This week’s Newsweek cover story targets the pros and cons of standardized testing for the youngest public school students.
One community highlighted in the discussion is Clemmons:
In wealthier communities, where parents can afford an extra year of day care or preschool, they are holding their kids out of kindergarten a year?a practice known in sports circles as red-shirting?so their kids can get a jump on the competition. Clemmons parent Mary DeLucia did it. When her son, Austin, was 5, he was mature, capable, social and ready for school. But the word around the local Starbucks was that kindergarten was a killer. “Other parents said, ‘Send him. He’ll do just fine’,” says DeLucia. “But we didn’t want him to do fine, we wanted him to do great!” Austin, now in fourth grade, towers over his classmates, but he’s hardly the only older kid in his grade. At Clemmons last year, 40 percent of the kindergartners started when they were 6 instead of 5. Other parents say they understand where the DeLucias are coming from but complain that red-shirting can make it hard for other kids to compete. “We’re getting to the point,” says Bill White, a Clemmons dad whose kids started on time, where “we’re going to have boys who are shaving in elementary school.”
For those who don’t want to wade through the entire story, the debate revolves around the usefulness of standardized tests for kids from 5 to 7 years old.
Some argue the tests are needed to help students avoid falling through the cracks. Others counter that too much academic rigor and testing in the early grades can lead to early student “burnout.”