Last year, a few early childhood advocates blasted the Common Core State Standards for their “harmful” effects on kindergarteners, particularly in reading. While a careful examination of the standards reveals this claim to be overstated, the notion that we are killing kindergarten was gaining traction long before Common Core came onto the scene (2010 and thereafter). Until now, this narrative has been informed largely by anecdotal evidence, idealism, and good old-fashioned nostalgia. Noting that “surprisingly little empirical evidence” has been gathered on the changing nature of kindergarten classrooms, this paper attempts to fill the void by comparing kindergarten and first-grade classrooms in 1998 and 2010—capturing the changes in teachers’ perceptions of kindergarten over time.
Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, researchers compared survey response data from public school kindergarten teachers in 1998 and 2010 to investigate changes across five dimensions: teachers’ beliefs about school readiness, curricular focus and use of time, classroom materials, pedagogical approach, and assessment practices.
Overall, researchers found that kindergarten has become more like first grade. When asked to rate the importance of thirteen school readiness skills, 2010 teachers tended to rate all of them as more important than their 1998 counterparts had. This was true for academic skills (identifying letters, counting to twenty) and non-academic ones (being “sensitive to others’ feelings,” problem solving). The most striking change in beliefs was related to reading: only 31 percent of 1998 teachers believed that children should learn to read in kindergarten; by 2010, that figure rose to 80 percent. In short, teachers expect more from kindergarteners than they did in the 1990s—not necessarily a bad thing given that their expectations have an enormous influence on student behavior and achievement.
However, the findings also point to an unfortunate narrowing in curriculum. While the number of teachers conducting daily reading and math instruction didn’t shift significantly, the percentage of those teaching music and art each day went down (by eighteen and sixteen percentage points, respectively). It’s not that music or art disappeared altogether; it just happened less often. An overwhelming majority of teachers in 2010 still reported teaching music and art weekly. (On a positive note, more teachers in 2010 than in 1998 reported that children had daily recess.) Kindergarten teachers also reported an increasing reliance on didactic instructional activities (use of worksheets, workbooks, and textbooks) as well as fewer centers for hands-on learning (particularly water or sand tables, art stations, and dramatic play and science areas). Schools serving more low-income and non-white children were more likely to use didactic instruction and less likely to provide hands-on learning opportunities.
Several looming questions remain and point to the need for further study. For one thing, there’s an ongoing debate regarding how much academic content is appropriate for kindergarteners—some argue that too much is damaging, while others posit that exposure to advanced content in kindergarten can benefit students. Given the wide range of developmental maturity among kindergarten-age students, it seems both imprecise and unproductive to generalize in either direction. (Instead, educators and policy makers may want to explore solutions, like a transition year between kindergarten and first grade or competency-based groups instead of age-based ones, to help mitigate concerns that less developmentally mature children are harmed by increasing rigor.) Additionally, the paper briefly mentions that “low-performing teachers in high-stakes grades are disproportionately reassigned to untested early elementary classrooms.” This trend deserves urgent attention because low-income children can’t afford underperforming teachers in the early grades. Finally, the report alludes to—and rightly rejects—the notion that academically oriented classrooms crowd out exploration, social skill development, and play. In fact, high-quality kindergarten teachers do both—yet low-income students, again, are more likely to receive poorly structured pedagogy and be ultimately shortchanged.
Today’s kindergarten classrooms are increasingly rigorous. Unfortunately, youngsters who come to school unprepared are at an even greater disadvantage than in the past. The study reminds us of the importance of high-quality, targeted preschool, as well as teacher policies that ensure that kindergarten students—especially those with skills deficiencies—don’t get short shrift.
Source: Daphna Bassok, Scott Latham, and Anna Rorem, “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?” American Educational Research Association (January 6, 2016)
