A good friend and parent posted a video, which is embedded below, about her son’s experience in Kindergarten. It’s important to remember that accountability in public education is for now one single definition. Not all accountability is created equal. We can be held accountable in numerous ways and to very different things.

In addition to the video, you can listen to our interview with her At the Chalk Face.

I also want to post a message from an educator that I received via Facebook that seems to offer some anecdotal confirmation of what is happening to the youngest students.

I did a clinic for my Master’s Degree this summer and tutored a kindergartener and a 2nd grader for summer school. Yes, these children were in summer school instead of out playing! This kindergartener could read and had most of her sight words for the pre-primer list, could write (phonically) and was just precious. Kindergarten has always been the place to get ready to read. If your child was reading by the end of the year, that was GREAT. This little girl is considered behind. Really???? I almost cried. However, I did what every good teacher/parent does. We read together, lots!! The second grader (boy) met me and immediately started “Did you know….?” He knows a lot and has lots of interests in how things work, but he doesn’t like to read. Why? Because, the stories are boring. He loved reading about how things work, volcanoes, trucks, just about anything non-fiction. Most of the books we had to read together because they were above his level, but very high interest for him. In their world of school, they are behind because of inappropriate expectations and both of these children’s love of learning is going to be lost. If you use these examples, please respect their privacy and don’t use my name or area because it would be too easy to access who these children were. Thanks for letting me vent about how asinine these expectations are for the littlest of our learners.

All of this I think paints a pretty dire picture of what one vision of accountability is doing to education.