Question: As a mother of a 16-year-old, 10-year-old and a 5-year-old kindergartner, I have seen the changes that have occurred in education in the past 10 years. Children now are to know how to read, write, add and subtract in kindergarten -- all halfway through kindergarten. This makes me crazy. I have no patience to try to teach these things. Yet I have to help the kindergartner.
What really irritates me is a letter I got from the 10-year-old's teacher. She said the children were going to be taking standardized tests soon, and they would have less homework after preparing for the tests. It seems to me that standardized testing should be testing on stuff the children have already been taught. They should not have to crunch for such a test. -- Just My Two Cents
Answer: You are right on target saying how the kindergarten curriculum has changed. In way too many schools, kindergarten is now a mini-first grade. This, however, is definitely not true of all kindergartens. There are still kindergartens that are more developmentally appropriate for young children -- stressing preparing children for school rather than a steady diet of academics.
Teachers are definitely more concerned now about the scores their students earn on standardized tests as these scores are used by many districts to rate the effectiveness of teachers. At every grade level, there is a curriculum prescribed by the state of what must be covered during the school year. Teachers may, of course, add content beyond this curriculum.
Preparation for standardized tests needs to include familiarizing students with the format of the tests so they will feel comfortable with it on test day. And review sessions over topics that are likely to be on the test can improve scores. New teaching to the test should not be necessary if the curriculum has been followed.
The issue of homework is the amount of homework that is assigned to children, whether it is for test preparation or to reinforce daily work. The rule that is most popularly applied is that children should have 10 minutes of homework for every year in school. This means your fifth-grader should not have more than 50 minutes of homework in an evening.