The Boston Globe interviewed early childhood education expert Nancy Carlsson-Paige about the changing nature of kindergarten. C-P told the writer Joanne Weiss that five-year-old children learn through play, not flash cards and drill. They are hard-wired to learn through play. The Common Core expects that children will learn to read in kindergarten, but C-P says that goal is developmentally inappropriate. An organization she helped found, “Defending the Early Years,” reviewed the research and could find no support for the Common Core claim that children in kindergarten should learn to read. There is time for that in first and second grades.
Weiss followed that interview by talking to State Commissioner Mitchell Chester in Massachusetts, who said that his concern for poor and minority students led him to believe that they should learn to read in kindergarten. It is a matter of civil rights. But reformers have become skilled at invoking “civil rights” for whatever they choose to do. If it is not right for children, it is not right for poor and minority children. Don’t you think?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
No, I don’t think so! Why? Because zip code still determines the quality of instruction received in American schools today – a shameful reality. Give the preschoolers of minority extraction a headstart and they won’t be classified as special education students in 1st grade!
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I often wonder if those Reformers who sing the virtues of vouchers for education would agree to vouchers for housing. Hey, a chance for families in “failing neighborhoods” to get quality housing in some McMansions.
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That’s an area where “reformers” and “non-reformers” would probably find common ground. Pick a <10-20% FRPL-eligible school in the bluest city in the bluest state, where people have immaculate, carefully cultivated political views and are quick to say that we must not rest until the schools that serve disadvantaged kids are amply resourced. Then tell those people that you want to let some disadvantaged kids who live on the other side of an arbitrary line into their kids' schools.
The ferocity and viciousness will surprise you.
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We would see “rich flight” just as we saw “white flight” a generation before.
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I’m all for giving preschoolers a head start if they need one, but the research shows that not all kids are ready to read in kindergarten. So my definition of a “head start” would mean something different than drill and kill activities. I don’t even want to get started with your special education comment, which to me, is a separate issue. Kids hating reading is starting to be a real problem. As a high school teacher, I can tell you that reading passages looking for “authorial intent” and “tone” etc. is killing student engagement, and many students rely on reading Sparknotes when they are assigned a novel. I cannot even imagine what it must be like for the elementary grades. My kids both became readers because they loved the stories they heard in school and that I read to them at home. I read every word of Harry Potter out loud, all 7 books, even past the ages where they could read themselves. The poverty/zip code connection means that parents may not have luxury of this kind of quality time with their kids. It’s not about the quality of instruction; it’s about the quality of life at home.
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Children who participate in early-education programs are less likely to be placed in special education, a recent Duke University study found.
The study, conducted by Duke researchers Clara G. Muschkin, Helen F. Ladd and Kenneth A. Dodge, tracked 871,000 children born between 1988 and 2000 who were enrolled in North Carolina’s two early-education programs. Researchers found children enrolled in early-education programs were 39 percent less likely to be placed in special education by time they reached third grade.
The study found that while early-education programs did not affect children with severe disabilities and physical handicaps, the programs benefited students with attention disorders and learning disabilities.
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The quality of life at home is a stark reality among minority population. While we preach and encourage parents/ guardians to spend quality time with their children – this is the least policy makers can do to augment for such! A history of impoverishment demands such!!!
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I have no idea if you are for or against ‘joyless’ kindergarten based upon your comments.
Head Start, Voluntary Pre- Kindergarten, and other such programs are already available and have a long history of seeking out minority and poor children, both rural and urban. The problem is that none of were designed to ptop up and support multiple-choice testing as pedagogy and education ideology.
The article isn’t about early intervention versus no intervention, as you seem to imply, but rather about the quality of the intervention and it questions why over 100 years of experience and research into early childhood education by experts in the field is being ignored and thrown out for the sake of David Coleman’s crackpot theories based in no actual experience or research but rather on what he and his neoliberal cronies just “know” is right because economists, politicians, billionaires, and other non-teacher practioners have said so.
Where do you stand?
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O.A., regarding the Duke study: Yes, it is well-documented that children who attend a high quality preschool do better in school later. But do you understand that these preschool programs probably have highly trained teachers who provide rich and engaging PLAY experiences? They do not do skill and drill. You need to do a little more research on what high quality preschool is before you have an opinion. I am an early childhood teacher and literacy specialist and my daughter didn’t read until she was 7. I wasn’t worried. She went to “kindergarten” (Year 1) in England and no one was worried that she wasn’t reading. She is now 11 and above grade level in reading. She got “advanced” on the ELA MCAS. There is no documented reason why a child, rich or poor, has to read in kindergarten.
