There has been discussion on the blog about whether the Common Core Standards include pre-K, and if not, whether they are nonetheless influencing them. A reader posed that question to me and I referred it to Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education specialist who recently retired after teaching at Lesley University for many years.
Hi Diane,
It’s hard to put your finger on the pulse of what is really going on in early childhood right now, and for good reason. There are big differences among states, school systems, and individual programs. But there are also trends that are affecting the early childhood field as a whole, and they are most strongly felt in programs that are State and Federallyfunded.
There is an increasing pushdown of academic skills into Kindergartens and Pre-K’s. The Alliance for Childhood first identified the disappearance of play in Kindergartens a few years ago. Wrongly, the erosion of play-based learning in Kindergartens has now become the norm and is currently filtering into Pre-K’s around the country. Thisacademic focus for young kids is driven by RTTT priorities and the Common Core Standards. The Common Core extends to kindergarten and requires children to learn specific facts and skills in literacy and numeracy at specified ages. For RTTT early childhood money, states have to agree to “align with the Common Core”. These mandates are not based on the knowledge base of the early childhood field, on what is known about how young children learn best. Those who wrote them are out of touch with young children and what quality programs should offer.
For many years, NAEYC (the National Association for the Education of Young Children) led the field in promoting “developmentally appropriate practice.” But in recent years, to the dismay of much of the membership, NAEYC has become more of a corporate and institutional culture, drifting away from its advocacy of practices rooted in child development understandings.
Testing and assessing young kids, also part of the policy mandates, has become an increasing focus of early childhood programs. Attention and resources go to assessment instead of meeting the needs of the whole child. Getting the scores up has led to more and more drill-based instruction and rote learning, less play-based and hands-on learning. All of this has brought considerable misery and harm to lots of young children.
I can imagine standards for early childhood education that would be based in the theory and research of our field that could actually support good practice. But these would look nothing like the current standards that reduce learning to mechanized bits of informationdisconnected from children, their needs and development, and the meaningful contexts in which they learn.
Nancy Carlsson-Paige
Dr. Carlsson-Paige recommended this link for readers seeking more information:
Diane Ravitch's blog 
BOARD OF REGENTS APPROVE NEW YORK STATE
P-12 COMMON CORE LEARNING STANDARDS
http://www.oms.nysed.gov/press/CommonCoreStandardsP-12.html
Diane
Thank you for this post. And thank you Sheila for posting the NYS Common Core Learning Standards for Pre-K.
I have posted before about the push down curriculum into pre-k.
Pre-K used to have an umbrella of early childhood educators who had the final word for pre-k. In an effort to save money, NYC disbanded the umbrella and gave pre-k over to each principal for the final word. In my school the administration has removed nap time because taking a nap takes away from instructional time. It’s all about time on task.
Pre-K used to have meaningful PD’s where we shared best practices and had workshops that focused on the whole child. We had these once a month.
In my district-I cannot speak for other districts which may have figured out how to by pass this insanity-We now have PD’s 4 times a year in NYC and the presenters do a power point where we are subjected to slide after slide. The program is timed so the presenter cannot accept questions because it will throw her off her schedule and suits come in to check where she is in the presentation.
We are forced to sit the entire day and watch this presentation which is always about Common Core and how to do performance tasks.
As teachers we are demoralized. As presenters, many of them are equally dismayed. The presenters we have were all early childhood classroom teachers at one time and actually know something but must present what Tweed dictates.
Thank you for mentioning NAEYC. As of late I had thought they had shifted their position but thought maybe I was just being more paranoid than usual.
I am trying hard to take the CC and make it more DAP-no easy task.
School starts soon and I am already anticipating new pre-k guidelines that will further destroy early childhood.
Many of my parents want and demand a more rigorous day thinking that is the way to improve their child’s success in school.
Bill Gates and his friends, RTTT can issue orders, and NYC DOE can send down directive after directive-children are still the same. Adults love to play. I am sure all the suits would not want to give up tennis and golf and skiing. But they deny the same to children.
Pushing down the curriculum gives the illusion that children are learning more earlier but in actuality we are creating a skyscraper on a foundation of sand. At some point it will all collapse and I’m guessing it will be the fault of the teachers and not the architects who designed the building.
I am hopeful that a light at the end of the tunnel is not the headlights of an oncoming train.
“In my school the administration has removed nap time because taking a nap takes away from instructional time.”
