avoice4children-blog

[avoice4children-blog]

Kindergarten: What’s the Rush?

Margaret Zlotnick

             I taught first grade as a brand new teacher in 1988. I think that anyone who taught back then agrees these were “the good old days” – the days before No Child Left Behind and Common Core.  Teaching has become more of a high stakes venture with more accountability and more standardized testing.  While the effort to improve our educational system is praiseworthy, we need to shed more light on the unintended consequences it has produced.  The curriculum has shifted down a year since I began my career; today’s kindergarten is yesterday’s first grade.  This has been obvious to early childhood educators for years and now research by Bassock, Latham & Rorem (2016) confirms the shift with empirical evidence which also indicates a shift away from time spent on science, art, music, and most importantly, play.  But is it developmentally appropriate?  Or are we setting children up for failure?

           Kindergarten used to help prepare young children to make the transition into elementary school.  Its goal was to help children separate from their mother, learn social skills, and to develop their gross and fine motor skills (i.e. holding a pencil, cutting with scissors) and to play.  As time went by, some academics were included such as counting, learning letters, and writing names.  Today kindergartners have homework, spelling words, sight words, and tests.  They are expected to read and write going into first grade.  But here’s the thing: when I taught first grade my students had done none of these things, it was my responsibility to teach them to read.  I don’t remember any of my students going on to second grade not knowing how to read.  This begs the question:  What’s the rush?  

           I also taught kindergarten for seven years.  I recently interviewed for a kindergarten position and was told that it is now much more difficult to teach than when I was doing it.  So if it is that difficult for teachers, imagine how difficult it is for children! What is making this downward shift in curriculum so difficult for both teachers and children?  The answers lie in how children learn and what they need to learn in order to succeed not only in school but in later life.

           Young children learn best by playing.  Play functions as the major means by which children (1) develop intrinsic interests and competencies; (2) learn how to make decisions, solve problems, exert self-control, and follow rules; (3) learn to regulate their emotions; (4) make friends and learn to get along with others as equals; and (5) experience joy (Gray, 2011).  Not only has kindergarten become more academic, it has expanded to a whole day program in many parts of the country.  This created the unintended consequence of greatly limiting children’s free play time.  Gray also notes that a correlation exists between decrease in play time for American children over the past 50 years and an increase in mental health problems in children and adolescents including anxiety, depression, feelings of helplessness, and narcissism.

           Reading instruction under No Child Left Behind has become more formalized and data driven.  It is not unusual for a school’s reading specialist to meet with kindergarten teachers every week to plan instruction.  In our district, Kindergarten Language Arts/Reading takes up a 90 minute block in which children receive whole and small group reading and writing instruction.  Children are also pulled out at other times, for individualized instruction if they need extra help.  This is done by the classroom teacher and/or instructional specialists.  The unintended consequence here is setting children up to fail before they start elementary school.

           The drive to have all children reading by third grade takes a one-size-fits-all approach and doesn’t allow for young children’s individual development.  Sadly, the research has already begun to show that pushing children to read earlier can actually have a negative effect on learning a few years down the road.  A longitudinal study of two groups of children in New Zealand who began reading instruction at age 5 and age 7 respectively showed no difference in reading ability level by age 11.  However, the group that began at five showed less enjoyment of reading and scored lower on comprehension (Whitebread, 2013).

           Finally, children from lower socioeconomic and English language learner homes are impacted even more negatively by the new Kindergarten than their middle class peers.  Findings indicate that although changes to kindergarten classrooms were pervasive, in many cases they were more pronounced among schools serving high percentages of low-income and non-White children, particularly with respect to teacher expectations and didactic instruction (Bassock, Latham & Rorem, 2016).  These are the very children who should be allowed to play and interact with each other to learn self-regulation and social skills; who should be read to and talked to, in order to develop a love of books and language; and who need time to play in nurturing environments that help them develop their curiosity and love of learning. Instead they are tossed into a pressure cooker and labeled as developmentally delayed or as having behavior problems because they act out their frustrations. In fact, Brown (1998) found consistent child and adult play deficits in a study of criminally violent young men. More recently, a study of 3,000 Enslish children in high-quality, play-based preschools, showed that attendance benefited disadvantaged children in particular (Whitebread, 2013).

           Shifting the curriculum downward has robbed children of the time they need to develop at their own pace and to learn through play. The evidence for delaying formal education is there.  In fact, many countries that routinely score higher on the PISA (Program for International Assessment) than the United States begin formal schooling later than we do (Whitebread, 2014).  Parents and early childhood educators need to educate and put pressure on school boards and districts to reverse the downward shift in curriculum and the problems it creates for our youngest and most vulnerable children.

References

Bassock, D., Latham, S., & Rorem, A. (2016). Is kindergarten the new first grade?  AERA Open 2(1), 1-31.

Brown, S. (1998). Play as an organizing principle: clinical evidence and personal observations. In M. Bekoff and J. Byers (Eds.) Animal Play: Evolutionary, Comparative and Ecological Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gray, P., (2011).  The decline of play and the rise of psychopathology in children and adolescents.  American Journal of Play, 3(4), 443-463.

Whitebread, David, 2013.  School starting age:  The evidence. University of       Cambridge Research.  Retrieved from  http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/school-starting-age-the-evidence

Whitebread, D., 2014.  Hard evidence:  At what age are children ready for school?  The  Conversation.  Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-at-what-age-are-children-ready-for-school-29005

  o[��US