In Santa Paula, Kindergartners Put to the Test

Many of them can’t read. Some are still mastering how to hold a pencil.

But that has not stopped kindergartners in Santa Paula from spending the past two weeks taking standardized tests, a practice that has drawn criticism from teachers and child advocates who view it as needlessly stressful.

“I don’t know why they’re doing this to those poor little kids,” said Connie Bennett, president of the Santa Paula teachers’ union. “Kindergarten is a developmental year--kids shouldn’t be exposed to a test that is inappropriate and invalid.”

Officials in the Santa Paula Elementary School District, one of a fraction of districts in the state testing kindergartners, say there are good reasons behind the decision. The children, they say, must be tested to qualify the schools for extra federal funding, and this particular exam--written by the publishers of the Stanford 9 test for older children--will prepare them for life as public school students in California.

“Our philosophy is the sooner we start giving these students tests like the Stanford 9, the sooner they’ll get used to it,” said James Medina, principal at Grace Thille Elementary School in Santa Paula.

But that is also what worries some educators, who oppose standardized tests at any grade level--let alone kindergarten.

“Any time you use one test to make any serious determinations, you’re putting too much faith in one instrument,” said Suzanne Winter, a University of Texas professor who is an expert in early childhood education. “Young children in particular don’t work well with pencil-paper tests.”

In Santa Paula, Bennett said, some children cried, wet their pants or became too frustrated to complete some portions of the exam.

The confusion was evident last week at Grace Thille School, as Bertha Alvarez’s kindergarten students yawned and squirmed during the final section of the test.

A 4-year-old boy tapped his head with his pencil as he stared blankly at the test booklet before him. Because he couldn’t read, the questions might as well have been rocket-building instructions.

Brows furrowed, the boy looked desperately to his teacher for some way out, but all she could do was gently encourage him. “Keep going,” Alvarez repeated. “The whole page. All by yourself.”

They sat with barriers between their desks so they would not be tempted to help each other--a virtue generally stressed in kindergarten. Many didn’t know the basics of test-taking, such as moving from one page of questions to the next.

Basic Math, Language Skills Are Tested

The test is divided into sections covering basic math and language skills, including a 30-minute segment that requires children to match sentences with corresponding illustrations. For instance, under the sentence “He is the king,” students were to choose from among pictures of a king, a football player and a policeman.

Such an approach does not impress Louise Platt, an assistant superintendent in Santa Paula. She said she is not “sold” on standardized tests, primarily because of the sizable score gaps between affluent and poor children.

At the same time, Platt said, educators cannot escape standardized testing, which is the cornerstone of the governor’s program to measure schools’ progress. While the tests overwhelm some young students--and even some older ones--they also can pinpoint those who are struggling.

“I think it’s the nature of the beast,” Platt said.

About 75 out of 1,054 California school districts have purchased the Stanford Early School Achievement Test, which is geared for kindergartners. While the state requires second- through 11th-graders to take the Stanford 9 each spring, districts may test younger students.

Standardized testing among kindergartners is rare, though several Ventura County elementary schools test their first-graders.

In most classrooms, educators said, assessments do not require fidgety 5-year-olds to concentrate on shading in answers to questions in standardized booklets. Instead, teachers ask students questions and note whether they’ve mastered things such as colors, shapes and numbers.

“With this test, they’re looking at each other’s papers and bubbling in anything--they have no idea what we’re talking about,” said Sandy Leatherman, a teacher at Santa Paula’s Barbara Webster School. “It doesn’t measure anything.”

Children in kindergarten should not be exposed to such pressure, some educators said. Moreover, they said, the results of tests given in the fall are unreliable, as most children are only beginning to read and still have not learned many basic math concepts.

“We would not subject our kindergarten students to that kind of ritual,” said Geno Flores, testing director for the Long Beach Unified School District. “The kind of assessments we do are done one-on-one.”

Some Educators Welcome the Tests

But school officials in other areas, including Saddleback Valley Unified in Orange County, had different viewpoints. Larry Callison, testing coordinator for the Mission Viejo district, said the tests kindergartners there took last year were an accurate gauge of their strengths and weaknesses. It is not happening this year only because the district lacked funds, he said.

Platt said the Santa Paula district will reevaluate use of the Stanford test after this year. The district also is experimenting with other tests, she said.

School board member Anthony Perez said he may bring up his concerns about the testing at the next board meeting.

“You have attention-span problems with younger kids, and you may be over-traumatizing them,” Perez said. “Are we teaching them to learn, or are we just teaching them to fill in bubbles?”

Although always controversial, the concept of testing kindergartners is not new. In the 1970s, it was a state requirement, said Ventura County Supt. of Schools Chuck Weis, who was an administrator in Fillmore at the time.

“It was my first day on the job and a teacher came in saying, ‘Who’s the idiot who decided to test kindergartners?’ ” Weis said. “I went into a classroom and watched them crying as they tried to take the test. At that point I learned how difficult it is for young kids.”

Emma Posadas, a first-year teacher at Barbara Webster, said her students, most of whom speak no English, filled in every choice to every question. “They were clueless,” she said. “It’s not fair.”

Another Santa Paula teacher said the testing runs counter to what kindergarten is all about. “A kindergarten teacher’s job is to make children love school,” she said, “and this test does not do that.”