They need rich experiences that build language skills and background knowledge in order to learn reading skills later. Some children may read in kindergarten, or even earlier, and some may not. Each child is unique and development is very uneven until age 8. They are not made from cookie cutters.
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Olukayode Banmeke is way off base. The research the poster referred to is regarding high quality Preschool, where 3 and 4 year olds learn through play-based activities. In high quality preschools, young children are not force-fed academics and they are NOT required to learn how to read. This thread is about academic Kindergarten for 5 year olds, where children are expected to learn how to read and play is replaced with drill for skill. For all of these ages, children learn best through play-based activities, not by being required to overcome challenges they are not developmentally ready for by being subjected to frequent drilling and lectures.
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I am white and “privileged”, and for this reason, I believe, was forced to learn to write in kindergarten before I was developmentally ready, and was forced to do so with my right hand. Turns out I’m naturally a left-handed writer, but I didn’t figure that out until adulthood, after years of learning disabilities which adversely affected my academic performance and, later, my professional life. I understand your concerns, but the focus should not be on making underprivileged kids live up to the same high standards as those placed on privileged ones; it should be on understanding how all children develop in the first place, and respecting those neurological realities.
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Understanding isn’t enough. How to overcome is. I was also born with severe learning disabilities and my mother was told when I was age 7 that I would never learn to read or write so she used painful punishment at home with a wire coat hanger and taught me to read on her own with advise on material from my 1st grade teacher. And I don’t resent what my mother did, because if she hadn’t, I would be illiterate today just like my older brother for his entire life until he died at 64 a man broken by poverty.
I don’t think that coat hanger my mother used damaged me one bit, but I did come home from Vietnam damaged with PTSD that had a dramatic impact on the rest of my life.
If the reformers are unwilling to deal with the challenges of the most at risk children by not supporting and defunding public education while corporate Charters throw these children out, then the solution may well be in the hands of desperate parents who want their children to be literate and end up living a live in poverty.
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Agree!!
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Another example of someone in a position of authority who knows nothing about childhood development or education attempting to dictate education policy.
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Exactly. What we have in Coleman & the corporate reformers is accountability entitlement. They have the right to be taken seriously. Teachers owe them respect. This sensibility is everywhere and it makes me believe there is a strong gender bias in who is believed. Joel Klein, Kevin Huffman, Rahm Emmanuel, Arne Duncan, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, John White, Cuomo, etc., lie and obfuscate with impunity.
Teachers, girls, union thugs, just be quiet and do as you are told.
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jcgrim this has been noted for some time; also , the language … anything you want for the students is “unsustainable”…. their greed and corporate profits will not “sustain” anything that is good for students, etc…. I find it very hard to sustain their presence in any kind of elected office……
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My sweet little nephew is almost seven years old and in first grade. His school is being torn down this summer and so school is getting out earlier than usual. To get the required number of hours in, the children are going an hour longer than they normally would. Between that and the Common Core, this sweet, active, little guy is saying that he hates school and is stupid at reading and math. What are we doing to these babies?
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Now here’s a big problem with our decades old accountability mania! Poor children who come to school with a large language gap are now subjected to tests that are “proxies” for that language development. If a child can’t “pass” the proxy test (for example -name enough alphabet letters within 60 seconds to be deemed “not at risk”) that child gets worksheets, curriculum, etc. designed to increase proficiency WITH THE PROXY instead of the kind of interactions and play that will boost language development and cognition. So the language strong kids get to be involved with high level pay while the language poor kids get worksheets so they will do better on the proxy tests. The gap widens and then, what do we get to help our most vulnerable kids, more proxy tests!!! CRAZY!!
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Colorado T, you need to go on the road. No one with any integrity could continue to support such mania, after listening to what you have just said and do anything but agree with you.
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It does not take money to talk with and listen to your own children. Why is lack of money or education an excuse for not doing this? The studies on the differences in early language development include the fact that much of the little bit of talking poor parents do to their children is negative.
Let’s put some of the responsibility where it belongs – with the parents who chose to bring children into this world. More parent training!!! Please.
