Preschool testing worries educators

Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2003 | 11:13 a.m.

Preschoolers enrolled in Clark County's Head Start programs will get an early introduction to academic pressure this fall when the federal government begins requiring proof of progress in exchange for continued funding.

This will be the first time in the 39-year history of the federal program that Head Start centers will be required to document student achievement. Head Start provides preschooling, nutritional assistance and health care to nearly 1 million children from low-income families.

The introduction of high-stakes testing into the Head Start program troubled some educators, including Audrey Amrein, a research professional at Arizona State University's School of Education.

"There's controversy already about testing second graders; a lot of people think that's too young," said Amrein, who co-authored a study on the impact of high-stakes testing on student performance. "To accurately assess a preschooler is a complicated process. You can't ask them to sit down and fill out a multiple-choice grid."

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which oversees Head Start, won't announce exactly how the children will be tested until later this month, but federal officials said the evaluations will likely concentrate on the 4-year-old participants and be administered at the beginning, middle and end of the yearlong program.

The requirements will likely incorporate standards set by Congress in 1998, said Windy Hill, associate commissioner of the federal health and human services department. For a 4-year-old, that means entering kindergarten able to hold a book properly and recognize at least 10 letters of the alphabet.

"We are renewing our emphasis on literacy," Hill said. "Research shows early cognitive development is critical to later success."

All Head Start programs are currently evaluated every three years to make sure teachers and volunteers are properly trained and following federal guidelines.

"We'll be focusing on the results, not just the process," Hill said. "By checking a student's abilities throughout, teachers will be better able to make changes along the way to ensure there's a program in place that encourages cognitive growth."

The 1,700 Southern Nevada children in Head Start are already tested several times a year, said Diana Goff, coordinator for the program with the Clark County Economic Opportunity Board.

"We're already focused on screening, assessments and accountability as a way of making sure children are exposed to a literacy-rich environment," Goff said. "It sounds like the new requirements will be formalizing a lot of what we've already been doing."

Judi Barton, who coordinates several Head Start centers for Clark County, said Monday her staff relies on frequent assessments to gauge which skills individual children are mastering.

"I understand that people don't like the idea that the funding will be counting on (the testing outcomes) but if the teachers and staff are doing their jobs all along it shouldn't be a problem," said Barton, who has been involved with Head Start for 15 years. "Our role is to make sure our children go to kindergarten ready to learn. It's difficult to do that if you're not documenting which students are on track and the which ones who need an extra boost."

The difference between students who have taken part in Head Start and children who have had no preschool experience is vast, said Carol Lark, principal at C.P. Squires Elementary School in North Las Vegas.

"The Head Start kids know how to follow directions, they're familiar and comfortable in the learning environment and that makes them ready to go," Lark said. "It's a jump-start for children who otherwise would start out with a real deficit."

Lark, who offers a pre-kindergarten program two days a week with room for just 32 students, said she could easily fill the class several times over from the waiting list of families. State and federal funding, however, seems to be as scarce for early childhood education as it is for everything else, Lark said.

"We're spending too much money trying to remediate students in the older grades, instead of directing the funds to get younger children at grade level from the beginning," Lark said. "You don't succeed by playing catch-up. You keep up."

But Amrein predicts that linking Head Start test results to funding will create too great a burden for the children and Head Start center staffs.

"We'll end up with preschool teachers figuring out how to 'teach to the test,' " Amrein said. "They'll find out what they need to do to keep their funding. There will be cheating, manipulating the results by telling certain students to stay home on test day, all the extremes we're seeing in secondary and high school settings."