Want Better Test Scores in Low-Performing Schools? Double the Art-Making

I want to continue sharing my insights into kindergarten-age students from my last post.

When children enter kindergarten, they should have had two or three years of drawing experience already (progressing from scribbling to being able to make a representational person). That doesn't mean filling in coloring books that are adult-drawn! Kids are naturally inclined to start making marks between age two and three. You can't teach them to draw better. Just providing paper and crayon for making big movements, and lots of opportunity to create their own imagery, promotes the natural development of large and small motor skills. Kids draw first, then read, then write. That's the progression.

However, the schools are filled with kids coming to school without any practice. Too many homes don't have basic art supplies like paper, crayons, and scissors. Parents don't realize the value of providing this practice to help their children be school-ready, and this applies to affluent families as well as low income. So the kids simply aren't ready. But the kindergarten curriculum now starts at the point where this development should have taken place. There is no time provided in many kindergarten classes to make up for this lack.

If we recognize this and want to improve test scores, kindergarten -- as well as the early elementary grades -- needs to provide double the amount of time spent on art and creativity, not reduce it. The remedial work must be done through art. That's where the gap begins. Kids will then be more ready to take on the accelerated curriculum. Yet at schools where the students score low, the tendency is to cut out the art and"play" to concentrate on writing. Educators, who are trained in child development, are in such a bind. They know they can't leapfrog children's development, no matter how much the state regulators think it can be done.

Kids move through predictable stages of development. It's like learning to walk -- kids spend a lot of time crawling first, figuring it out on their own. It doesn't matter what the adult wants. Children develop on their own timetable to progress to the next level. If the state wants kindergartners to perform beyond their readiness, everybody's time, effort, and money is being wasted. Talk about a creative disconnect! School becomes an endless frustrating fog for these kids. On the other hand, engaging the kids in lots of art to address their developmental needs will do more to improve their abilities faster than giving them piles of worksheets to fill out.

I once received some state grant money to tutor very low kindergartners who were not school-ready. I knew from their backgrounds that they had not had regular access to crayons and paper. Our tutoring sessions involved art-making, not trying to make them to write sentences or sound out words. Scribbling, coloring, and painting worked towards fluidity of movement, teaching their fingers to grasp a pencil as they gained some control to make shapes. Cutting and playing with clay built up strength; gluing helped them focus. They were better able to process their own ideas. When children haven't built up the motor skills schools take for granted, and depend on for success, it's pretty difficult to prod them forward.

Providing art education would transform the kindergarten struggle into a more positive, forward-moving experience. We cannot leapfrog kids over their developmental stages, no matter how dire their test scores. Of course, the panic over scores results in a consequence to the principal who bears the brunt of low scores. It explains the unrelenting push to get kids to perform on subjects that aren't of natural interest to them .

One of the things making me the angriest is that these kids will struggle all through school. Lots of resources and interventions will miss the mark. We have to address the first lack -- no art-making. It only compounds as they get older and the curriculum gets harder. Schools have inadvertently become so one-sided -- lop-sided -- because they must teach only the left-brain type of thinking. The right-brain subjects need to be instructed, too. That's where kids are taught how to problem-solve and work with ambiguity.

Low-income schools with the best principals and fantastically dedicated teachers still can't get the results until we teach the whole mind. Business will continue to experience the "creativity gap" because workers coming from our schools have been taught there's one right answer instead of being able to think expansively. That's what extreme testing and accountability has produced.