The End of Kindergarten

Although the last few weeks at school have been a bit of a free-for-all, Elba, Gemma, and Wilder have had an academic-intensive year at "kindergarten."  By the middle of May, they had a solid foundation in patterns (aba, aabb, abcd) and were learning to write four-part stories using the words "first, then, next, last or finally."  Gemma and Wilder were both bringing home worksheets that used coloring squares and number lines to explore all the different ways you could "make a number."  (1+9, 2+8, 3+7...)

Yesterday in the car, they were quizzing each other about the latest words to show up on their "word prompt boards" -- would, should, and could.  "I can too hear the L," Gemma insisted crossly.  I could almost feel Wilder rolling his eyes in his seat behind me.

After nine months of literacy work, all three of them are reading "Henry & Mudge" books independently.  (Elba and Gemma need a few more word prompts than Wilder.)  Wilder read me to sleep with the last four chapters of Junie B. Jones Is A Graduation Girl last Friday.

In other words, they've all had a fantastic year in first grade.

ChicagoMama and PhantomScribbler have both written today about When Should a Kid Start Kindergarten?  They both make excellent arguments, so I'm just going to pull out the quotations that affected me the most in Elizabeth Weil's discussion of "red-shirt" kindergartners:

In response to this testing, kindergartens across the country have become more demanding: if kids must be performing on standardized tests in third grade, then they must be prepping for those tests in second and first grades, and even at the end of kindergarten, or so the thinking goes.

Curriculum planners no longer ask, What does a 5-year-old need? Instead they ask, If a student is to pass reading and math tests in third grade, what does that student need to be doing in the prior grades? Whether kindergarten students actually need to be older is a question of readiness, a concept that itself raises the question: Ready for what?

Our district superintendent has made clear his determination to make kindergarten more rigorous so that children will be "better prepared" by the time they take their first end-of-grade exams in third grade.  Because their teachers' aides were pulled out of class for a week to proctor the third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade EOGs, and because there were PA addresses and signs asking for silence all over the place, all the kindergartners at our school are well aware of the importance of those tests.

One serious side effect of pushing back the cutoffs is that while well-off kids with delayed enrollment will spend another year in preschool, probably doing what kindergartners did a generation ago, less-well-off children may, as the literacy specialist Katie Eller put it, spend “another year watching TV in the basement with Grandma.”  What’s more, given the socioeconomics of redshirting — and the luxury involved in delaying for a year the free day care that is public school — the oldest child in any given class is more likely to be well off and the youngest child is more likely to be poor.

According to Heckman’s analysis, if you have limited funds to spend it makes the most economic sense to spend them early. The implication is that if poor children aren’t in adequate preschool programs, rolling back the age of kindergarten is a bad idea economically, as it pushes farther down the ramp the point at which we start investing funds and thus how productive those funds will be.

There are moves afoot across the country to provide pre-school programs in every public school, so that lower-income parents could access the same quality preschool education that upper-income parents now provide.  Of course, this will cost money, and introduces all sorts of arguments about teacher accreditation and resource allocation for early-childhood education.

One can easily see how the skill-begets-skill, motivation-begets-motivation dynamic plays out in a kindergarten setting: a child who comes in with a good vocabulary listens to a story, learns more words, feels great about himself and has an even better vocabulary at the end of the day. Another child arrives with a poor vocabulary, listens to the story, has a hard time following, picks up fewer words, retreats into insecurity and leaves the classroom even further behind.

I've seen 72 kindergartners handle their new school this year, and I'm here to tell you that the ones who found the curriculum manageable love school, and keep trying to do well.  The ones who weren't ready continue to struggle.

What's worse, the kids who did well in kindergarten were never at risk in the first place of failing their EOGs three years from now.  The kids who entered at risk, mostly stayed at risk, because their first encounters with big-kid school taught them that school is a struggle, and that school is the place where their (unspoken, unaddressed) family-based inequalities roar to the forefront and hold them back.

The kids who will someday pull down our EOG scores and hurt our district's standing on the No Child Left Behind measures gained nothing from the district's decision to skip kindergarten and move right along to first grade.

Even more laughable, everyone admits that -- because most first graders simply are not neurologically ready for the more complicated cognitive skills of second grade -- first grade will mostly be a repeat of our "kindergarten."

