Background:
California is preparing to implement a series of steps that have significant impact on the entire educational system. The movement toward bringing California’s Kindergarten age for entry into closer alignment with most of the other states in this country has been flirted with for decades. It has been a matter of public policy discussion within the early care and education (ECE) profession for years. Previous efforts by Runner and others have been fiercely debated.
The Impact on the public education system in California:
As the realization that a change in entry date for Kindergarten is upon us, we will need to address a number of potentially positive and negative effects at the High School end of the educational spectrum. The potentially positive effects:
- It will mean that our high school juniors will have greater maturity when taking college entry exams
- It will mean that high school students will have greater maturity as begin to prepare for and to enter the workforce
- It will mean that our high school athletes, musicians, artists, and academic decathletes will have greater parity with their competitors from around the country
- It will mean that our high school seniors will have greater maturity when making decisions regarding what comes after high school
- It will mean that the college freshmen students from California will have greater parity with students from other states
There are a few predictions of potentially negative effects:
- High school seniors that turn 18 during their senior year may be at greater risk of dropping out
- Older cohorts of high school students may be at greater risk of engaging in risk behaviors such as drinking, smoking, unprotected sex, etc.
- An additional year of formal education may amplify or accelerate any “burnout effect” experienced by students as early as middle school.
The potentially positive consequences of the shifting age of entry for Kindergarten are numerous and obvious – in their implications for Kindergartners and Preschoolers as well:
- Older Kindergartners will be better prepared to successfully attend to an increasingly academic curriculum.
- Older Kindergartners will be better prepared to successfully tolerate full-day Kindergarten programs.
- Older Kindergartners will have had more life experiences resulting in increased knowledge, skill sets, and vocabulary.
- Older Kindergarteners will have greater fine and gross motor skills, supporting the increasing emphasis on writing skills.
And, as to be expected, there are several potentially negative consequences:
- Parents needing access to free public schools for their children may have to wait a year before their child is eligible in areas where Transitional Kindergarten classes may not exist.
- Policy-makers may be inclined to continue the trend towards developmentally inappropriate curriculum.
- Schools may transfer teachers without early education knowledge or experience into the new Transitional Kindergarten classrooms.
- Preschool programs may experience a trickle-down effect of pressure to prepare younger preschoolers for academic success.
- Expectations for behavior for preschool-aged children engaged in academic programs may result in stress and negative attitudes toward school for students, as well as stress for teachers forced to impose inappropriate expectations upon their students.
- The Head Start, State Preschool, First 5 Funded Preschool, Private Preschool and Licensed Family Childcare programs that account for a majority of the licensed preschool infrastructure of early education in California will face the possible negative impact of families dis-enrolling their child early to enter into a Transitional Kindergarten program.
The research, science and best practice to consider:
This occurs at a time when research is indicating that Preschool should not be like school. Transitional Kindergarten should not be a lower octane version of already inappropriate Kindergarten programs. Recent research from MIT and UC Berkeley support the case for inquiry-based child-directed learning over adult-directed instruction for young learners (
www.Slate.com). Professors from Pacific Oaks College, successful physical education programs in schools across America, a variety of advocates and scholars from Richard Louv to Dr. John Ratey to Larry Garf to Jonathan Mooney support the long-held tenets of the California Association for the Education of Young Children and Play Matters – that children are active learners and learn best through play.
The current infrastructure for Transitional Kindergarten:
At this moment, the infrastructure is not in place to support Transitional Kindergarten through the public school system. This lack of infrastructure is complex and inter-related. Policy-makers have yet to perform the due diligence needed to thoughtfully and pro-actively implement Transitional Kindergarten through the public school system. Let’s consider some of these concerns.
- Elementary education credentials with an early learning emphasis are a very recent phenomenon and not widely available. This means that very few teachers currently employed by school districts will have these credentials.
- The teachers that do have these credentials will be recent hires and have minimal seniority.
- School districts will lose approximately 8% of their incoming kindergarten enrollment due to the older cohorts of Kindergarten students.
- School districts will lay-off the more recent hires (possibly those very teachers with early education backgrounds).
- Transitional Kindergarten as currently proposed does not require teachers to have early education backgrounds.
- Many school districts have already located State Preschool, Head Start, and Universal Preschool programs on their campuses. Bumping these partners to create classroom space to provide Transitional Kindergarten is bad policy.
- Transitional Kindergarten will result in parallel State-Financed systems serving an overlapping population of students.
- State Preschool currently serves children until the year they become eligible for Kindergarten.
- With a Transitional Kindergarten program, a child may be eligible for two separate and competing State-Financed systems. Because of her or his birthdate, a child may be eligible for both Transitional Kindergarten and State Preschool.
- The two competing and overlapping systems will not be equally financed however. The State Preschool Standard Reimbursement Rate is being reduced by 10%. At this same time, a Transitional Preschool program will likely have greater funding levels.
- Labor issues will result in school districts that attempt to implement both programs as it is very likely that teachers doing almost identical work will have greatly different salary schedules.
A simple solution:
Implement the Transitional Kindergarten through the California Department of Education (CDE) State Preschool infrastructure.
- Qualified, experienced, degreed teachers are already available.
- Research-based curricula are already in place and in use.
- A 15% cut to CDE State Preschool contracts means that classroom space is already available to serve the expected number of Transitional kindergarten students.
- A 10% cut to the CDE State Preschool Standard Reimbursement Rate means that an influx of enhanced dollars to implement Transitional Kindergarten will help offset the dire cuts to existing CDE programs. This infusion of dollars may be exactly what is needed to salvage the entire state subsidized preschool delivery system.
- Implementation of Transitional Kindergarten through CDE State Preschool will drive the solution for creating a sustainable bridge between the pre-K system and the K-12 system. The currently weak transition plans by many school district will essentially be not only mandated, but “motivated”.
- Transitional kindergarten within CDE State Preschool will eliminate the sense of two distinct State-funded delivery systems.
This is intended as a dynamic document. I welcome edits and comments. It is my hope to present it shortly to CAEYC and other advocacy groups.
Respectfully,
