After a public outcry from parents and teachers, the Los Angeles Unified School District decided to make timed reading tests optional for most transitional kindergarten students.
Previously, the district had required all TK students to take the Kindergarten Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, or DIBELS for short, a standardized screening test that assesses a child's reading fluency through a series of four one-minute tests. In one test, for example, students have one minute to name as many uppercase and lowercase letters as they can on a page. In another, they are asked to read sight words like young man speaks and acquaintance.
School officials said DIBELS would provide a quick and valuable way to inform future kindergarten teachers of TK students about their readiness for school, and asked teachers to complete the test by June 5. However, the DIBELS test is intended for kindergarten children and is not intended for preschoolers like TK, according to one of the test's developers.
But in a course correction, the school district announced this week that testing would be optional for students in TK, the new state grade level for 4-year-olds.
“For the 2023-24 school year and with the review of the California Preschool Learning Foundations taking place this summer, the administration of DIBELS for UTK Los Angeles Unified students will be optional,” a spokesperson for the school said. Los Angeles Unified. UTK stands for Universal Transitional Kindergarten. English language learners will still need to take the DIBELS to assess their skills, at least for this year.
The decision came after months of lobbying by district parents and TK teachers, who attended board meetings wearing matching yellow T-shirts that read: “We learn by playing, NOT UTK TESTS.” Groups of concerned teachers also met repeatedly with the district's early childhood leaders.
The problem, they said, is that the test is not intended for preschoolers and assesses skills that don't align with the state's expectations for what they will learn.
“This is huge for us,” said Sayra Espinoza, TK teacher at Overland Elementary School. “When we all come together, the district listens a little more.”
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Espinoza was asked to give DIBELS to his students late last year; She taught a class of children who had birthdays earlier, and by then they had all turned 5.
“It was pretty confusing for them and frustrating for me,” she said of the test, which took about 15 minutes per child to administer. “Many of them didn't understand printing concepts, so following them from left to right confused them.”
Your students will still be tested periodically using a report created by the district, but it is based solely on a teacher's observations, rather than a timed test. “It's really a big win in terms of not over-testing them, especially at such a young age,” Espinoza said.
She gave much of the credit for the district's course correction to parents, who repeatedly showed up at district meetings to make their case against the DIBELS test for their children at TK.
Lourdes Rojas, mother of a 4-year-old at TK in Carson, said she spoke with Michael Romero, head of LAUSD Transition Programs, at a meeting last week. At that time, she said that the DIBELS test would continue to be applied in TK.
“We express our concerns again. We said, can we make this optional? And I feel like that really made them think and apparently they changed their minds,” Rojas said.
Maria Arriaga, 4, smiles as she poses for a portrait with her mother, Lourdes Rojas, after school at Victoria Community Regional Park in Carson.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Earlier this week, some LAUSD principals began informing TK teachers that the DIBELS test had been made optional. On Wednesday night, the district confirmed the change.
“I feel very encouraged, very excited. I feel like my voice matters,” Rojas said. “We come together and fight for something positive that will affect our children.”
School board member Kelly Gonez said she had also been advocating for the district to adopt a more appropriate game-based approach to testing since learning about the issue from a group of TK teachers in late March.
“In fact, I think instead of trying to push academics into kindergarten and preschool, we should go the other way” and bring play-based approaches to the more advanced primary grades as well, she said.
This article is part of the Times' early childhood education initiative, which focuses on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. To learn more about the initiative and its philanthropic sponsors, visit latimes.com/earlyed.
