To: President Donald Trump
Stop preschools from crushing kids
I am passionate about education, but what I see in my child's preschool is shocking: 3-year old are spending their days learning letters and numbers, instead of playing.
The adoption of the Common Core State Standards falsely implies that having children achieve these standards will overcome the impact of poverty on development and learning, and will create equal educational opportunity for all children.
Many children are not developmentally ready to read in kindergarten, yet the Common Core State Standards require them to do just that. This is leading to inappropriate classroom practices.
I call for the following action: Withdraw kindergarten standards from the Common Core, and make kindergarten and preschool a place for the young kinds to play and socialize, as it historically was designed to be.
The adoption of the Common Core State Standards falsely implies that having children achieve these standards will overcome the impact of poverty on development and learning, and will create equal educational opportunity for all children.
Many children are not developmentally ready to read in kindergarten, yet the Common Core State Standards require them to do just that. This is leading to inappropriate classroom practices.
I call for the following action: Withdraw kindergarten standards from the Common Core, and make kindergarten and preschool a place for the young kinds to play and socialize, as it historically was designed to be.
Why is this important?
My son, who turned 3 this April, is enrolled in preschool. I asked his teacher: how much time does he spend outside? 45 minutes was the answer. Shocking? No wonder American kids have vitamin D deficiency. So I asked if he could play outside more. The teacher said that he could, but then he would be missing out on other activities, including tracing letters and numbers, and by the time he turns 4, when he goes to the next class, he needs to know letters and numbers. I was shocked even more. I insisted that I want him to play more outside, and she agreed, saying if the parent asks, then it is ok.
Why, despite all the scientific proof, that early academics hurt, the government keeps pushing first grade curriculum to kindergarten and to the preschools? Isn't it time to actually incorporate research into school policies, instead of making policies that hurt our children?
Researcher and educator Mercedes Schneider, author of A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Education, has documented the lightning- quick writing of the CCSS (Common Core State Standards) and has found no evidence that they are based on research. She writes:
If they [the writers of the CCSS] were interested in research they would have started with kindergarten and piloted the standards for a few years and then made adjustments based on their research — and built slowly from there. There is absolutely no evidence that developmental stages were considered. That is a major problem across the standards and especially for the youngest grades. Anyone who has a cursory knowledge of development knows that it is not linear and that children do not all develop at the same rate — there is a span.
Now, as the Common Core standards take hold across the country, literacy has taken over even more space in kindergarten classrooms, crowding out many high- quality learning experiences young children need. In a survey by Defending the Early Years (DEY) of about 200 early childhood teachers (preschool to grade three) across 38 states, 85% of the public school teachers reported
that they are required to teach activities that are not developmentally appropriate for their students.9 A New York public school kindergarten teacher with more than 15 years of experience reported:
Kindergarten students are being forced to write words, sentences, and paragraphs before having a grasp of oral language...We are assessing them WEEKLY on how many sight words, letter sounds, and letter names they can identify. And we’re assessing the “neediest students’” reading every other day.
While the timetable for children’s cognitive development has not changed significantly, society’s expectations of what children should achieve in kindergarten have. A recent two-year study by the Gesell Institute in New Haven found that “children are still reaching important developmental milestones in much the same timeframe as they did when Dr. Arnold Gesell first published his data in 1925.
Gesell used 19 measures to ascertain a child’s development. Among them were asking children to look at and draw a circle, cross, square, triangle, divided rectangle, and more complex forms. A clear pattern emerged. He found an age span for each task, but also a clear pattern of when most children could accomplish the task. By age three most children could replicate the circle, but most could not copy the cross or square until age 4.5. They could draw the triangle by 5.5 but could not copy the diamond until after age 6. The Institute’s recent study, given between 2008 and 2010 to about 1300 children across the country, found almost identical results. The Harvard Education Letter described the findings under the heading: “Kids Haven’t Changed; Kindergarten Has.”
A number of long-term studies point to greater gains for students in play-based programs as compared to their peers in academically-oriented preschools and kindergartens in which early reading instruction is generally a key component.
A number of long-term studies point to greater gains for students in play-based programs as compared to their peers in academically-oriented preschools and kindergartens in which early reading instruction is generally a key component.
Findings from HighScope’s Preschool Curriculum Comparison Study, for example, suggest long-term harm, especially in the social-emotional realm, from overly directive preschool instruction. In this study, begun in the late 1960s, 68 children from low-income homes were randomly assigned to one of three preschool classes. Two were play-based and experiential. The third was a scripted, direct-instruction approach. Interestingly, there were very similar short-term gains among the children in all three programs at the end of year one. But the children were followed until age 23. By that time, there were significant differences in social behavior.
