Susan Ochshorn rightly worries that the current policy craze for universal pre-kindergarten will push developmentally inappropriate practices into the early years. Kindergarten will become what first grade used to be, and four-year-olds will be expected to read and take standardized tests.
Ochshorn writes:
“Fast-forward to the polar vortex of 2014. Nerissa Ediza’s tweet, on February 1, says it all. “What sober person gives standardized tests to a kindergartner? Someone who’s actually never met a five-year-old?” she asked, releasing into the twitterverse a picture of the front page of The Oregonian. “Kindergarten test results ‘sobering,’” read the headline, the text below depicting Governor Kitzhaber’s displeasure with early childhood education’s “scattershot” approach.
“Rebecca Radding, a former pre-K and kindergarten teacher in a New Orleans KIPP school weighed in a week later, spilling her tale of woe:
Radding wrote:
“By year three it had become very, very difficult for me to hide my disdain for the way the school was managed. In the previous two years, I’d fought hard for the adoption of a play-based early childhood curriculum, only to see it systematically dismantled by our 25-year-old assistant principal. When this administrator told us that our student test scores would be higher if we used direct instruction, worksheets and exit tickets to check for their understanding, I lost my shit. I’m sorry, but five year olds don’t learn that way.
“I was fired a week later. Well, to be fair, I was told that I “wasn’t a good fit”…Somewhere along the line I developed this radical idea that children are humans who should be treated with dignity, and that the classroom should ideally be a place to be even if schooling weren’t compulsory.”
Ochshorn continues:
“The earth has moved—an avalanche of accountability, threatening the child-centered precincts of the field. Whole cities are assigning homework to preschoolers, demanding they “read” hundreds of books. “Study finds that kindergarten is too easy,” crowed Education Week, reporting on a forthcoming article, in the American Educational Research Journal, by Amy Claessens, Mimi Engel, and Chris Curran, who found greater gains in math and reading when students were exposed to more advanced content. The article, soon to retreat behind a firewall, has garnered most-viewed status on AERA’s website since it was posted on November 13. Claessens attributes the interest to “some pretty interesting policy implications,” adding that “shifting what you’re teaching is very cost-effective.” Nothing like a little cost-benefit analysis to get those synapses firing.”
What kind of person would think that “kindergarten is too easy?” Maybe someone who has never met a five-year-old? Someone who has never taught a five-year-old? Someone who thinks that children should be seen and not heard? Someone who believes “spare the rod and spoil the child”? Maybe what we need are workhouses for tykes who don’t read by five and who don’t do their homework.
What kind of society will we be if we listen to people who don’t understand or like childhood, who think that four-year-olds and five-year-olds need to work harder and play less or not at all?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The root cause of all of this testing is the preposterous notion that students need to be batched into age cohorts and progress academically in lockstep. If they DON’T match the SLOs set for their age cohorts they are “failures”. This batching process underlies the entire standardization movement. We started batching students this way nearly a century ago for “efficiency”. The “worksheets and exit tickets to check for their understanding” are a by product of the engineering and spreadsheet mentality that “reformers” advocate.
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I’m not sure about that. We’ve had age cohorts for generations, yet this insane amount of standardized testing has only come about in the last 10-15 years. When I was a kid we had one standardized test a year and it was solely for very loose diagnostic purposes as one metric among many.
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You can’t have standardized tests without standardized groupings… one of the best books I read in graduate school back in the early 70s was Education and the Cult of Efficiency by Callahan. It explained how business principles of Frederick Taylor were embraced by urban school boards and superintendents and college presidents leading ultimately to the current construct we have today. My contention: we’re mis-using technology to reinforce the status quo by measuring progress based on age cohorts instead of using it to individualize instruction.
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Thanks for spreading the word at your own blog, Wayne! Just wanted to say that I’m totally on board with government support of preschool. If you’ve been following my blog, ECE Policy Matters, you know that well. What I’m worried about is education reform writ large, which is squashing not only young children, but older students’, joy of learning. Still, I have hope; we’re attracting others to the fold, as I noted in “Play: The New Capitalist Tool.” Onward!
