Schools to Start Gathering Psychological Data on Students

Testing: It has practically become a four letter type of word.

I remember being tested in the 1980’s. We took what was, at that time known, as the CAT: California Achievements Tests. Those tests weren’t, to my knowledge, tied to government money or used as a tool to threaten schools. They were simply a test to see how students were doing. No pressure. Just annoying.

Fast forward thirty years, testing is now tied to government funding. If your students don’t do well, money will be taken away ( because that makes sense). The pressure put on kids AND teachers is insurmountable. We have become an education system not to educate, rather it is a system used to teach students how to take tests. Then this data is collected by our government and used to supposedly better our education system.

Some education experts have now decided this isn’t enough. The National Assessment of Educational Process (NAEP) (often called the “Nation’s Report Card”) wants more. They want to test students to find out what their goals and mindsets are. Basically, they want to give our students psychological testing and collect that data. The question is why or to what end? The answer is simple. Instead of schools just teaching the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic, they now want to teach social and emotional skills; skills which are traditionally taught by parents. Apparently, we, as parents, are not doing it to the government’s satisfaction.

Education Weekly published an article outlining what (NAEP) has decided to include in this testing.

“The background survey will include five core areas—grit, desire for learning, school climate, technology use, and socioeconomic status—of which the first two focus on a student’s noncognitive skills, and the third looks at noncognitive factors in the school…….In addition, questions about other noncognitive factors, such as self-efficacy and personal achievement goals, may be included on questionnaires for specific subjects to create content-area measures, according to Jonas P. Bertling, ETS director for NAEP survey questionnaires.”

How does one go about measuring grit? And does a 4th grader have the same goals as an 8th grader or a 12th grader (the ages when these tests would be administered)?

Socioeconomic factors have long been used to redirect tax dollars to schools in need. See Chicago Public Schools for that.

The term cognitive is one that is thrown around frequently in the education and psychological worlds. Simply put, it just means a person’s mental process or how we perceive things, memory, judgment and reason in contrast to emotions and how we react to things.
Non-cognitive skills refer to social skills, how one relates to others. They are not things that can really be measured in general. Yet, here they are trying to do that very thing.

At this point, schools will not have the same accountability as they do for other testing. That, however, may come in the future.

So, in short, the government basically wants to collect every piece of data about your child that they possibly can. One school in Connecticut even asks, on a kindergarten form, how the child was born: C section or vaginal.

One could argue that with all of the special needs children and so much of our tax dollars money going towards non-basic education, perhaps the questions are valid. If there are things that could make learning difficult for your child, and his education plan needs to be altered, this could be seen by some as a necessity.
Has the government gone too far? Are they asking for too much? Asking in the name of better designed education is the purported reason, but is that really the direction we want to go?

How do you feel about the government collecting psychological data on your child? Is it too much information?