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RT – as a long time teacher in a large urban district I talked to parents a lot about talking to their kids and “negative” talk, no matter who was doing it, made me cringe. My point is that it is that the kids who are school dependent for the kind of interactions and play they need don’t have a minute to waste while they are in school on skill and drill of the few parts of language development that can be tested in 60 seconds. Blame the parents and hold them responsible – have at it – but let’s not make things worse for the kids who need what their parents can’t or won’t provide by insuring the kids also won’t get rich language in school!
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Colorado Teacher,
I totally agree with all kids being taught in a joyful setting where reading is fun. I dislike the DIBELS “curriculum” foisted upon K-3 students. The assessment was not designed as a curriculum, but as in the case of any test whose importance is overstated and overly monitored by state and federal departments of education, the curriculum becomes test prep.
Children love to discover, explore their world, and have fun. Fun and joy in learning is not fluff, as the TFA types are taught. They are not waste of time.
I am just tired of educators having to make up for lack of good parenting. We love children or would not be with a class full of them 5 days a week. If one loves his own children, why doesn’t one at least talk with them?
Preschool for at risk children is great, but it still doesn’t make up for what is missing at home. Some of the greatest programs have been those that work with parents and children in the home. Where is the money for those?
Let’s advocate for educating parents in the home or at the very least get them in parenting classes while their kids are in free preschool. Responsibility.
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Robert, I think much of problem is that parents working 2-3 minimum-wage jobs just to keep afloat are exhausted and don’t have time– they don’t see their kids much, even in two-parent families. We have always had poverty, but only in the past 30-40 years has it been impossible for one parent’s income to support a family. Having two parents work often means no parent at home to talk with the child.
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“Will”? Don’t you mean “Does”? The answer to which is yes, we’re already there.
I’ve mentioned my friend BJ before who runs and in-home play-based daycare. She’s always talking about her kids that are going to public school kindergarten the following fall. They have to take a three hour “assessment”, which every one of her kids has failed. These are quite affluent folks from Oak Park, not poor folks working two or three jobs to put food on the table. If your child fails the assessment, s/he has to go to summer school which is five weeks of three hours a day of basically non-stop drill-and-kill. Kids come back from this program already hating school and they haven’t even started kindergarten yet. When they do go to kindergarten it’s as bad or worse. Kids who have long since given up their nap come back to her program in the afternoon after summer school or kindergarten and go to sleep for two or three hours. Again, this is upscale Oak Park, not some poor, minority inner city school.
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I feel sick!
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Oak Park is a lovely and unique place, and there are certainly plenty of well-to-do families, but the district is 25% FRPL-eligible and 2% of the kids are actually homeless.
Concern about identifying and addressing deficits in background knowledge and pre-reading isn’t something that’s limited to “reformers.” I’m aware of your experience with the kids who caught up just fine with play and little in the way of direct instruction, but some educators, even some progressive ones, might reasonably disagree that such an approach is optimal, especially at a district or school level. A lack of play in kindergarten is sad no matter how you slice it, though.
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None of the families who attend BJ’s daycare are remotely eligible for FRPL, yet the children still fail the “assessment”. How do you explain that?
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In a nutshell, the answer to Dienne’s question, which virtually all professionals in Early Childhood Education know very well, is individual differences. This is demonstrated by years of research on Kindergarten where, in classrooms every fall, there is often a wide spread of development, as children’s developmental levels can range from 3 to 8 years of age. (See #6 on this Gesell Institute of Child Development web page: http://www.gesellinstitute.org/5-16-14-ten-facts-kindergarten-parents-need-know/ ) I saw this in my own diverse Kindergarten class every single year for decades. Individual differences account for the facts that young children are idiosyncratic and typically develop at their own rates.
Skilled ECE teachers have been dealing with this wide span of development in Kindergarten for many decades. It was not until non-educators who know nothing about child development wrote the Common Core and decided to turn Kindergarten into 1st Grade by inappropriately expecting every 5 year old to be on the same page on the same day of their lives, and learn how to read in their first year of formal schooling, that normal development was seen as an issue.
The matter is not about deficiencies in children, parents, educators or schools. The problem is that know-nothings, who think young children are the same as older kids, did not bother to get input from ECE professionals regarding child development, as well as the indicators of high quality programs that meet the diverse needs of young children, before they decided what Kindergartners across the country should be learning.