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This is also about the women, their still dominant role in nurturing the young and a whole lot of anger about the continued preponderance of women in teaching.
Among others, George Lakoff has theorized about these “push the kids harder” policies. He sees the policies as imposing a “strict father” value system on education in the belief that father knows best, especially how to protect the family., The world is viewed as a hostile place. Children must be made tough, have “rigorous” this and that, acquire “grit” to thrive.
A school is an extension of home. Women are the primary workers. In this setting. They must also follow all the rules that flow from the strict father ethos—long associated with conservatives and known as paternalism. Schools and teachers are caricatured as too soft on discipline, too eager to negotiate, too protective of students, and so on.
I do not like the stereotyping that this theory forwards, but when every policy has obligatory rhetoric about “rigor,” and when “grit” is an instant hit, and when top-down micro-managing requires teachers to identify learning “targets” and have an “impact” on kids–this theory pops into my head.
A recent document setting forth standards for teacher education programs uses the word “impact” 110 times in less than 60 pages. “Impact,” lest we forget, is what cars do when they crash. Impact is the result of dropping things from a height that can do serious damage. An impacted tooth can cause a lot of pain. Sardines in a can have been impacted.
This word “impact,” along with the mandated setting of learning “targets” and really truly “rigorous” standards, with strictly “academic” content and skills to be “mastered” by children (who are still learning) reflects a deep hostility to the nurture of children and young and of teachers who assume that role. All of “you people” engaged in teaching are out of control. You must be held accountable, properly managed. “We” have the power, and if you don’t conform, we will tear down the house of public education.
Unfortunately, this ethos is evident in the hot-off-the-press standards from the Council for the Accreditation of Education Preparation (CAEP) a new accrediting agency created by merging the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC). Both organizations will close operations as soon as USDE recognizes CAEP’s standards for accrediting teacher education programs.
These standards are filled with the same accountability demands and jargon that has been inflicted on public education by policy makers who are thralls of industrial strength management schemes.
Teacher education programs are now called “provider programs.” Graduates, once known as teachers, have morphed into “completers.” Below is some of the rhetoric approved by the board of CAEP, August 29, 2013. The standards were prepared by a 42-member commission, a majority of whom have titles such as president, dean, provost, chancellor, executive director, CEO, “talent manager,” principal (a lobbyist). Gates-funded institutions, associations, and research projects are clearly in evidence.
“Standard 4. The provider demonstrates the impact of its completers on P-12 student learning and development, classroom instruction, and schools, and the satisfaction of its completers with the relevance and effectiveness of their preparation.
Impact on P-12 Student Learning and Development
4.1 The provider documents, using multiple measures, that program completers contribute to an expected level of student-learning growth. Multiple measures shall include all available growth measures (including value-added measures, student-growth percentiles, and student learning and development objectives) required by the state for its teachers and available to educator preparation providers, other state-supported P-12 impact measures, and any other measures employed by the provider.”
These standards are filled with jargon mindlessly parroted in more than two decades of policies designed to damage teachers who are not properly “standardized.”
Find all of the standards by entering here. http://caepnet.org/accreditation/standards/standard4/
See also, Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G. (1990). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. and Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. NY: Basic Books. (See especially their discussion of the role of sensory-motor experience in concept formation, long known to pre-school and Kindergarten teachers, but denied by conservative mandates to maintain a strictly “academic” and test-driven focus in schooling.
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Laura H. Chapman:
Thanks for pointing out the importance of metaphor. The “reformers” always invoke inappropriate and simplistic metaphors when they talk about teacher evaluation and measures of student growth and achievement. Achievement is always equated with test scores, and growth is associated with ever higher scores.
The rhetoric of “education reform” tends to be built around what Lakoff and Johnson call conceptual metaphors. These metaphors are part and parcel of human thought. Up is positive. Higher is always better, or more powerful. Fast is better than slow. So when education policy is framed as a competition, we get Race to the Top. In this botched metaphor Secretary Duncan and President Obama (and Big Business) reduce the goals of education to a narrow measure of performance (test scores) and completely ignore all the complexities of teaching, learning, and schooling. (He also reinforces the idea that ranking and competition, as human values, are superior to cooperation and the acceptance of differing strengths and capacities of others.)
