Pre-K Education – Worth More Than Me.

0447-0809-3011-5445_TN By Kristin

The Obama Administration is looking to give grant money to states that show commitment to early education.  I hope Congress passes this piece of legislation, because the gap between kids who are ready for kindergarten or not ready for kindergarten continues to widen over the years.  By the time I see them, the four-year old who doesn't know his ABCs has often become a 15-year old who has no confidence, no academic curiosity, and no faith in the system.  Everything that can be done for a child's academic life before kindergarten is worth more than anything that is done after.

My daughter will begin kindergarten in September.  She can read and write a few words.  She knows her planets and can do some basic addition and subtraction.  Her preschool teacher assures me that she is ready for kindergarten.

Then there's a little girl I'll call May, the 5-year old younger sister of a student of mine.  May spends her days watching television and drinking Mountain Dew out of a sippy cup.  Her front teeth are black with decay.  She is quick and clever but doesn't know her ABCs and can't count beyond 17.  She will also start kindergarten in the fall. 

If May and my daughter were in the same class, they would surely be friends.  They have a lot in common.  But what happens when my daughter is ready to learn to spell "fairy" and May is learning to make an "f"?  As a parent and a teacher, I have confidence in the public education system my daughter is entering, but I'm nervous for May because it might be too huge a task to try to catch her up, especially if she is in a classroom with 25 other students. 

I know, because by the time they reach tenth grade their skills range from "John's," who was so embarrassed by his illiteracy he came to Language Arts only when I promised I would never, ever ask him to read out loud, and "Kim," who is in an honors class and flies through literature like Jane Eyre.  In middle school, Kim was moved into honors classes while John was left behind.  This, combined with the lack of academic opportunity at home (not intellectual, but academic), mean that by high school a five-year gap has become a potentially unbridgeable canyon.

And I am not blaming the families.  Not entirely.  I am blaming the unequal distribution of resources that allow me to take my daughter to the zoo and force May's family to move every month because they are homeless and living with friends.  I'm blaming a system that allows me to send my daughter to an engaging, safe preschool and forces May to be parked in front of the television.  I would like more of my tax money to go to preschool care and less to go towards the criminal justice system, where a few of my struggling students end up every year.

One of the goals of Obama's administration is that the Early Learning Challenge Grants provide states the funding necessary to deepen, consolidate, and expand services provided to children from birth to kindergarten.  My state is a perfect example of why this funding is necessary, and why it's so important Congress passes this legislation.  Washington currently has more than one program providing birth-kindergarten support for families, but according to the Department of Early Learning's very helpful Karen Healy, "Free childcare does not really exist in Washington state."  Why?  Because the state can't afford it.  Washington does provide subsidised childcare and supportive resources to families who qualify.  To do more requires more money.  Money the Early Learning Grants could provide.

This piece of legislation is important.  If not all families can prepare their children for kindergarten, then society needs to.  It matters. 

21 thoughts on “Pre-K Education – Worth More Than Me.

  1. Kristin

    Deb, beautifully put, and thank you for sharing your expertise. I was hoping a kindergarten teacher would chime in!!! I haven’t heard the term “environmental disability,” but that makes perfect sense. I am glad you are a kindergarten teacher.
    Kim, I think you’re right. I remember learning to write letters in kindergarten, and I went for half of the day. I don’t know why kindergarteners start kindergarten knowing their alphabet and how to write their name. Deb? Any ideas on that? But I think it’s true that there are many who think kindergarten is where their child will learn to read and write.
    Bob, I do see what you mean about their kindergarten readiness (or not) being immaterial, when our task at hand is to deal with the children who are before us. I absolutely agree with that, and it’s one of my core philosophies as a teacher. However, as a working mom with two little ones, and as someone who thinks society should do everything it can to give each child a fair shot, and as a teacher who sees the 10th grade result of teachers who DON’T prepare….Ah Ha! You got me. Okay. If each teacher along the way did what she was supposed to, I wouldn’t see a behind May, I’d see a child ready for 10th grade. I’ll give you that one.
    But as a working mom who has the luxury of knowing her children are sung to and read to and given a place to draw each day at their preschool, I want all parents to have that luxury. I want them to go to work knowing their child is being engaged, supported, and exposed to interesting things.

