Putting pressure on the littlest ones

A couple of different reports coming in this week on the undue pressure and demands that we're putting on kindergartners, which are in direct opposition not only to all rules of logic, but also to what we know about how children that age learn:

First, from Massachusetts, a complaint from educators in Waltham on the inappropriate ELL test that they are being required to use on their kindergartners:

"My concern is for what were telling families and children that are 5 years old what's important about their education," [elementary school principal] Colannino said. "Are we giving them a test that's developmentally appropriate? And is it going to give us assessment information we can use to better instruct their English language development? Right now, I don't have the answers to the those questions."

And a study from the Alliance for Childhood, which shows that kindergartners are spending much larger quantities of time in direct English and math instruction than in free and imaginative play. This doesn't, contrary to what proponents argue, yield long term results, and in many cases backfires. It just isn't developmentally appropriate.