ABSTRACT

The literacy assessment of young children is in a state of upheaval. Political forces have set the pendulum swinging wildly. Consider, for example, the use of early literacy assessment for accountability purposes. The 1980s saw an increase in states’ efforts to implement high-stakes accountability testing in earlier grades in school. However, the pendulum slowed in the 1990s, at least for the assessment of young children, and reversed course. Writing in 1996, Shepard, Taylor, and Kagan concluded that states had virtually eliminated accountability testing in grades K-3. They considered this shift a positive move away from an era, characterized earlier by Shepard (1994), as involving . . . “testing of 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds [that] has been excessive and inappropriate” (p. 212). They considered it inappropriate, because, among other things, it distorted the curriculum, leading, for example, to “the teaching of decontextualized skills” (p. 212).