  2. Bob Heiny

    Good points, all. I agree with you Kristin, many things appear out of kilter in classrooms.
    Yet, with due respect, to many of us, teachers have a contracted duty to get students ready for the next class, regardless of what skills and info with which they entered. Ways exist for that to happen, and many teachers do so across all cohorts of students. Any reason not directly addressing that instruction (and it’s thus fixable by teachers) appears as a red herring, whether intended or not.
    While I understand it, I may not always like it when I’m the one with students not performing better than par.
    Does my red herring reference make sense now?

  3. Kim

    I see this as an issue of society having failed to adapt to changing times. As an “older” person, my experiences as a child match more what the current government programs are. I’m old enough to remember black and white television, and I remember hearing about JFK’s assassination when I was in first grade. I also remember kindergarten when it was a relatively new concept. There was no K program when I was five, but three of my four younger siblings attended kindergarten. (I was flattered that you used “Kim” as your example of an honors kid.) It was my first grade teacher’s job to teach me the alphabet and how to read. That was what first grade was all about. Now with kindergarten and pre-school, kids are expected to come to first grade with knowledge that used to be part of the first-grade curriculum. There wasn’t such a wide range of abilities in the classroom. As segments of our society have put more and more emphasis on early childhood education, other segments have remained back in the “olden times,” and the government hasn’t figured out how to bridge that gap. Just a thought…

  4. Deb Ortner, NBCT

    I have an interest in this topic as I am a kindergarten teacher. Several Mays come into my classroom each year and we discuss the needed additional services to bridge what I call the “environmental disability” May has. May doesn’t have a learning disability she struggles because she lacks the background knowledge that could have been built by growing up in an environment where someone talked to her, sang to her, and read to her. I spend a lot of time at the beginning of the school year doing those very things with May and her friends. I am often amazed at the growth that takes place and shows itself by January or at the latest, March. Those little 5 year old brains are sponges! There are times when May does not make that progress and we need to work on how to make up for those lost 5 years but I want my shot at my best first teaching for May. I am not an advocate of academic retention, social/bahavioral retention when necessary but I’m not looking for a 10 year old kindergartener (that’s how old May will be when we make up those 5 years in front of the t.v.). I am an advocate for universal preschool. The majority of students who enter my room with a quality preschool education, are excited and confident about learning. I would trade universal preschool over full-day everyday kindergarten anyday. I like the half-day program when they are so young. It’s a lot to get done in two hours and forty-five minutes but the majority seem to get there and they still need time to be little kids and build their own background knowledge through play and imagination (which is hard to fit into 2:45).
    I find the connection between home and school to be critical to the growth of the Mays and her more fortunate friends in kindergarten. Once a child goes to school is not the time to stop talking, singing and reading to them. I would like to see some of the stimulus money go to community learning centers available to parents, staffed by instructional assistants that can help guide one in appropriate choices of educational activities that are best for their child (yes, we have public libraries but I have yet to find a level A book in one of them). Or better yet, provide me with the materials I need to send home appropriately leveled books and math activities that will support learning between home and school.
    So, that’s my take: universal preschool over full-day kindergarten, support for at home learning activities, and don’t count out the Mays. I’d keep writing but I have to go talk, sing, and read to my 9 and 11 year old.

  5. Kristin

    Bob, not a red herring, but a part of the problem. There are many things out of kilter in classrooms – the poor match between our ancient program of “sit and listen” to the modern learning styles of our students, the failure of social promotion to ensure a child’s academic readiness for the next skill level, and the dismal failure of things like state assessments to monitor a teacher’s effectiveness.
    If we step out of the classroom, and our students do, there are even more parts to the problem, like the fact my students are now the children of people who dropped out because high school didn’t work for them.
    I’m not saying free preschool will elimate the fact that 25% of my non-honors students are in gangs, or that I have about three students every year who drop out, but I think it will help give kids a fair chance in kindergarten. And while you’re right, billions of dollars are put towards pre-K education, it is not considered part of a child’s K-12 school career. My state has subsidized preschool, but it fills up and is hard to find.
    Students have a right to an education until they are 21 years old. My school has students, though the counselors try to send them to “alternative programs,” who attend high school for six years in an effort to earn enough credits to graduate. Frankly, it’s a joke. If a student is going to get fourteen years of school, why not make it pre-K to twelfth grade?