Only next year, the kids who needed a year of preschool/kindergarten and did not receive it (not from the best, most developmentally aware kindergarten teachers I've ever had the grace and good luck to encounter) will be dealing not only with the inequalities their families have, but the inequalities their school system created, by asking them to be first graders before they were ready.

Weil suggests that there is no easy solution to red-shirting and the problem of the achievement gap.  I'd like to suggest that she's wrong.  And I say this as the parent of three kids who managed their first-grade curriculum well, who love school and respect their teachers, who are already reading at a second-grade level according to some measures.

The solution to the problem of unfunded preschool and the red-shirting of kindergartners is easy.

All we need to do is turn kindergarten back into kindergarten again.

Comments

[elswhere]

Amen, Amen, Amen.

[Phantom Scribbler]

Great post, Jody! We brought LG's kindergarten portfolio today, and, in the HOUR AND A HALF it took us to read through it all, I was completely blown away by the level of work these kids were doing. (Even given that, from what you're saying here, our school district is much easier on the kindergartners than yours.) Graphing, complex geometric puzzles, story structure. Wow. And crazy. Thirty years ago, we were expected to learn how to sit in a circle and stop eating the paste.

His school is small and well-supplied with aids for struggling kids (it's a Title I school). They really make an effort to make each kid feel like he or she can achieve competency by trying his or her best and having fun. But I'd hate to see what the result of this curriculum would be in a school without such extensive supports.

[Lisa C.]

"Spending another year watching TV with Grandma."

Ouch, says I. Because the issue you're addressing in this post applies directly to the Moosh. He will be one of the youngest in his kindergarten class starting fall 2008, age 5 years, 1.5 months. We can't afford preschool. Period. We can switch our work schedules and put him in a really super awesome daycare(7 hours a day, 4 days a week), but that's the best we can do (to the tune of $800/month). And if he does not pass his kindergarten readiness evaluation next spring, we are left with two choices: pay for yet another year of day care (cost to us: another $10,000) or put him in school when he is not ready. It's a Solomon's choice, in my opinion.

I hate this. I hate feeling pressured to have him in day care next year when having him home is more convenient for us. But on the other hand, I can't justify making kindergarten, with it's rigorous academic schedule, his first year in a structured classroom. I think that will set him up for failure. Our school district makes no bones about it: kindergarten is for learning to read. The end.

Now R and I were both early readers (I was 4 when I learned to read, and R was either 4 or had just turned 5) so the problem may solve itself. I am wracked with nerves and guilt over this whole school thing, though.

[carosgram]

Thanks for the post and also the links. I posted a long entry at phantomscribbler's blog and so will not bore you with my thoughts. You always take on great topics and I so enjoy your blog.

[landismom]

Thanks for this insightful post. My daughter is the youngest kid in her class, and while I don't regret our decision to send her to kindergarten the year she went, I do wish the school environment were different. In the three years that she's been in school, she's proven herself more than adequate to the academic work.

The area that I'd change, if I could, though, would be reducing the amount of stress on the kids in even kindergarten, and certainly this year in 2nd grade. The pressure, not the work, is what gets to my daughter.

[Jennifer]

Our local elementary is focussing on reducing class sizes in kindergarten next year, the year my son starts (last year the kg classes averaged 25 kids!!), so they are not offering all-day kindergarten. And yet there's the push for kids to be reading by the end of the year.

Kindergarten is 2 1/2 hours long. I am quite interested to know how they'll take kids from not knowing all their letters to knowing how to read in 2 1/2 hours a day.

[Jennifer]

BTW my community will never pay for public preschool. Never. Oregonians are cheap when it comes to schooling, for one; and for two, there just isn't room. All the elementary schools in this town -- some of which are LESS THAN 5 YEARS OLD -- already have portables!

Interestingly, when my husband was growing up here, there was no public kindergarten.

[Sandy D.]

My district has addressed this by providing (free) "Young 5's K" - they offer a couple of small classes that are geared towards kids with late fall birthdays, whose parents might be expected to "redshirt" them. Since my dd was born two days before the Michigan cut-off date (Dec. 1), and was so shy it took her four months to say a word to her preschool teacher, we did this and loved it. She has grown in confidence (and some academically, though they really didn't push for literacy as you describe) so much this year. K is going to be wonderful.

