SOE News
Samuel Meisels Critiques Early Childhood Testing
Oct. 5, 2005
The School of Education and its Early Childhood, Families and Literacy Program presented the third William C. Friday lecture, featuring Dr. Samuel J. Meisels, president of the Erikson Institute in Chicago. The lecture, titled “Can Early Childhood Assessments Answer Policymakers’ Questions about Accountability?” was held in the George Watts Hill Alumni Center on UNC’s campus.
Formerly a professor at the University of Michigan and Tufts University, Meisels has served as president of the Erikson Institute since 2002. He holds a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and is a leader in the field of early childhood development, a subject on which he has published 150 articles, books and monographs.
Lynne Vernon-Feagans, the School of Education’s William C. Friday distinguished professor of early childhood, families and literacy, introduced Meisels, citing him as a “practitioner as well as an academic.”
As a former preschool, kindergarten and first-grade teacher and a major researcher in early childhood development, Meisels opposes high-stakes testing for young children. His lecture focused on the negative aspects of early childhood national testing, particularly within the Head Start Program, and on the need to make early intervention and assessment programs more effective.
Meisels explored issues surrounding the Head Start National Reporting System (NRS), an effort by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to measure the progress of 4 and 5-yr old Head Start children. Highly critical of this system, he described examples of biased questions from the test and listed several problems associated with school readiness tests such as the NRS.
One particular problem, he argued, is that test items often imply teaching. “You can’t test a child on colors or letters,” he said, “if a child hasn’t been taught his or her colors or letters.” Because of the great variety of teaching in different schools, states, cultures and classrooms, having one standard assessment test is not only impractical, Meisels believes, but it also “punishes children for what they haven’t been taught.”
He noted that “high-stakes tests assume that the goals of educational programs are the same, regardless of differences in setting, resources, timing, approach, or child and family demographics.”
“The best way to evaluate a child’s performance,” Meisels said, “is to study performance, not something else. And the best way to improve a child’s performance,” he added, “is to teach the child, not test the child.”
To illustrate this point, Meisels related an anecdote comparing cows that are constantly weighed to children who are constantly tested. Regardless of how often this is done, he said, neither will grow unless they are fed. Without better nourishment, testing is futile.
Instead of high-stakes standardized tests for preschool and elementary children, Meisels advocates alternatives such as observational assessment and program evaluation, which he believes will put less pressure on the individual child while yielding more useful and accurate results overall.
The William C. Friday Lecture series, named for William C. Friday, president emeritus of the UNC system, brings several internationally renowned scholars to UNC’s campus each year. The lecture series enhances the William C. Friday Distinguished Professorship at the School of Education and recognizes Friday’s commitment to the children and families of North Carolina.