  6. Bob Heiny

    Thank you, Kristin. Maye it is a money problem. I wonder. States and the federal government have pumped billions of dollars since the 1960s into preschool programs, yet teachers beyond that still offer the same laments as our predecessors during the past decades about poorly prepared students. Do you think maybe lack of public preschools is a red herring for something out of kilter in classrooms?

  7. Kristin

    Great questions Bob. I suppose the answer to your first question is that everyone knows it should be done but no one wants to pay for it.
    The basic premise is that providing equal access to quality pre-K childcare will result in fewer children struggling in elementary school, which will result in fewer children struggling in high school.
    It’s actionable by putting the responsibility on the state to extend public education into the pre-K years. As it is now, free quality pre-K care to families who need it is provided by non-profits. It’s not available everywhere there’s a kindergarten, and it’s not available to every family who needs it. Connect a preschool to each elementary school. Let the three and four-year olds who will attend that elementary school, go to the preschool. Let them go for free. Some parents might prefer a private or stay-home alternative, just as they do during the K-12 years. Thoughts?

  8. Bob Heiny

    I wonder why this same discussion with the same points has continued publically among politicians and educators since the 1960s and privately decades earlier among fewer of each? What do you see as the basic premise and how is it actionable?

  9. Kristin

    Rena, I missed your post before (11:03 is late for me!). I love the image you paint of healthy meals and kids being kids. I’m sure more people feel the same way, so I wonder why this isn’t a priority when the state is deciding where to put money? Taxpayers can build stadiums but not preschools? That’s backwards.

  10. Kristin

    Well, if they did pass full-day K it’s not happening at my daughter’s school. We both work, so we need to pay $200 a month for full-day K. I can only hope it’s subsidized for families who really need it.
    And talk about class size! I had 12 5-year olds at a birthday party and thank goodness three moms stayed to help and my husband is an elementary teacher. I am impressed and amazed that kindergarten teachers manage more than 20 5-year olds. I don’t know how they do it.

  11. Rena

    I would gladly pay more in taxes if it would keep the Mays healthy and educated. It could begin with a preschool where young children learn enough to at least keep up with their peers. Where healthy meals are offered and kids are allowed to be kids.

  12. Mark

    Didn’t the legislation which passed last spring in WA say something about full-day K? If no one knows off the top of their head I’ll look it up tomorrow.

  13. Kristin

    Joe, thanks for the link to Kathleen Cotton and Nancy Faires Conklin’s excellent article. Their research supports what I’ve long suspected. And to me, “sufficient early education” doesn’t have to be a 2-year old sitting at a desk being drilled in her letters. It means a child is engaged, exposed, and having her natural curiosity rewarded with interesting experiences. When I was two, my mom stayed at home and I wasn’t in childcare. Neither did she sit at the table and engage us with exciting projects that stimulated our minds. Instead, I was running around our neighborhood with playmates, learning to deal with their moms, being socialized, and problem solving. Today few families can afford to have a parent stay at home, and those who do hardly feel comfortable (nor does society condone) letting pre-K children run around the neighborhood. I need to think more about what we’ve lost in terms of pre-K socialization because of that. It might need its own post.
    Amy, you are absolutely right. Preschool is excellent, for those who can afford it. The families of my students range from below the poverty line to extremely affluent, and I can tell you that none of the students who live in poverty have access to the type of preschool you describe. The saddest result of this is that your children are much more likely to be put in an honor’s class than children who are behind your children in their number sense and literacy – not because of a difference in intelligence or capability, simply because of a difference in experience. This doesn’t mean that some children living in poverty don’t have “sufficient early childhood education,”
    excellent care, and aren’t prepared for kindergarten. Many of them have extended family members who provide superb care, academically, intellectually, and socially. It simply means that a difference in financial resources plays a huge role in academic success, beginning at one, two, three or five years old and continuing through school.
    Enough children enter kindergarten without the social skills Joe describes, or the basic academic skills kindergarten teachers expect, to create a gap in skills before a child has even begun her education. This means that no matter how many solutions we attempt in the higher grades, we’re just trying to run up a hill of gravel.