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I don’t want to quibble about whether young children are more developmentally disparate than older children. Developmental differences have obviously been recognized as an important factor at every level. We just seem to switch to a recognition that as children grow they develop interests that also influence their approach to instruction in subjects that may or may not be of interest to them. Mandating that children will be able to perform certain tasks and operate at a certain level at a designated age (or else!) is just plain stupid. We are pretty good at describing what a typical child may be able to do and with what level of sophistication, but such information is only valuable in that it helps us understand and plan for the immense variability. I do find the demands being placed on young children to be particularly horrifying probably because my own experience with “education” at this age has been with play based programs that have been guided by observation of young children rather than mandates about skills to be mastered. We do pay less attention and have less patience for behavior that “gets in the way” of instruction with older students.
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2old2teach – well said – thank goodness you’re not 2old2think (and write)!
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2old2teach, You may not want to quibble with the research, but a six year spread in development is not the norm in classrooms with older children. Sure, there are usually some children who are more advanced and some who lag behind, but those with serious delays usually have IEPs, are not necessarily in mainstream classes all day long and they have supportive services, including special ed teachers and teacher aides, which is not typical in Kindergarten. The most common category of special needs served in schools is Learning Disabilities and those are not typically diagnosed until around 3rd Grade, because a two year delay is usually a component of the identification process and it’s a challenge to distinguish that from the normal variability seen in young children’s development. I do, however, agree that, all too often today, older children are getting the short shrift, and I think that’s related to education “reform” and what Lilian Katz meant when she said, “We are doing earlier and earlier to children what we shouldn’t do later.”
I never heard teachers and administrators shout at little kids so much and say, “This is REAL school!” as often as I have in academically oriented ECE classrooms that are dominated by direct instruction, including those that implement DISTAR. That’s because younger children are more inclined to act out in rebellion against rigid, didactic curriculum, though some may be internalizers as well. The children had already been denied opportunities to learn through play and often their consequences were to be denied Recess as well.
When the introduction to schooling for young children consists of, “Sit down, sit still and be quiet,” for many, that is contrary to who they are and what they need. That is because children this age are at a developmental stage when they are biologically primed to take initiative, be creative, experiment and try to make sense of the world. A lot are leaving home for the first time and coming from experiences with relationship-based learning, but are then expected to navigate through their first experience in group care with peers who they are not permitted to interact with most of the time. It’s understandable that, down the road, they might end up with social and delinquency issues.
The opposite is true for children in play-based programs. Even in adulthood, those students had “significantly fewer felony arrests of various kinds and fewer years of special education for emotional impairment. In addition, compared with the Direct Instruction group, the High/Scope group aspires to complete a higher level of schooling, and has more members living with their spouses.”
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I knew I shouldn’t have used that word “quibble!” I should have just said that I have no argument with anything you have said. In fact, I agree. However, as most of my professional experience has been with older children, I can only speak with some authority about learning from the perspective of a special education teacher (mild developmental delays, LD, social-emotional, ESL or as commonly called now non-categorical). My own four children were lucky enough to attend a play-based kindergarten. I have been exposed to both play-based and academic programs as a substitute, the academic in recent years. I could not stomach what I saw in the academic class. (I was supporting a special ed student.) I have not subbed at that level again.
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Like.
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In high quality play-based preschool programs, such as those inspired by Reggio Emilia and High Scope, regardless of economic background, with skilled ECE teachers, children who are ready can and do learn how to read, without being pressured to do so or subjected to drill and kill. Those who are not ready are developing emergent literacy skills.
Will thinks-he-knows-it-all Tim ever learn that he comes across as a real know-nothing, especially to those of us who are genuinely experts in this field?
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ECE, I’m basing my thoughts on things like the results of Project Follow Through and Direct Instruction; the success that many Catholic schools have had for generations with a traditional phonics-based approach; and the opinion of veteran educators who work in the high-needs traditional district New York City public schools my kids have attended.
A large reason I strongly support choice is the fact that there are in fact wide differences of opinion among genuine experts. I’m also quite wary of people who play the “genuine expert” card–am I to assume that your own personal opinions on matters of politics or public policy should be disregarded because you are not a genuine expert in those fields?