Wow, how insane. Seems to me we all ought to take a “siesta” everyday. The world might just become a little saner!
It’s apparent that we as a society have completely lost our collective minds. An article in the WSJ today mentions what college graduates in China are facing. This may be the U.S. in twenty plus years if we continue along this road.
China’s Graduates Face Glut
Mismatch Between Their Skills, Job Market’s Needs Results in Underemployment
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443545504577566752847208984.html
“Experts say that many of the graduates lack skills such as critical thinking, foreign languages and basic office communications that businesses are looking for. Even small private enterprises that offer humble salaries find many graduates unsatisfactory. “Those small sales companies that desperately need people also reject us graduates,” said Ms. Wu. “They say we don’t have social resources or work experience that they need.”
It’s interesting to note that two areas where grads are weak or deficient in are: critical thinking and “social resources”. Both are taught to students early on. I thought that was the purpose of kindergarten. Start thinking, interacting and socializing. Oh well, silly me.
The information in this post and from readers breaks my heart. My daughter is a new preschool teacher, and as I write this she is at her school getting her room ready for the children. She is filling the space with picture books, puppets, puzzles, blocks, a sensory table, easles for artwork, and musical instruments. So far no one has handed her a set of Common Core standards or worksheets, but that day may come. I agree with Mark and Duane…this is just crazy!
The comments about NAEYC are,sadly, too true! I have been a member for over 30 years and have watched it change to the point that you can no longer trust them to have young children’s best interests at heart. Very disappointing from such a fine organization.
From what I gather, the Common Core’s emphasis on having children read “rigorous” material also extends to those beginning readers in k-2. So, instead of doing what we know is best for children by starting off with more controlled vocabulary and building from there, we are going to start them right away reading challenging text. How will frustrating our early readers help them with literacy?
Dear Diane,
As an early childhood educator for more than 25 years and author of 5 books, including Many Languages, One Classroom and Basics of Supporting Dual Language Learners, and numerous articles on the subject, I would like to clear up some inaccuracies that have been posted here and contribute some accurate information that is called for by your topic.
The Core Curriculum State Standards were written for K-12. http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/myths-vs-facts Several states have chosen to adopt them and some have added their own guidance for preschool. The federal government has in no way established requirements for what must be taught in preschool. Standards do not equate to a curriculum. As I often tell my audiences, standards are like ingredients, but each classroom still needs its own recipe for how to use those ingredients. A curriculum is more like a recipe. Ten people might buy the same ingredients and make ten very different cakes. If you burn your cake or put more salt than sugar into it, it will not be successful – but you can’t blame the grocery store that sold you those ingredients. Anyone who has concerns about how the core curriculum standards are affecting preschool programs is going to have to look state by state by state, and program by program, and classroom by classroom to see how they are described, recommended and then implemented. I appreciate that Sheila and Anne took that approach here.
Aligning with the standards gives states, programs and teachers something to work toward without dictating how they have to get there. New Jersey is one state that put their own developmentally appropriate spin on the standards and has provided developmentally appropriate guidance for both preschool and kindergarten http://www.state.nj.us/education/ece/guide/
For another approach to establishing learning goals for preschool, I suggest that readers visit this site to learn more about the Office of Head Start’s School Readiness initiatives and supports: http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/sr/approach/cdelf
While I agree with Nancy that early childhood educators need to be concerned about the overacademization of kindergarten and preschool classrooms, this concern has plagued us for many years and is not a new trend that appeared with the standards or RTTT. 25 years ago my first daughter started kindergarten, and when I saw the door directly onto the playground during my classroom visit, I asked how much time the children spent outdoors. The teacher told us they NEVER would go outside because their academic reading curriculum took up too much time. My mom, who was the most DAP preschool teacher I’ve ever known, also encountered pressure from parents to give her students more ‘homework’ in the 1970s.
I agree with Nancy that testing and assessment are issues of major concern in our field right now. That is a separate, and important, topic to discuss. I do believe it is possible to address the preschool skills and knowledge that lead up to what is expected in K and 1st in a hands-on, creative, project-based, child centered way. We just need to make sure we do what needs to be done to prepare preschool teachers AND the administrators who supervise and support them.