  14. super_v

    I hope that our state gets this funding. And, most importantly, I hope they can use it wisely.
    I read the main funding points of the proposal and see that the key areas that will receive funding are in the existing Head Start program. If this is the case — Brilliant! (No need to create new agencies). Head Start has been proven effective and already has a strong effective network.
    We have our child (and this Sept., both children) in a preschool program because we value education and socialization and inherently know what the research shows: early education has short-term and long-term benefits. It’s also great for us parents — we get great feedback from the teachers about our child’s development and participating in the school community.
    It’s also expensive. The same check we write to our preschool could pay for a year at the University of Washington. That expense is not even an option of a lot of families.
    I absolutely believe that the disparities described in this article ring true and can be reduced more by funding early childhood education programs.

  15. Joe

    –“I would like more of my tax money to go to preschool care and less to go towards the criminal justice system, where a few of my struggling students end up every year.”
    This is a key concept. Prison is the “pound” to early education’s “ounce.” And without getting into the merits and pitfalls of our prison system, it doesn’t seem to be one that helps its constituents in the long run. Early education, on the other hand, has proven to have a long term positive impact. See this article for a fairly comprehensive and well-documented list of long term benefits of early childhood education: http://www.nwrel.org/archive/sirs/3/topsyn3.html
    It’s interesting to note that the great majority of benefits are not specifically cognitive, as in IQ and test scores, but social. Children with sufficient early childhood education had “fewer arrests and antisocial acts,” “better relationships,” and “higher employment rates,” among a host of other benefits.
    Early childhood education should be at the top of our legislative priorities – more important by far than raising teacher pay or deciding which high-stakes test to implement.

  16. Kristin

    Travis, I too was surprised to find that the budget for the state’s before-kindergarten education was relatively small. The years from birth to kindergarten are almost half of the years a child spends in school, yet they aren’t really considered a valid part of our education budget? That’s crazy to me, especially when the push recently has been to eliminate the achievement gap between rich and poor.
    Kelli and Tom, I agree that putting money towards the solution, even if it means higher taxes, would improve a child’s chances of success in later education. And we pay it anyway. We pay it trying to repair the damage done when a teenager doesn’t see education as a valid part of his future, and tries to make the kind of living you don’t need a high school diploma for.
    Mark, well done looping this topic back to one we’ve seen in earlier posts. It’s true that keeping May in a grade level until she learns the skills needed to move on will solve HER problem, but again, that seems to help solve the problem instead of prevent it. As long as the children of the middle class, wealthy, and educated are starting kindergarten with literacy and numbers skills, and the children of the poor and uneducated are not, we will continue to have a backlog of children who shouldn’t be promoted.
    Why does it seem so crazy to begin public education before kindergarten? Are we terrified of erasing the line between those who have time to sit and read Goodnight Moon to their child and those who don’t, or can’t?

  17. Mark

    May’s plight has obvious implications for her future and the futures of her peers. Do away with social promotion, and perhaps she would have the opportunity to master those skills before moving on toward a track of perpetual failure.

  18. Tom

    Excelllent post, Kristin. As teachers we all see May as she moves on along, progressivly faling farther and farther behind her classmates. In Europe, many counties mandate giving every child the same early learning experiences that you gave to your daughter. The downside, of course, is higher taxes. On the other hand, we end up paying even more when we graduate and then remediate illiterate adults.

  19. Kelli

    This is a strong argument and has won my vote. It seems like a simple solution to support the students from the beginning, ensuring they become successful students later on, rather than spending all that time and energy trying to save the students who are too far behind. Yes, we need to continue to try to help these high-schoolers, but switching gears away from the problem and towards the solution (and avoiding the problem) makes the most sense. Perhaps someday all the “Mays” will enter kindergarten prepared and enter high-school with years of academic success to support them through.

  20. Travis A. Wittwer

    This is an interesting situation. The situation of money and school. Thanks for posting this. It is something that comes up every year, but we have yet, as a country, to find a workable solution. Here is what I find frustrating…how can a state now have the budget? The most money should be put into early education. If there is a strong education early on, it will carry through. Additionally, we are likely to spend the money anyway. We can spend it proactively (and effectively) in early education, or in remedial classes and summer school and drop out rates and unemployment. This brings to mind Franklin’s statement that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. What is worth noting is the difference in weight regarding whether an action is done now or later.
    Readers, what do you think? Spend money in early education? Are there drawbacks to this?

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