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You are totally out of the loop. The long term impacts of DISTAR are no comparison to high quality programs such as High Scope and other play-based programs: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED504839.pdf
Ever been in a classroom where DISTAR is implemented with young children? I have and all I can say is that I am not at all surprised that,
“By age 15 the youngsters who had attended the DISTAR program self-reported twice as many delinquent acts as those in the other two groups. They also reported “relatively poor relations with their families, less participation in sports, fewer school job appointments, and less reaching out to others for help with personal problems.””
We have much more engaging and instructive methods of teaching young children than that scripted drill and kill program.
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I wonder what the American Statisical Association would say about the quality of randomization from a sample size of 58 students in a longitudinal education study.
The progressive camp has the Perry study. Direct Instruction / Reading Mastery has its studies:
http://www.nifdi.org/pdf/JDI_02_02_03.pdf. None of this is settled science.
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I wonder what anyone with a brain would say about the conflict of interest that exists when the research cited comes from a journal geared towards “the DI community” that was established by, and is still chaired by, Siegfried Engelmann, the Behaviorist who created DISTAR.
Thank goodness we have many well trained Early Childhood Education teachers that are sensitive to children who cry and don’t want to go to school after they have been subjected to this kind of regimented learning experience and who know other effective instructional approaches that meet the needs of the whole child.
Case closed –except for those who adore it when teachers behave as military-style drill sergeants and who could care less when the primary role of students is to comply with adult demands. No wonder you love charter schools and have no concept of the developmental needs of young children. (And, yes, I implemented manipulative Behavioral techniques for years, when they were the “in” thing, and I really regretted doing that to kids, so I returned to school and learned a wide array of effective child-centered strategies.)
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“Phonics” is not an “approach.” Teaching phonics is one part of teaching children how to read. Sounding out words is one of the four “cueing” strategies used by readers. I wish people who don’t teach reading would stop pretending that they understand the process of learning to read! If you are not a surgeon would you be so presumptuous as to tell a surgeon how to perform surgery?! Or an electrician how to wire a house? Teachers are trained to do their (very complicated) jobs. Let us teach!!! The CC calls for kindergarteners to learn vowel sounds and their many symbolic representations (letter or combination of letters). Many kindergarteners are not ready for this. Their brains are simply not ready and that’s ok. They will learn this when they ARE ready. The CC needs to be revised by early childhood experts. Apparently there was not even one involved in the development of CC! Insane.
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there are articles in the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald requesting that this man be removed due to conflict of interest (his accepting trips to London etc through Prearson PARRC) and his ill-advised decisions when policy is set.
who said that his concern for poor and minority students led him to believe that they should learn to read in kindergarten.
jeanhaverhill@aol.com
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this article also made it into the Worcester Telegram (Worceseter is our second largest city after Boston)….http://www.telegram.com/article/20150205/NEWS/302059973/1020
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You would think that there is a clear conflict of interest. Finn should have been gone a long time ago.
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You’ve gotten Chester Finn confused with Mitchell Chester.
Totally understandable! : )
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I did didn’t I? There must be something about the two men other than their names that has me intertwining their biographies. That and/or there are occasions when I should avoid the urge to talk.
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2OLD2TEACH you have them in the right neighborhood…. M . Chester and
“Checkers Finn” are in this greater boston area; Checkers Finn just “retired” from Fordham Institutute and now it is headed by Mike Petrilli — so they are all birds of a feather… some confuse Fordham Instiute with Fordham University (not the same thing)…. but Gates money goes through Fordham Institute with the Education Next newsletter and Finn always has an article in there about his opinions .. their word goes right to NAEP and they are “blue skying” how to measure student’s personalities now….. it really infuriates me how they carry on.
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Worcester, the city of seven hills.
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aw, shucks , Duane ; thanks for noticing; and about 10 colleges; we were built on the 7 hills… have you ever visited? I worked at Worcester Polytech (WPI) one year and it is right near Instiute Park and Bancroft Tower which is on one of the hills with a spectacular view over the city…. ( I was a mere student at that other school across the city — the public teachers college but my tuition was only 100 a year until my senior year when it was 200.) Sorry folks for the personal moments but I didn’t know how else to get in touch with Duane.
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I think we file this under: Careful what we wish for! Unfortunately, the article calling for Mitchell Chester’s removal comes from the Pioneer Institute. And newly-elected Governor Baker has just installed Jim Peyser as his Secretary of Education.