The only drawback? With so many kids in the class with Oct-Nov. birthdays, she had birthday cupcakes or other treats every few days in the fall. The spring has been a long drab succession of graham crackers, goldfish, perked up by the occasional Trader Joe's chocolate cat cookies.

Hmm, I guess you can tell what's important to my dd at school.

[maggie]

My kid will be on the young end (born Nov, for a 12/31 cut-off) - but I'm not worried about her - she's a girl, I was always the youngest, she's in a great daycare. But still, there's something wrong in this whole picture. So yes, turn kindergarten back into kindergarten.

[Erika]

Hi Jody! Great post, it's nice to see you writing again at the blog.

Redshirting has been my obsession for the last year- Audrey turned 5 this past October. She did a 2nd year of 2 morning a week Preschool with a fabulous, Arts-based, non-academic program, and really blossomed socially. I was happy to have her home with her siblings and not in full day K just yet.

She is academically way ahead of my local public school's program, so we've pushed to have her admitted to my parish's private school for 1st grade next year, skipping K entirely. She will be the youngest in her class by far. Many boys there were red-shirted I suspect. I know it's a good match for her (tall, responsible, and reading well...) but hearing about aggression issues that went on with these older boys last year in K has given me pause. And made me hate red-shirting just a little bit more. Sigh. There's no perfect solutions. I'm glad to hear that your 3 had a great year and learned so much. Take care.

[nyjlm]

Our elementary school believes K is a two year program. Some children do it in one yr, and some take both years. I think this approach makes a lot of sense, and particularly really helps the less well off kids who may not have had quality preschool, or even quality interaction with their parents.

[Naomi]

For a long time, I'd see redshirting presented as parents trying to give their kids an "edge." And yet in every case I saw, it seemed to be parents who were acutely aware that their rambunctious five-year-old was not socially ready for the pressure-cooker version of kindergarten that so many districts serve up.

My kid was in the opposite situation; she just missed the cutoff the year she turned five. (Cutoff = 9/1, birthday = 9/20.) So she was one of the oldest kids in her class. In retrospect, she would have been fully ready for kindergarten last year, and would have done great in first grade this year. She enjoyed her final year of preschool, but spent a lot of this year bored, which makes me sad. I'll note that she was bored with the academic bits -- she's always happy to play or draw.

I haven't written a whole lot about Molly's kindergarten in my own blog because I'm not even vaguely anonymous, and you never know who's going to stop by. But there are a couple of things that have really gotten me thinking about inequalities, lately. I may try to write about them at some point.

[Tulip]

Jennifer may wish to peer beyond her beautiful Ponderosas to Salem, where SB392 has passed through the Senate & is now in the House (the last I checked, which was late May). This bill will lower the compulsory age in Oregon to six. One of the results will be necessary additional classroom space, teachers, and so on, and the only way to pay for that is increased taxes. Oregonians won't have a choice but to pay it.

There are a myriad of mandatory economic impacts to Oregonians which will result from a lowered mandatory attendance age.

[shannon]

NCLB and the stupid testing is a major factor in our decision to home school for the early grades. We're glad we have the option. I wish public school kids could opt out of the NCLB-influenced curriculum.

Yes, Nat will be passing those tests with flying colors, come the end of "third grade," but she won't be sweating bullets between now and then.

[SheilaC]

Could you explain the term "redshirting"? I'm Canadian, and I'm not getting it. But I am sorry that kids in your school have such big demands placed on them in all-day kindergarten. It does sound a lot like what Grade One does in our school. Our gang had a much more traditional fun half-day kindergarten, and they loved it. And now they love Grade One, too, except that they are some of the most advanced readers, and haven't been much challenged in that area.

That said, hooray for W, E and G for reading Henry and Mudge, and lots of other good books no doubt. They might also like Cynthia Rylant's series about Poppleton, and Mr. Putter and Tabby.

Thanks for the link to the levelled reading lists! Plenty there for me to print out and take to the library on Saturday...

[Foster]

I dont even like the idea of all-day kindergarten, and I work at a daycare where kids can spend up to 10 hours.

This whole problem is why I am saying "Hello, Waldorf!" Just for kindergarten, though :)