Kindergarten Assessment – The First Test

Jul 29th, 2009 | By David Niall Wilson | Category: Article

P1016645My daughter goes in today for her first official test.  She’s entering Kindergarten this fall, and very excited about it.  We’ve been going over colors and vocabulary, math and very basic spelling, and everyone was in great spirits right up until yesterday afternoon.

We are a pretty informal family.  Katie is just…Katie.  Now things have changed, and all of a sudden she is being introduced to the world as Katie Wilson.  What we discovered was that we have never bothered to teach her to spell her last name.  The occasion to use that last name has never really materialized, and she has done so well on every other aspect of preparing for the test that it just slipped our minds.

In the grand scheme of things, we all know this isn’t going to be a big setback.  In fact, Katie herself is quite calm about it.  Still, it’s that first moment where you think you have something completely nailed, and you realize things slip between the cracks.  It’s hard not to count it as the first slash mark on the board where parental failures during the school years are tallied.

In any case, Katie, who is a trooper,  has been reciting the letters of her name over and over, and when I left this morning she was industriously copying her full name on a piece of typing paper in eerily legible script for a five year old.  I suppose I won’t panic, but I doubt I’ll be able to prevent myself from buying her a congratulatory present.

From here on out, her life will be all about tests, particularly for the next couple of decades.  Look out Kindergarten, and world.  Katie Wilson has arrived…

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  • SplinteredMind
    I think it's fascinating what we as parents forget to "teach" our kids until we start interacting with the outside world more. Some of these things were just never important before that point.

    Good luck, Katie Wilson!
  • Tests for kindergarten? Thankfully my little guy is not old enough for that stuff yet. But seriously, what are the tests for? Do they have an advanced placement kindergarten? I like Adam's suggestion about the pictures!
  • David -- forget about the letters and the colors. Ask your daughter to draw a picture of herself. And then ask her to do it again every 6-8 weeks. Keep them in a pile. Then sit down next spring and look through them and you will be blown away with how much she's grown in her year in kindergarten. You wont just see her drawing skills improve. You'll see her self image improve in ways you can never imagine.
  • Wow, an assessment test in kindergarten? What sort of test are your kids having to take? I have been a teacher for seven years, and although I do not work in kindergarten, none of the schools in our district give kindergarten kids assessment tests unless there is a concern.

    Just remember that education has a wide variety of assessments for success, and, in my opinion, testing is one of the poorest ways of determining where kids are in their knowledge level. There are just so many factors, especially at the kindergarten level, that could affect the results: new environment (classroom), new experience (what's a test Daddy?), time restrictions, stress, time restrictions, etc.

    Good luck to your kids, but remember, this is just a snapshot.
  • Uggh, we're about to go through the same thing with our 5-year-old son, Zachary, and I haven't given a thought to the assessment tests. And I definitely don't think he knows how to spell Rutherford.

    I've intentionally steered away - thus far - from obsessing about tests, early achievement, etc.

    I always chuckle at the parents who ride their kids unmercifully re: academics/tests - all to get into an Ivy League school. Forbes magazine routinely does a survey/stats about the number of Fortune 500 CEOs who went to state schools vs. Ivy leagues. State schools win overwhelmingly. And, that's, even if you care about measuring success in life via a career.
  • New Post at Dad-O-Matic - The Kindergarten Assessment Test
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