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replying to Christine: this is from Blue Mass Group ”
“Now that Charlie Baker is elected (governor), and has appointed James Peyser, we are left waiting for New Schools 2014 IRS 990, I believe, under Governor-elect Baker, Massachusetts is going to experience the largest transfer of public wealth to private pockets in the history of our state! In appointing James Peyser, a deliberate strategy to undermine public education is underway……. it is up to us to keep this fox from from raiding the hen house, and putting public education into the hands of private pockets.”
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Jean,
“. . . have you ever visited?”
We’ll have the folks here learn a little about Wustah.
Lived in Worcester for a couple of years, my first son was born there. Lived on an island, yep, Sears Island that is in Indian Lake in the north part of Worcester. Lived on the back end of the island. Then bought a house in Oxford. Didn’t do anything related to education back then (85-87).
If you ever feel a need to contact me please feel free to do so: dswacker@centurytel.net .
Duane
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Also my all-time favorite restaurant is in Worcester, “The Sole Proprietor”. Great food, service and was quite reasonably priced. The last time we ate there I had the most expensive item on the menu ($16) called “A Fine Kettle of Fish” that had mussels, clams, crab, a lobster tail, and fish fillets along with red potatoes, carrots, etc. . . (if I’m remembering correctly).
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Although it’s refreshing to see an article that even mostly gets it, I’m disturbed by a writer who could pen this: “Chester clearly cares about the poorest kids, and his counter-argument is compelling: With no sense of direction or pressure, we’d wind up with cruelly different expectations.” Right, it’s just been the lack of standards that have held kids back so long. Darn teachers don’t know what to do without those standards!
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Let me recommend again a WONDERFUL book: How to Teach a Love of Reading Without Getting Fired. Written in 2002, the book is more valuable than ever now -for obvious reasons.
The author, Mary Leonhardt, taught for many years in Massachusetts and has written a number of other books, including Parents Who Love Reading, Kids Who Don’t: How It Happens and What You Can Do About It.
I don’t know where Mary is these days. I hope she’s okay. I tried to contact her amidst all this craziness that is going on in our schools now. It helps to hear from people like her who are wise, humane and generous. When my son was first in school I corresponded with Mary about how to get him excited about reading. (He was having some trouble, like many kids do when first starting to read.) She took the time to write to me personally. My son now devours books voraciously and is getting ready to apply to college.
I see her books are on Amazon. It looks like they are available on kindle at a low cost.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for our teachers who already KNOW how to teach a love of reading. If only some of these so-called “reformers” took the time to listen and respect those teachers.
Tracy O’Connell Novick, a member of the Worcester School Committee, wrote a great editorial piece back in October: “Is Mitchell Chester Listening” (Worcester Telegram and Gazette)
“In order to understand the concerns around overtesting, the commissioner is going to have to listen, ” Novick wrote. “He’ll need to listen to students as young as kindergartners who know that they dare not make noise at recess, or sing during music class, or applaud a classmate’s presentation during MCAS time.”
http://www.telegram.com/article/20141008/NEWS/310089991/1017
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Tracy O’Connell Novick, a member of the Worcester School Committee, wrote a great editorial piece back in October: “Is Mitchell Chester Listening” (Worcester Telegram and Gazette) “In order to understand the concerns around overtesting, the commissioner is going to have to listen, ” Novick wrote. “He’ll need to listen to students as young as kindergartners who know that they dare not make noise at recess, or sing during music class, or applaud a classmate’s presentation during MCAS time.”——————————————————————————————————————————————–
yes, thanks for this comment; Tracy is a commentor here and the Globe often picks up her name … I am pleased that she has made this commitment to working with the educators and parents. Also, I am hoping that Chester would at least being to listen to the MTA — he made really nasty comments about the newest MTA president that were picked up by Boston Globe magazine and i posted them here at the time. How he can dismiss the MTA president with his contempt for teachers etc.
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John…. Tracy’s article quote: “” Novick wrote. “He’ll need to listen to students as young as kindergartners who know that they dare not make noise at recess, or sing during music class,” reminded me of 1965 and the “detention of 400 school children who had been transported to a state prison farm after the warning: Sing one more freed song and you are under arrest. sadism towards children is still rampant in this culture…..
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Being ready for school does not mean that a student has to be a reader in kindergarten. Early reading among middle class students correlates with children that enjoy playing alone. My daughter read in kindergarten, and my son did not. Both are bright and did well in school.
