Standardized testing originated in the eugenics movement

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. If you think standardized testing is okay,

do you understand that we are using standardized testing in Head Start? With 3 year olds? Yes, some behavioral scientist actually tested enough 3 year olds to establish norms. This is academic testing. Like how many colors does your 3 year old recognize and how far can he count and does he know all his letters.

I want to know how many other 'experts' spoke up and said wait a minute, we can find all that out without using an expensive (and meaningless) standardized test? I want to know if any 'expert' spoke up and asked why are we labeling our 3 year olds? Why are we deciding at age 3 what group they belong in and - what are we going to DO with this information?

As a special ed teacher in an elementary school, I see kids all the time who were labeled as being 'intellectually deficient' when they were in kindergarten. And then a couple years later, in 2nd or 3rd grade, we test them again and decide they have average cognitive functioning and those standard scores we got when they were younger are just not valid.

This is not an exact science for determining functioning in our teenagers; it is even less exact for our pre-schoolers. But the more we depend on these arbitrary standards, the more we will see them used to judge our young children and categorize them into programs with specific tracts. And if that doesn't bother you, I don't know what to tell you.