The means of achieving improved performance is expressed in Secretary Duncan’s favorite sports metaphor, “raising the bar.” In Duncan’s world, it is assumed that demanding higher performance (under the threat of punishment) will result in higher performance (in the form of higher scores).
Duncan gets away with these inadequate and wrongheaded representations of what really happens–or should happen–in education because he is making use of “automatic” metaphors that are embodied in human thought. The future is ahead and the past is behind, up is good and down is bad. Difficulty implies quality. We understand these concepts without thinking.
Shaky ideas like international education rankings, measures of “learning growth,” and “dummying down” the curriculum (a truly unique Duncanism) appear to make sense because they draw from our collective metaphor bank. The problem is that when it comes to education, these basic metaphors are misapplied. They don’t make sense to most people who actually know schools and children, in all their variety and complexity. While Duncan’s rhetoric exploits basic metaphors derived from our everyday existence, it doesn’t square with the realities of education.
If journalists and politicians were to figure out how bad the “reform” metaphors really are, they might stop buying Duncan’s rhetoric and start thinking for themselves.
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“The changes we document in our study,” the authors conclude, “represent something other than a wholesale shifting of the first grade curriculum down by a year. In many ways, kindergarten in 2006 looks quite distinct from both kindergarten and first grade classrooms in the late nineties.” (Note the authors’ use of italics.)”
It’s funny, because I think the changes are commonly understood, or a lot of parents I know say they recognize a change. Perhaps they remember their own kindergarten experience and then compare.
It isn’t a random sample or anything, I’m not polling these people, but I have heard this again and again and again. People seem a little bewildered by it – as if acceleration is inexorable and inevitable, out of their control.
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No sooner did I finish my comment than I found this article from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/04/26/kindergarten-show-canceled-so-kids-can-keep-working-to-become-college-and-career-ready-really/
College and career ready Kindergarteners? Ay yi yi!!!
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The irony is that preparing for the show and putting it on is the kind of complex learning that would help children on the so-called measures of achievement.
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Pre-k worries me, because NCLB was sold exactly the same way. It would be a bargain, a deal, with funding would come a massive “accountability” scheme. Win/win!
I just don’t think there is anyone in ed reform who ever says “no”, to anything, or I haven’t seen any evidence that there is anyone who says no. Why will the approach to pre-k be any different than the approach of the last decade? The tests will be “better” or “personalized”; administered on a computer to get around the fact that no human being could apply all this collected data to 25 kids. With a huge tranche of federal funding available all of the same approaches will just be pushed down to pre-k.
I read one of the Senate bills on pre-k and there was this sort of weak, half-ass attempt to limit testing, but that was the liberal members of the Senate and anything that passed would look vastly different. They’d pile on “accountability” provisions because “accountability” is a particular, distinct political coalition in ed reform and that group would get whatever they demanded, along with the “choice” caucus of ed reform and whoever else lines up to add provisions. There doesn’t seem to be a “tread carefully and think this thru” caucus in ed reform, or a “remove that portion” caucus. It’s just a group of people battling for funding and dominance for their favored approach, and they all get everything, because they have to hold the “movement” coalition together.
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Kindergarten in my district became the new first grade when we moved from half day to full day. But five-year-olds have not become the new six-year-olds.
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What ever happened to Montessori or Waldorf? Wonderful, age appropriate, programs for young children. My son went to many Waldorf art programs at our local park district (I would have sent him to a Waldorf school had one been available). Have we done nothing but go backwards with these new programs?
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What’s really sad is that Montessori and Waldorf will be the choices for those who parents who can find a way to afford them. Mass pre-K will be privatized, staffed cheaply, probably doing the accountability thing.
So when the two groups enter first grade, the gaps will be even larger.
So the new obsession will be a win-win for everyone but those who need it. The kids.
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standardized tests for tots! hold those babies accountable!
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Not sure how standardized they are, but there’s already a slew of testing for kindergartners in Hillsborough County. Not for the teachers’ benefit. It’s all top-down, district mandated testing. Acquiring data for the sake of having data.
