What, Exactly Are We Assessing?

      I know I have been vocal about testing in PreK, and I will continue to be. But, in the midst of fall "assessments", I had an epiphany:  What, exactly, are we assessing?

     Over half my class is non-English speaking this year.  We are required to give an assessment called "My IGDIs."  In the assessment manual, the directions state that the student must answer the question...in English!  How is that even fair to my Hispanic children? It is not a true picture of what they know!  For example, In a subtest, called "Picture Naming," one of the pictures is of a half gallon of milk. The child *should* say milk. My Hispanic children, every.single.one of them said, "leche." the Spanish word for milk, so I could not give them credit for naming that picture because they did not say "milk." Are you kidding me??  They KNEW what it was, they just couldn't say it in English.  What are we assessing?  The assessment says "Picture Naming." 

     On their website, this is what it says about the assessment: 

• Research-based:  MyIGDIs measures and seasonal benchmarks are grounded in years of research by child development experts, so you can have confidence in the reliability and validity of the results. 

     I feel that this assessment is discriminatory toward non-English speaking students, making the students' answers invalid.  Why can't they answer in their native language? It's not meant to test English. It's testing whether or not they know what the picture is. I even tried calling the company, but I needed a district code, which I don't have access to. As fired up as I was, that's probably a good thing!

     I talked to my teaching partners. They have some children who are non-verbal. They can't say "apple."  Why can't there be an assessment for them where there are three pictures and they are asked to point to the apple? Just because they can't say it, doesn't mean they don't know it. This mandated assessment doesn't come close to giving a true picture of where our students are! So when those who are not in our classrooms on a daily basis, who don't know our students, read the data, they aren't seeing a true picture of the students who are in our classrooms. 

     It's not right! It's not fair! It's discriminatory! It doesn't give a true picture of what our students actually know and portrays them in a negative light.