New York Kindergarten Students ‘Breaking Down’ Filling Out Bubble Tests About Ducklings

shutterstock_151206917__1381488994_74.134.205.46If you have a kid who attends school in New York, they may have started taking “bubble tests” – you know, the tests where you fill in the bubble to show the correct answer, to illustrate what they know about numbers, shapes and order. The tests, according to the Department of Education, aren’t required to be administered by the 32 early education schools yet, but they do have to be completed by the spring. Reading the report in the New York Daily News, I would think maybe waiting a few months to administer these tests may be a good idea.

Administering the exams is a complete headache, teachers said. ”They don’t know how to hold pencils,” said a Bronx kindergarten teacher whose class recently took the Pearson exam. ”They don’t know letters, and you have answers that say A, B, C or D and you’re asking them to bubble in . . . They break down; they cry.”

”We said to color it in with a pencil, so they were taking out crayons,” said a veteran teacher on Staten Island.

The news article has examples of the tests given, and they look pretty adorable, with little duckies and the kids have to mark how many ducks are in a row. Haha! Dumb babies don’t know how to complete bubble tests. I think the testing is a good idea so teachers can get an idea of what their kids actually know and understand, but I’m not sure that kids this age are quite ready to follow the instructions about how to answer the questions to begin with. It would seem to make more sense that the kids be given the test when the school year is almost completed, because kids change so much during kindergarten.

Maybe they could just practice filling in the bubbles with crayons until then.

(Image: CLS Design/shutterstock)

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