the usual standardized pencil-and-paper test.

For about 20 minutes, a teacher or counselor has a youngster build with blocks, name animals, answer questions such as “what did you get for your last birthday?” and fill in a drawing of an “incomplete man” missing limbs and facial features.

To the trained eye, the answers are supposed to reveal maturity.

For example, a 5- or 6-year old might write a beautifully formed letter “O.” But if a child starts the letter at the bottom of the circle, that’s taken as a sign of immaturity.

Likewise, children who draw belly buttons on the “incomplete man”--who wears an incomplete bow tie--are often judged less mature.

Criticized in Guide

A review of the test in the “Mental Measurements Yearbook,” an annual guide to standardized tests, says Gesell has offered “no evidence of internal consistency, reliability, stability over time, or empirical validity.”

Critics also charge the questions are outdated and biased against minorities and poor children. The test’s norms, or averages, were last updated in 1979, and they were based on 640 New England children, only 7% of whom were minorities.

The test asks, for example, “What does your daddy do?” The question might baffle the many children nowadays who lack live-in daddies.

Gesell’s critics, who include several early childhood education associations, recently called for an end to mass standardized testing of young children.

Some of Gesell’s woes reflect recent criticisms aimed at standardized tests generally. The Scholastic Aptitude Test, taken by college-bound high school students, has been similarly accused of bias, unfairness and misuse.

Tied to Larger Dispute

The Gesell debate is also related to a larger dispute among educators: Are many schoolchildren too old for their grade, or too young?

Louise Bates Ames, at 80 a best-selling author of child-rearing guides and the institute’s guiding spirit since Dr. Gesell’s death in 1961, contends that as many as half of U.S. schoolchildren are “over-placed,” or too young for their grade. Many eventually get labeled slow, or learning disabled.

Such problems might never occur, said Ames, if children were promoted on the basis of “developmental age,” not chronological age. If educators and parents would only heed the test’s results, fewer children would drop out or be held back later, she said.

“What we’re looking at is the whole spectrum of 12 to 13 years of schooling. It’s not so much a fear that a kid won’t make it in kindergarten. It’s hard for parents to see that,” said Jane Keirns, a member of Gesell’s national lecture staff.

Test critics take the opposite view. They see little virtue in a test that helps schools justify keeping youngsters from progressing with their peers. And they oppose segregating children who test “young” on the Gesell into “developmental kindergartens” or “transitional classes.”

“There’s little that supports what goes on in developmental K. If a kid is at least one year too old by ninth grade, the probability of dropping out is 50 percent greater,” said Meisels. “At least 20 percent of kids in kindergarten are too old for their grade. It may be substantially greater than that.”