I do take exception to the odd addition of complaints about the National Association for the Education of Young Children included here by Nancy. As a member of the largest professional association for preschool educators in the country for more than 25 years, and as the daughter and mother of a member, and as a NAEYC author, speaker and volunteer, I want to make it clear that nearly 90,000 educators pay a membership fee to support this organization every year. A small handful of people who are not happy with the organization do not represent anything close to “much of that membership.” NAEYC did not write, promote, or implement the Core Curriculum State Standards and there really does not seem to be any value in complaining about one’s personal grievances in this context or of promoting an unrelated facebook page of a small local chapter. The fact is that NAEYC literally ‘wrote the book’ on developmentally appropriate practice for early childhood education and more information about that leadership can be found here: http://www.naeyc.org/DAP
Thank you for the link to NAEYC regarding DAP. As I read DAP with Kindergarteners, one important issue that stands out to me is the fact that the writer considers knidergarteners as 5-6 year olds. I have been teaching kindergarten for 27 in a district north of New York City and at least half of my class will not turn 5 until the end of November, Part of the problem is that we are expecting 4year olds to fall under the “kindergarten” umbrella. Perhaps changing the cut off for enrolling into kindergarten will help to alleviate the issues. It might be an easier fix since districts are insisting on taking away nap and play. I wish we could get more people to use DAP practices. Instead, we are being made to sneak them in. How sad is that????
Thanks, Diane, for making room on your blog for this critical topic.
Karen states that the “overacademization of kindergarten and preschool classrooms” is not a new trend. That may be true, though without a doubt the problem has intensified. The Alliance for Childhood report The Crisis in Early Education A Research-Based Case for More Play and Less Pressure (Miller and Almond, November 2011) states that “the pushing down of the elementary school early childhood has reached a new peak with the adoption by almost every state of the so called common core standards.” That report also looks at the high rate of preschool expulsions of late. Preschoolers and kindergarteners are now being expelled at three times the rate of K-12 children. How can that be okay? Peter Gray has documented the decline of play and the increase of childhood problems over recent decades in his article “The Decline of Play and the Rise of Psychopathology in Children and Adolescence” (The American Journal of Play, volume 3, number 4; Spring 2011). The increase in the number of young children attending overly-academic preschools and kindergartens is most assuredly part of the problem. An increase in childhood depression and anxiety are some of the results. When our mission should be, at the very least, to do no harm, clearly the children are being harmed. We cannot toss them in the trash like a cake with too much salt or a recipe gone awry (to further Karen’s analogy above). They are human beings, for goodness sake.
Finding ways to stay developmentally appropriate, when many of the tests and assessments are not, is becoming increasingly difficult. And looking critically at the how, what, when and why of testing and assessments which have increased with RTTT, is important work for the early childhood community. If ever there was a time in the USA for early childhood educators to be looking closely at policy and debating the direction of early childhood education, now is the time. As the leading organization of early childhood educators, NAEYC should be at the forefront of advocating for young children – and speaking out against policies that aren’t grounded in what decades of research has proven: that children develop best — socially, emotionally and cognitively — when they have educational experiences that promote creativity, thinking and problem solving skills, and engage in meaningful activities geared to their developmental levels and needs.
Nancy Carlsson-Paige is not alone in her assessment of the situation. A national coalition of early childhood educators met earlier this year regarding their concerns about the current education policy trends and their negative effects. You can read more about that in an op-ed piece titled “How ed policy is hurting early childhood education” published in Valerie Strauss’ The Answer Sheet at The Washington Post. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/how-ed-policy-is-hurting-early-childhood-education/2012/05/24/gJQAm0jZoU_blog.html)
Geralyn Bywarter McLaughlin
Director, Defending the Early Years
deyproject.org
What the heck is going on? My focus is on the secondary level where I teach. So forgive me for being absolutely clueless but, when did it become OK to suspend or expel 3-5 year-old children?
So what more can we as educators do on a local level to support appropriate early childhood education?
The parents are key. I can’t imagine any parent of a four-year old who wants him or her subjected to testing
Go Dianne! Go! We need to turn up the heat in regards to Common and Core and Early Childhood Ed. They are a’comin’! The recent NYSAEYC Conference seemed to embrace Common Core for Pre-k (A little disturbing). Working on combating the document and designing a training (as it relates to Pre-k) and proving that all of the singled out “skills” and “concepts” that the CCSS spells out can actually be learned through PLAY (naturally), within a play-based preschool program. What a concept! The sad thing is that the trainings I have been too spew academics and program days with minimal open-ended play. Teacher directed activities are beginning to give way to spontaneous learning. We really do need to turn up the heat! Please do not let them take Early Ed. too! 😦
correction…”Common Core” 🙂