A pre-K teacher in New York City expresses alarm at the proliferation of developmentally inappropriate mandates:
The debate is already on about what constitutes quality early childhood education and, private schools not withstanding, in NYC and thanks to NYS for including common core in pre-k, it is not a good thing.
In our continuing effort to “win the gold medal” in education, we have lost sight of what it means to be a child in the United States.
Despite volumes of research on the subject of early childhood learning, many have pushed down the curriculum into pre-k so far as to make it not a community of learners but small people struggling to memorize useless information will do nothing to enhance right brain thinking and develop children into adults who are able to be actual thinkers rather than drones.
Children develop along specific biological pathways. Some develop some parts of their development sooner than others. Children are not on a trajectory of development. Some will start speaking sooner but take a little longer to get all those gross and fine motor skills. Some will be “ready” for the challenge of a super structured classroom that we see today and others will need a more experiential environment.
I have posted before that I teach pre-k in a NYC public school and have seen the decline in developmentally appropriate practices over years.
This last year the cots were removed from my room because resting took away from instruction.
This was tried several years ago when NYS mandated no naps, fewer trips to the bathroom and less hand washing, citing that in pre-k we were losing 60% of instructional time with all those frills. Pre-K teachers ignored the mandates and eventually the state rescinded. Sadly, they are back again.
There was a time when every child in my class was celebrated for his/her personal accomplishments. Today each child is judged not by what they can do, but rather by what they can’t do. This makes no sense.
Many children in pre-k are seen as “at risk” simply because they are not meeting some arbitrary benchmark on a statistical timeline. The “suits” need to read “Leo the Late Bloomer”
I don’t want want to sound paranoid and think everything is a conspiracy, but some days it’s difficult not to think that way.
I teach in a NYC community where there is high poverty and all the collateral damage that goes with it. I think quite often my students are set up to fail so those who have big money and big titles and no educational background point and say, “see, these children are not capable of learning more than just rote learning” The “suits” can create low level employment for thousands, some of whom had more capabilities but were shuttled into a narrow educational tunnel from which escape is very difficult.
Once again, I invite those who would take away from my students all the things that their children enjoy in their schools, both public and private, to create schools that look like the schools their children attend rather than create what I sometimes call “practice prisons”.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think you’re right to feel paranoid–Sometimes they really are out to get you!
One thing that is starting to get some notice, but is still too far below the radar, is that while the state’s pile on more and more restrictive and demanding requirements for public schools, simultaneously they are pushing for reducing or eliminating those requirements for charters and virtual charters. As the Portland Press Herald noted in its expose of the LePage administration’s virtual charter games in Maine:
Digital education companies also have something less than an arm’s-length relationship with [Jeb] Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, the organization [Maine’s Education] Commissioner Bowen has leaned on in developing administration policy.
The foundation’s Digital Learning Now! initiative receives funding from Pearson, K12, textbook publishing giants Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt and McGraw-Hill, and tech companies such as Apple, Intel and Microsoft, and digital curriculum developers Apex Learning and IQ Innovations iQity. The initiative – whose 10-point strategy has been formally embraced by the LePage administration – focuses on removing legal barriers to public financing of virtual classes.
The “10 elements” include dozens of specific policy directives, including for states to:
• eliminate restrictions on online student-to-teacher ratios, enrollments, class sizes, budgets, providers, or the number of credits a student can earn;
• not regulate “seat time” in classes, or require that online providers, their teachers, or their governing board members be located in the state;
• avoid assessment of “inputs such as teacher certification, programmatic budgets and textbook reviews” and focus instead on “student learning data” from digital testing;
• fund digital learning “through the public per-pupil funding formula;”
• provide all students with access to “any and all” approved online providers;
• require students to take online courses in order to graduate;
• pay for the online classes of all students, including homeschoolers and those in private schools;
• ensure by law that full-time virtual schools are available for all students;
• deprive school districts of “the ability to deny access to approved virtual schools and individual online courses” even as they pay for their students to use them out of their per-pupil budget allocation.
“One of the striking things about these reforms is the extent to which they remove control of the schools from democratic governance and turn them over to corporate decision-making and appointed bodies,” says Alex Molnar, research professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Education Policy Center. “Education policy is now being made to some degree by people who have a financial stake in what they are making policy about.”
Digital education companies also have something less than an arm’s-length relationship with Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, the organization Commissioner Bowen has leaned on in developing administration policy.
The foundation’s Digital Learning Now! initiative receives funding from Pearson, K12, textbook publishing giants Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt and McGraw-Hill, and tech companies such as Apple, Intel and Microsoft, and digital curriculum developers Apex Learning and IQ Innovations iQity. The initiative – whose 10-point strategy has been formally embraced by the LePage administration – focuses on removing legal barriers to public financing of virtual classes.