With poor students, children arrive in kindergarten with more than a reading readiness gap. My experience is with poor ELLs. The performance gap is part experiential, part language and part reading readiness. Reading to children is probably the best thing parents can do to prepare children for school! Poor students are at a tremendous disadvantage if they don’t have “phonemic awareness,” mostly letter sounds and rhyming. These can be taught through nursery rhymes and games. The instruction does not have to be tedious, and it can be fun, if done in small, age appropriate doses. As far as trying to force fluent reading in kindergarten, not all students are ready for it. It should be noted that in Scandinavia, a country with high rates of literacy, reading is not started until age 7 or 8. They also don’t have the socioeconomic range that we see in typical US classrooms.
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Sorry: Scandinavia, a region with high rates of literacy,
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There is no reason to believe that Mitchell Chester will listen to anyone who disagrees with his ‘core’ belief system. Really, Joanna Weiss is not literate on the issues that inform Early Childhood and Kindergarten education. Her article is somewhat appealing because it does not, ostensibly, support the hard line held by the Globe editorial board, or the most ignorant Globe reporter, Scott Leigh, Dienne, in her post, above, rightly called out Weiss for finding that Chester’s counter arguments ( to Carlssen-Page’s) were “compelling”. His argument is self serving; he has sufficient conflicting interests to sink a ship. Moreover, learning to read in kindergarten does not fall within the domain of being a Civil Right. Clearly, Chester is grasping for pseudo legal justification for imposing his instructional imperative. Once again, Chester makes it abundantly clear that his farcical pedagogy and belief system are immune to the acknowledging the primary importance of race, class and ethnicity on the educational futures of children. Finally, we have to understand that new Governor is an ardent supporter of the Common Core and there is no way that he is going to give Chester the heave-ho. Any progressive change must be exerted locally and state wide by a coalition of parents, teachers, the MTA and community organizations. Joanna Weiss wears the soft glove of the Globe’s hard glove support of educational reform.
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I wonder why no one has mentioned Finland.
“State Commissioner Mitchell Chester in Massachusetts, who said that his concern for poor and minority students led him to believe that they should learn to read in kindergarten. It is a matter of civil rights.”
I read what Chester the dunce had to say and wanted to fall down on the floor and laugh until I couldn’t breathe but I didn’t. I resisted the urge.
In Finland, children are introduced to reading by their parents as early as age two—it’s cultural and it is a family affair not attached to any kind of bubble test that decide if you are college and career ready—and don’t start school until age 7 with lots of time for play.
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Bizarre answer? It will lead to earlier failure as well as to cutting back on strong intellectually lively practicesq.
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Lloyd, do you think Chester gives a tinker’s damn about high level successful educational practice. in Finland ? I mean, what does Finland know about Ed reform and the Common Core as a “Civil Right” ? Chester’s brain- and I use that term advisedly – is steel tight shut; and with every reason for it to remain so.
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You’re right—Chester is a puppet, a flunky, a tool of the oligarchs. His loyalty is to his masters and the reward the oligarchs will bestow on him. But I felt a need to mention Finland and how things work over there where according to the world happiness index, the people are much happier than they are in the U.S.
Finland is ranked #7 on that index. The U.S.was listed #17 (Mexico was #16). I wonder how much the standardized testing regime is contributing to that U.S. rank.
Then of course there’s the REAL rank for the U.S. on the OECD’s Pearson created international PISA test that Stanford revealed in this report:
Poor ranking on international test misleading about U.S. student performance, Stanford researcher finds:
There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country; surprisingly, that gap is smaller in the United States than in similar post-industrial countries, and not much larger than in the very highest scoring countries.
Achievement of U.S. disadvantaged students has been rising rapidly over time, while achievement of disadvantaged students in countries to which the United States is frequently unfavorably compared – Canada, Finland and Korea, for example – has been falling rapidly.
But the highest social class students in United States do worse than their peers in other nations, and this gap widened from 2000 to 2009 on the PISA.
U.S. PISA scores are depressed partly because of a sampling flaw resulting in a disproportionate number of students from high-poverty schools among the test-takers. About 40 percent of the PISA sample in the United States was drawn from schools where half or more of the students are eligible for the free lunch program, though only 32 percent of students nationwide attend such schools.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
And I think it’s worth meantime AGAIN (repeatedly) that the entire for-profit corporate driven and Bill Gates funded Common Core reform movement and agenda stems from the 1983’s A Nation at Risk that was revealed to be a total fraud and misleading by the 1990 Sandia Report.