School records indicate that 47 percent of the children assigned to the direct instruction classroom needed special education for social difficulties versus only 6 percent from the play-oriented preschool classrooms. And by age 23, police records showed a higher rate of arrests for felony offenses among those who were previously in the instructional program (34 percent) compared to those in the play-based programs (9 percent).
Rebecca Marcon found negative effects of overly- directed preschool instruction on later school performance in a study of three different curricula, described as either “academically oriented” or “child- initiated.”18 By third grade, her group of 343 students — 96% African American with 75% of the children qualifying for subsidized school lunch — displayed few differences in academic achievement programs. After six years of school, however, students who had been in the groups that were “more academically directed earned significantly lower grades compared to children who had attended child-initiated preschool classes. Children’s later school success appears to have been enhanced by more active...
Why, despite all the scientific proof, that early academics hurt, the government keeps pushing first grade curriculum to kindergarten and to the preschools? Isn't it time to actually incorporate research into school policies, instead of making policies that hurt our children?
Researcher and educator Mercedes Schneider, author of A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Education, has documented the lightning- quick writing of the CCSS (Common Core State Standards) and has found no evidence that they are based on research. She writes:
If they [the writers of the CCSS] were interested in research they would have started with kindergarten and piloted the standards for a few years and then made adjustments based on their research — and built slowly from there. There is absolutely no evidence that developmental stages were considered. That is a major problem across the standards and especially for the youngest grades. Anyone who has a cursory knowledge of development knows that it is not linear and that children do not all develop at the same rate — there is a span.
Now, as the Common Core standards take hold across the country, literacy has taken over even more space in kindergarten classrooms, crowding out many high- quality learning experiences young children need. In a survey by Defending the Early Years (DEY) of about 200 early childhood teachers (preschool to grade three) across 38 states, 85% of the public school teachers reported
that they are required to teach activities that are not developmentally appropriate for their students.9 A New York public school kindergarten teacher with more than 15 years of experience reported:
Kindergarten students are being forced to write words, sentences, and paragraphs before having a grasp of oral language...We are assessing them WEEKLY on how many sight words, letter sounds, and letter names they can identify. And we’re assessing the “neediest students’” reading every other day.
While the timetable for children’s cognitive development has not changed significantly, society’s expectations of what children should achieve in kindergarten have. A recent two-year study by the Gesell Institute in New Haven found that “children are still reaching important developmental milestones in much the same timeframe as they did when Dr. Arnold Gesell first published his data in 1925.
Gesell used 19 measures to ascertain a child’s development. Among them were asking children to look at and draw a circle, cross, square, triangle, divided rectangle, and more complex forms. A clear pattern emerged. He found an age span for each task, but also a clear pattern of when most children could accomplish the task. By age three most children could replicate the circle, but most could not copy the cross or square until age 4.5. They could draw the triangle by 5.5 but could not copy the diamond until after age 6. The Institute’s recent study, given between 2008 and 2010 to about 1300 children across the country, found almost identical results. The Harvard Education Letter described the findings under the heading: “Kids Haven’t Changed; Kindergarten Has.”
A number of long-term studies point to greater gains for students in play-based programs as compared to their peers in academically-oriented preschools and kindergartens in which early reading instruction is generally a key component.
A number of long-term studies point to greater gains for students in play-based programs as compared to their peers in academically-oriented preschools and kindergartens in which early reading instruction is generally a key component.
Findings from HighScope’s Preschool Curriculum Comparison Study, for example, suggest long-term harm, especially in the social-emotional realm, from overly directive preschool instruction. In this study, begun in the late 1960s, 68 children from low-income homes were randomly assigned to one of three preschool classes. Two were play-based and experiential. The third was a scripted, direct-instruction approach. Interestingly, there were very similar short-term gains among the children in all three programs at the end of year one. But the children were followed until age 23. By that time, there were significant differences in social behavior.
School records indicate that 47 percent of the children assigned to the direct instruction classroom needed special education for social difficulties versus only 6 percent from the play-oriented preschool classrooms. And by age 23, police records showed a higher rate of arrests for felony offenses among those who were previously in the instructional program (34 percent) compared to those in the play-based programs (9 percent).
Rebecca Marcon found negative effects of overly- directed preschool instruction on later school performance in a study of three different curricula, described as either “academically oriented” or “child- initiated.”18 By third grade, her group of 343 students — 96% African American with 75% of the children qualifying for subsidized school lunch — displayed few differences in academic achievement programs. After six years of school, however, students who had been in the groups that were “more academically directed earned significantly lower grades compared to children who had attended child-initiated preschool classes. Children’s later school success appears to have been enhanced by more active...