The “10 elements” include dozens of specific policy directives, including for states to:
• eliminate restrictions on online student-to-teacher ratios, enrollments, class sizes, budgets, providers, or the number of credits a student can earn;
• not regulate “seat time” in classes, or require that online providers, their teachers, or their governing board members be located in the state;
• avoid assessment of “inputs such as teacher certification, programmatic budgets and textbook reviews” and focus instead on “student learning data” from digital testing;
• fund digital learning “through the public per-pupil funding formula;”
• provide all students with access to “any and all” approved online providers;
• require students to take online courses in order to graduate;
• pay for the online classes of all students, including homeschoolers and those in private schools;
• ensure by law that full-time virtual schools are available for all students;
• deprive school districts of “the ability to deny access to approved virtual schools and individual online courses” even as they pay for their students to use them out of their per-pupil budget allocation.
“One of the striking things about these reforms is the extent to which they remove control of the schools from democratic governance and turn them over to corporate decision-making and appointed bodies,” says Alex Molnar, research professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Education Policy Center. “Education policy is now being made to some degree by people who have a financial stake in what they are making policy about.”
(See: http://www.pressherald.com/news/virtual-schools-in-maine_2012-09-02.html?searchterm=K12)
And in Louisiana, Bobby Jinal’s administration has come in for similar scrutiny: http://cenlamar.com/2012/09/12/bobby-jindal-and-john-whites-voucher-scam-violates-the-louisiana-state-constitution-and-they-know-it/
The answer is clear–All of the charters want to paid on a fully-burdend per-pupil basis, i.e., at the same rate as the public schools. But they want to reduce their overhead to maximize their profits. So, the game is not about improving education by providing better schools, it’s about a bait and switch to transfer tax money to corporate profits.
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That’s exactly what I think this whole “teacher witchhunt” is…a Conspiracy! If “the suits” can make teachers in public schools look totally incompetent, that would make it much easier for them to take over…conspiracy!
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“This last year the cots were removed from my room because resting took away from instruction.”
This blog is doing wonders for my diet. I just got sick to my stomach again.
And, no, you’re not paranoid and, yes, it is a conspiracy to set up inner city kids/schools for failure. Anyone who’s ever met a four-year-old knows that they need naps (or at least quiet time) to function. Without that, they’re barely manageable, let alone teachable. No rich white folks would send their own young child to a program that didn’t allow for rest.
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Aren’t pre-schoolers subjected to Common Core because NYS took RttT money that requires adoption of the Common Core?
Isn’t this really about lawmakers’ greed for federal dollars that won’t end up in the classroom? Cuomo’s departed education secretary was from the NGA, birthplace & copyright holder of the Common Core. He (education secretary ) was involved in the writing of the standards.
What are we doing to little ones? What are NYSED Board of Regent doing to little ones?
What is NY Governor Cuomo doing to little ones? Gov Cuomo refers to himself as the students’ lobbyist. Agree, lobbyist in the sense he got money for the state.
However shame on Cuomo for referring to himself as the students’ lobbyist when what he really has done is lobby for federal $$ for students while giving the US Department of Education (US Government) information about about students (little ones) in exchange.
I don’t see Cuomo as a lobbyist. I see him as a salesman. He sells kids’ data to the US government in return for RttT money AND Common Core standards.
Please correct me if my reading of this situation is faulty.
Also, a previous post referenced Conservatives’ fondness for high-stakes testing. This is an unfair designation. Perhaps think tanks that consider themselves (or are considered Conservative) push paper on the topic.
I do not believe high stakes testing are the product of Conservatives. Not is a country led by a Democratic President & administration or states led by Democratic Governors.
Our education trajectory isn’t partisan even though those who aren’t Democrats get the blame for what is bad about education policy. Our education trajectory is bad policy most likely based on greed, not political party.
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Resistance Is Futile.
http://www.livestream.com/nytschoolsfortomorrow/video?clipId=pla_f5879bc8-7e85-435c-be01-17737bd28c6b
This is a video of a panel at yesterday’s New York Times Schools for tomorrow. I was in attendance and wanted to stand up and begin shouting during this nightmare of a presentation. Watch it from about a minute or 1m20s in. Galvanic response device… and later in the video, kindergarten blocks that talk to our babies.
Hook them all into computers? I believe that this is tantamount to confining the minds of our children in wheelchairs. They will no longer be able to think or interact without the crutch of a device courtesy of a global megacorporation.