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Our youngest children are already in the vortex and here’s another great book speaking to their suffering: Sharna Olfman’s ALL WORK AND NO PLAY.
“A child possesses a self, which imbues her with the desire to give her life meaning, purpose, and a moral compass.
A child is motivated to learn by the desire to be grounded in her family, in her community, and the natural order, and yet at the same time to express herself and place her own personal stamp on the world.
Her thinking is infused with emotion, sensory and bodily kinesthetic experience, artistry, imagination, and soulfulness. It is through this uniquely human prism, in the service of uniquely human needs, that she processes information. Thus, it is a tragic irony that we idealize the disembodied, emotionless computer and try to teach our children to think according to its operating principles. Real psychological growth ceases, and the educational system encourages a growing cynicism and despair.”
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I am working on a doctoral research project inspired by Diane’s book, Death and Life of the Great American School System (2011). If the public school system–as many of us knew it, at least–is dead or near death, it would stand to reason that public school teachers who remember the system as it was prior to No Child Left Behind (2002) have experienced loss and grief. If you remember what it was like to teach prior to No Child Left Behind, if you feel as if teaching completely changed when No Child Left Behind was implemented, or if you ever felt saddened by some of the changes that resulted from educational reform, then you may be interested in taking my survey.
https://ndstate.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5nCLnPAFadWZX93
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Recently, I decided to check out some part-time preschool programs for my three year old. I figured he might like to play with other kids a few hours a week. The preschool director at the first school quickly informed me of the “rigor” of their new program, which will help the kids get ready for the CC$$ when they get to Kindergarten. She said kids will still get playtime, but their learning time will be deeper and include higher level thinking skills. Needless to say, that was the last school I visited; I decided to keep my little guy home next year and take him to the park instead. ; )
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Good choice. it’s really sad to see these private Pre-k’s taking this on. Why do the educators that work at and run these schools think this is a good idea? Surely it must go against the grain of everything they know and stand for.
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Somewhere along the line we have started to worship material success as the only life to lead. The Jobs, the Gates, the rich these are the only measure of success educationally that matters. This hero worship of the rich has now allowed them to dominate our thinking politically, educationally, health care, and childhood. It seems no one really cares how people get rich and succeed jus that they do. Childhood can’t be wasted on the joy of learning it has to be a militaristic preparation for success. Of course most teachers know that that the know it alls in the class aren’t always the ones that succeed. There are those kids with hearts of gold, natural leaders, natural teachers, kids who are artistic, creative and kids that like sports, and challenges, and kids that like music and love to sing. Kids that are funny , insightful and oh so sweet and good. Success isn’t a test result it’s being who you are and developing that. If we channel them too fast and too furiously down one road we are cutting them off from their source of happiness within and I can’t tell you what the ramifications of that are. I remember Issac Stern went to china in a documentary called Mao to Mozart. The violinists there were technically perfect but did not know how to play with heart and soul. And it seems now that kids will be technically perfect if this system prevails but their heart and souls, the very source of joy and happiness will be shut down and what a tragedy that is. And to start it so young is a double tragedy, the joy that is a child isn’t easily suppressed, you see kids after weather tragedies playing joyfully together with destruction all around. But one sure way to suppress it is to have their worth measured, not by their character and inner talents, , but by their ability to take tests and pass.
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” Kindergarten will become what first grade used to be…”
Too late. That’s already happened.
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That’s just what I was going to write.
I went to K in the mid-1970’s and I didn’t learn to read or write until 1st grade. Amazingly. I still managed to go to college (and got an engineering degree w/o taking calculus in HS). Someone needs to measure (kiss) my grit(s).
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lol. I noticed a change after NCLB. Less play time, no nap time, moving the some of the first grade curriculum down to K. It’s even worse now. And not just in kindergarten. I’ve encountered some things in third grade that I didn’t encounter until high school, and quite a lot of things that I learned when I was in fifth grade. Like you, my friends and I were in K in the mid 70s, and we all managed to graduate from college (many of us with advanced degrees). I guess we didn’t know that we were supposed to be college and career ready at the time. I don’t recall any of us having to take remedial courses in college either.
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