Testing the"whole child" would depend on the age of the child and what you are looking for, if anything in specific. I do believe testing is an added benefit of a great child care and preschools because you know where a child's strengths and weaknesses. You might even be able to tell what kind of learner the child is, does he do better when he see it done first or just hearing the directions. If you are going to test you should test all the areas you can: language(both expressive and receptive), fine and gross motor, spatial ability, self help skills, and cognitive. There are probably more areas you could test but these should give you a fairly good picture of the child. Then if therea are concern you have data to show a parent so the child can recieve the services he needs.
Chinese standardize testing
The Chinese value rote memory of most everything they score on a test. Chinese student are tested to see what elementary school they into as well as high school and college. The most information I found was on the college testing it is a multi-day test on everything they have learned or memorized. They put a lot of emphasise on "drill and kill" learning therefore many of their students cannot think outside the box, it is always an apple is always an apple or if you draw a tree it looks exactly like your classmates or the teachers.
So now many of the teachers in China are looking to the way we educate children so their students can be better in the United States when they come to study. They are looking at way to teach collaboration and creative thinking. How to work as a team and view other opinions as part of a thinking process. But with this move of thinking on their part so have we started to move to their way of thinking "drill and kill" maybe a way we can raise our test score.
I am not a great fan of is the one test fits all which many states have moved to because of No Child Left Behind(NCLB) because children do not all test the same way. The child could have an off day and not do as well for what ever reason we may not know about. Some are better at the pencil and paper test while other would do better if they could tell you the information. What I truly do not agree with is testing a child at his grade level when he is on an IEP and can not do the work at that level. I think a collection of best works both done by the teacher and child might be a better way to look at a child.
Sources: http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=5264
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/17/education-in-china-testing-diane-sawyer_n_785016.html
Hi Laury,
ReplyDeleteThe information your provided on China. How interesting that they are looking to get away from "drill and kill" and we are moving toward it. I think there does need to be a balance of rote and problem solving. I have witnessed more teaching to the test and teachers changing grading curves now than before No Child Left Behind.
I also agree that a collection of work is a better way to assess learning.