“A Nation at Risk” (1983)
What the report claimed:
American students are never first and frequently last academically compared to students in other industrialized nations.
American student achievement declined dramatically after Russia launched Sputnik, and hit bottom in the early 1980s.
SAT scores fell markedly between 1960 and 1980.
Student achievement levels in science were declining steadily.
Business and the military were spending millions on remedial education for new hires and recruits.
The Sandia Report (1990)
What was actually happening:
Between 1975 and 1988, average SAT scores went up or held steady for every student subgroup.
Between 1977 and 1988, math proficiency among seventeen-year-olds improved slightly for whites, notably for minorities.
Between 1971 and 1988, reading skills among all student subgroups held steady or improved.
Between 1977 and 1988, in science, the number of seventeen-year-olds at or above basic competency levels stayed the same or improved slightly.
Between 1970 and 1988, the number of twenty-two-year-old Americans with bachelor degrees increased every year; the United States led all developed nations in 1988.
http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2009/07/history-lesson-about-sandia-report.html
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Guess what happens next…the young children who cannot sit still will have to miss recess for not sitting still for their literacy block. I work in a town where young children are allowed to.construct their own curriculum as it emerges. I am appaled that children who may be born to parents who don’t know what to question are being.cheated out of the joy of learning. What is the frkg rush? The dumb rich power players need to let these children play in their sandbox and crunch the numbers on what it would cost to put the Kind back in Kindergarten. They truly make me sick with their clueless, racist opinions. If you wouldn’t want it for your.child then don’t mandate it onto someone without your privilege.
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There’s a whole town that allows young children to construct their own curriculum as it emerges? Wow! Where do I find it?
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How about Winnetka?
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Personally, I think children should start developing reading skills in kindergarten. However, the drill-and-kill method is not how you do it. Some kids start reading as early as 2 and some don’t learn until 8 and all can go to college. I was reading on a second/third grade level in kindergarten because my mother taught me. It was the best thing she could have ever done for me since they were teaching sight reading in the schools and she felt that phonics was the right way. It was for me.
But if you are going to sit a child down with endless worksheets and take the joy of hands on and experiential learning out of school, that is wrong and not healthy at all. They are too little and don’t have the attention span for that kind of work.
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Diane Ravitch writes “If it is not right for children, it is not right for poor and minority children. Don’t you think?”
Yes. It’s not personal opinion that counts but research. And other countries have done the research for us. It’s basically what common sense dictates: reading is only a tool to learning. Kids first need to be motivated to learn to read. For them (as for adults), the object of desire is the fairy tale and not the letters in the fairy tale book. which was
I entered 1st grade at 7 in Hungary. Above my shelf in kindergarten, I had a fish. That was my “sign” which was put on everything I owned in kindergarten. I didn’t have my name there—I had no idea how to write my name, and I wouldn’t have recognized it if I saw it.
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“Weiss followed that interview by talking to State Commissioner Mitchell Chester in Massachusetts, who said that his concern for poor and minority students led him to believe that they should learn to read in kindergarten.”
So this decision is based on the personal opinion of someone who isn’t familiar with child development? And when confronted with the facts, it’s still “Full steam ahead”…?
This is MONSTROUS! How can this be happening? The only thing I can figure that makes sense is that they want to make public schools into places NOT to send your kids. Pave the way for privatization as the savior while still blaming the teachers and our “failed public education system”.
Totally disgusting. Our leaders are failing all of us. Adults and children.
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If they are concerned about Civil rights, then why is it that I am not hearing them addressing the increasing gaps in earnings between groups of people and the resulting consequences on these families or addressing the related issues of poverty and school success? Someday a wealthy person will buy a TV station who will present the 99% side of each issue so we will begin to have a real dialogue about solutions to these issues. Unfortunately, Theodore Roosevelt’s do not come along very often and until then, we will be regressing to the 1890’s at an increasing pace. Hold on, it will get a lot worse before it starts to get better.
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“reformers have become skilled at invoking “civil rights” for whatever they choose to do”
makes me think of the government’s continuous invocation of “national security” to hide its systemic corruption and criminal actions
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Well, we know that expression about opinions and body parts. Unfortunately in the field of education people get to put their opinions into practice even when they are pure poop
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