Testing for Kindergarten author Karen Quinn
Hello. I’m Karen Quinn, author of Testing For Kindergarten. Have you ever worried about whether or not your child would be able to get into the school you most want him to attend? It’s enormously stressful, especially if you’re applying competitive schools that require testing. I teach parents how to work with their young kids for 15 – 20 minutes a day so that by the time they’re tested, they will perform at their highest level AND be ready for the academic demands of kindergarten. I do this in a way that is fun and natural so kids don’t know they’re learning and you aren’t stressed out.
If you’d like to watch the true story behind my new book, grab a cup of tea and click the video. It’s about 10 minutes of riveting footage (and not just to my mother). But if you’re in a hurry, read on; it’s quicker. Yes, I teach parents how to help their little ones succeed on IQ tests they need for kindergarten admissions and ability group placement. I know what you’re thinking…this woman is demented!
Getting kids ready for IQ tests when they’re barely out of diapers. Call social services…NOW!
But wait! Before you turn me in, hear me out…
My personal opinion is that it’s nuts that schools make such high-stakes placement decisions based on a single test taken by a 4-year-old on one day in his life. What if he’s having a bad day? Even if he’s having the best day of his life, IQ scores can change by as much as 30 points between the age of 2.5 and 17. Not only that, they are poor predictors of success in school. But guess what, schools across America rely on these scores to place 4 and 5-year-old children in top private schools, gifted program, and ability groups. So as unreliable as they are, the schools where you live will look to them to make life-affecting placement decisions for your child. As parents, we can kvetch about this or do something about it.
The next thing I say will surprise you, but it’s something I know for sure. As much as we love to grouse about IQ tests for toddlers, they aren’t entirely useless. Here’s why. Every IQ test assesses the 7-abilities children need for academic success: language, knowledge, math, thinking, memory, spatial, and fine-motor skills. Kids need these same abilities to excel from the time they start kindergarten until they finish high school. As a parent you must understand what these abilities are, how to instill them in your child, and how to recognize whether or not he has them. If he is missing just one of these abilities, he’ll struggle in school, endure criticism and embarrassment in class, and will likely suffer diminished self-esteem. It sounds harsh, but it’s true.
I know this from experience. My daughter, Schuyler, lacked certain spatial abilities. Unfortunately, we didn’t figure that out until 6th grade. By then, her academic problems had compounded and it was almost impossible to catch up. Schuyler’s school struggles were epic – all for lack of spatial skills. To this day, I deeply regret that I didn’t understand enough about intellectual development to recognize the root of Schuyler’s problem and how to help her. I don’t want anything like this to happen to your child.
I never expected to become an expert on IQ testing, school admissions, and learning. In fact, I began my career as a lawyer, and then moved to marketing at American Express. But when my son, Sam, was 3, something happened that changed the course of his life, and my career.
Sam was one of those toddlers who had an ear infection every other month. By the time he turned 3, we noticed that he wasn’t developing the way his older sister had. Eventually, we mustered up the courage to take him to a doctor who ran a battery of physical and psychological tests.
“I have good news and bad news,” the doctor told us. ”The good news is…Sam’s speech and motor delays stem from the fact that he can’t hear, the result of fluid build up from all his ear infections. Physically, we can fix that.”
“The bad news is that we gave him the WPPSI – the same test he’ll need to take next year to get into school. He failed miserably. I don’t believe he can catch up.” And then came the kicker. ”Mrs. Quinn, no private school in town will accept your son.”
I was devastated. We lived in one of the worst performing public school districts in New York City. With Sam’s delays, I felt he would need the small class size of a private school in order to thrive. Naturally, I called my mother. I’m lucky. My mother was a Professor of Early Childhood Education. With her guidance, she and I mapped out a program I could do with Sam at home to build the skills he would need for kindergarten. Every night, Sam and I worked together. To him, we were just playing. But in reality, each activity was selected to develop the 7-abilities he would need for testing and school.
One year later, Sam took the test again. I’ll never forget the call I got from our nursery school director a few weeks later.
“Sam’s results are in,” she said. ”You’re never going to believe this, but he made the top scores in his class!”
Sam was admitted to our first choice school. Today, he’s a bright high school student taking honors and advanced placement classes. In fact, by first grade, his teachers were surprised to learn that he ever had any developmental delays.
Not long after that, American Express laid me off. Before I even packed up my boxes, I knew what I had to do. The experience with Sam inspired me to co-found Smart City Kids, a company dedicated to improving every child’s chance of acceptance to the school of their parent’s choice. We helped NYC families through every step of the admissions process with workshops and one-to-one consultations for nursery school and kindergarten, private, gifted and talented programs, and public school. While there, I taught parents how to work with their children, just as I had worked with Sam. Time and again, they performed so well on their tests that they get into the top city schools.
I am not a professional educator. I am a mother who was forced to figure this out to help her own child. Later, I became a professional, sharing what I knew with other parents so they could help their children, and they did. Now I’m passing the information on to you with my new book, Testing For Kindergarten, and through my blog, which you can register for right on this website. In fact, you should stop what you’re doing right now and register ! Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you.
Back so soon? Good. Where were we? Ah, yes, the blog. It’s a continuation of my book, really. Through it, I hope to help you help your child test well and get her placed in the best possible school situation for her. It may be a private school, a gifted program, a magnet or charter school, your local public school, a religious school – we all have different desires and beliefs about the optimal school placement for our child. There is no right or wrong answer. I plan to fill this blog with the information you need as you apply to programs, prepare your child to begin his first school experience and support him in the early years. I hope you’ll become as aware of the 7-abilities as you are of the 5 food groups so you can feed your child’s brain every day and help him soar in school. If you have questions, please ask. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll find someone who does.
Here’s a bit about me personally. After leaving Smart City Kids, I wrote The Ivy Chronicles, a novel that pokes fun at the NYC private school admissions process. That’s why I named my blog The Baby Ivy Chronicles, in case you were wondering. Seriously, you have to have a sense of humor about this stuff or you’ll go nuts. I wrote three other novels after that – Wife in the Fast Lane, Holly Would Dream and The Sister Diaries. I’d describe my novels as smart chic lit, but funnier than most books in that genre, with protagonists who are very accomplished, tend to lose everything in the beginning but eventually get back on their feet and triumph. They’re working on movies for two of them, which would be cool if it happened but with Hollywood you never know. Testing for Kindergarten is my first non-fiction book and it is a true labor of love.
Last year, we moved from NYC to Miami Beach where I live with my husband, Mark, son, Sam, two dogs, Olive and Bronco, and two cats, Cookie and Smokey. My husband recently took a job in California, so we’re doing the best we can with a bi-coastal marriage until Sam graduates high school. My daughter, Schuyler, is in New York City studying acting. If you have any desire to read more about my life, check out www.karenquinn.net, where I’ve been blogging about it for years. People tell me the blog is funny.