Orwell and Huxley were right about a lot. (and perhaps Keanu Reeves and Lawrence Fishburne, too…)
My five year old now returns from school crying. No rest. Hardly any recess. He’s beginning to say– a week or so into Kindergarten, “I’m not good at school.” Entering third grade, my seven year old will never have recess again.
But I am a teacher, and mine is the only full time income. I have no access to Waldorf or Friends schools for my sons, and have to live with the sense that their potential intellectual achievement is being crushed under GERM.
I have also become convinced that my own urban high-needs school teaching job will soon be excessed when the school where I teach is shut down and replaced with a shiny new charter. The charter school lobbyists are all lined up at the board of education meetings and the writing is on the wall.
Futile or not, I will resist.
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I am in the same boat with you. My 9 year old refused to be tested and told the school “My name is Nathan, I’m not a number.” He told his principal they could not make him take the state test. He is in the gifted program, but they say he thinks in divergent ways. He actually thinks for himself at a young age. I have been tasked to teach science for all grades at our rural school. I won’t actually teach science, I have been told not to do any experiments, but to use science as a tool to do more reading of non fiction material and mathematical measuring so that our state scores improve. My principal stated ” I don’t give a d___ about them knowing any science, I want their scores up. I know my job won’t likely last long either.
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Mr. J – I want to share your post on Facebook – what do you think?
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When we label children early we d particular damage also to boys who develop language skills later as well as sitting-still skills! Parental anxiety is easy to arouse. If doctors acted like schools now do they’d panic parents whose kids walked half a year earlier or later, etc etc. We’d start remediation programs, etc etc. Six months –half a year–is a commonplace “gap” between tots and has no long term consequences.
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Not to mention age differences in cohorts. My son and his current college roommate are over a year apart in age but of the same high school graduating class (my son being younger). So throw developmental issues together with differing ages, the example being that my son was 20% younger than his buddy in kindergarten, and see how that plays out.
But of course they should all be developmentally “equal” at all times throughout their schooling careers. AY AY AY!
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“…the cots were removed from my room because resting took away from instruction.”
That occurred in PreK classrooms in the Chicago Public Schools, too, where there are also 3 year olds, while Arne Duncan was CEO. The same explanation regarding rest periods taking away from instructional time was given.
This edict, as well as higher standards in Early Childhood Education (ECE) and the pushed down curriculum that is evident in RTTT, can be attributed to the influence of Duncan’s Chief Officer of Early Childhood Education at CPS, who is a consultant to the Secretary of Education, Barbara Bowman. She also happens to be the mother of Obama’s Senior Advisor, Valerie Jarrett…
Whenever you see policy mandates in education under this administration, always look to their origins in Chicago.
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Click to access PreK_ELA_Crosswalk.pdf
Click to access PreK_ELA_Crosswalk.pdf
The links above take you to draft Connecticut documents relating to CCSS for preschoolers. The introduction states that the adoption of CCSS for K-12 “has naturally led to questions regarding standards for preschool and/or prekindergarten students.” The next section talks about a work group that has been charged with the task of creating comprehensive learning standards for birth to age 5.
Yes, the CCSS and these documents have “naturally led to questions” in my mind. Here are some of them: Are you crazy? Have you ever spent a full day with a toddler? How about with a room full of toddlers? Has your life experience not taught you that children are not little robots that all develop the same skills at the same time? What are all of the wonderful memories you cherish from your own childhood? I’ll bet those memories are about things like books and blocks and crayons and swings. Are any of those precious memories about being assessed?
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DebMeier
Most schools are not designed for boys. Those creating curriculum where one size fits all and the one size is developed using girls as the model, many boys are doomed from the first day, particularly boys with late birthdays. It breaks my heart to see boys trying to adjust to sitting still for long periods of time, with no recess. We are told to create movement in our classroom. I have 18 pre-k children in a decent size room but it’s no match for being able to walk outside and/or be at a playground where children can run and jump and hop without bumping into furniture or another child. And, just because some of the boys and girls also for that matter, are able to sit and adjust to the classroom does not mean that in a few years the results of this damaging curriculum will surface.
“Parental anxiety is easy to arouse. If doctors acted like schools now do they’d panic parents whose kids walked half a year earlier or later, etc etc. We’d start remediation programs, etc etc.” Deb, your comment reminded me of the commercials for “Your Baby Can Read” They have been removed from television and I believe they have been put out of business, or at least I hope so, but I know so many people who thought this program was the best thing since sliced bread.
Of course parents are anxious about their child’s development, particularly in poverty areas where parents know that education is a key to a better life for their child and they want every advantage. Who wouldn’t ? They are easy prey to snake oil salesmen who promise their ed reform will do 101 things. I’m surprised they don’t tout curing cancer with the rest of their false promises.
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