Nancy Bailey describes here the determined effort by policymakers to stamp out play and childhood, all in the name of teaching reading long before children are ready to learn to read.
Because kindergarten has become more advanced, preschool is seen as the time children must have prereading skills for kindergarten. If they don’t, it’s seen as a red flag. This makes teachers and parents push children to learn to read early.
Children are expected to know letters and numbers, even basic sight words. They’re supposed to be able to sit and focus on tasks for longer periods. But preschool wasn’t always about teaching prereading skills, and we should question if children that young are being pushed to read too soon.
In 2002, Newsweek published an article entitled “The Right Way to Read.” The title was conjecture. Reporters visited the Roseville Cooperative Preschool in northern California. Children there were called “masters of the universe” because they oversaw play. Children played most of the time. The school based everything on play.
Children played at a science table. They used magnifying glasses to explore flowers, cacti, and shells. They donned smocks to do art, lots of art. They were able to climb and stay active. They had access to books and a dollhouse.
There were no letters or numbers on the wall.
Director and founder Bev Bos told teachers, “Forget about kindergarten, first grade, second grade. We should be focusing on where children are right now.”
But Newsweek didn’t praise the preschool. They were there to show the controversy surrounding it.
The Bush administration had claimed research indicated that 50,000 Head Start teachers were going to have to learn how to provide explicit instruction on how to teach the alphabet, letter sounds, and writing to young children.
Not only that. Preschool teachers were to use a detailed literacy-screening test. Forty-five million was being earmarked for preschool-reading research.
Children were no longer masters of their world. Adults were in control.
Yes, the adults were in control but they made horrible decision that stole childhood and play from children.
For all the hundreds of millions and billions poured into the Great Crusade to Teach Preschoolers to Read, there has been minimal change in NAEP scores for reading, in fourth or eighth grades. Despite the pressure to raise test scores in reading, scores remained stagnant, and no academic progress was made at all for the lowest performing students since the implementation of NCLB almost two decades ago.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is old news. Yes, play until 7, then learn how to read in a month with phonics. That what they did a hundred, two hundred years ago, and it worked. I mean, there is no harm learning numbers and letters while playing or helping parents, but putting kids in a formal class before 7 is a crime.
And this is how SOME other countries are still doing it.
Pls see my post below, I respond to a ccouple of your points.
Play…ever so important for social skills, problem solving, building language and vocabulary, creativity, etc. The “push-down” of academics into lower grades (younger students) has deteriorated the development of young minds only to put pressure on parents, and stress out students who never had a chance to develop naturally and age appropriately. What a shame.
“Play is the work of the child.” It is how children make sense of the world. Programs for young children should be designed by those that understand child development. Any program for young children should be built upon the basic nature of the child. They learn by doing, not watching. Computer assisted instruction is inappropriate for preschoolers.
Most of these “pay for success” preschool programs are assembled by business people that know less about child development than the average mother. Their goal is to create a low cost program, not an appropriate one. Any preschool program should encourage active engagement of the whole child.
It’s about grifters, the richest 0.1%, feeding off of the children of labor because their concentrated wealth eliminated middle class demand for goods and services.
Cannibalization is the final stage of American economic misery.
Shout out to Bill and Melinda Gates.
I’m sorry so few posts here. Hopefully more will join in. The early-academics dumbing-down of PreK/K is ongoing, & needs to be turned around. Bear with me: it’s a long post. This is my livelihood.
As Dunce Me says above, this process started quite a while ago.
When my eldest was in K [‘92], our district already had a publicly-funded ‘disabled PreK’ that had somehow winnowed out not only the developmentally-delayed, but those whose PreK’s were screening for pre-reading issues [speech delay? adhd?] that suggested potential future reading difficulty. I remember conversations w/other K moms who had a younger child in “disabled PreK” who were saying, “my kid is tiny, & late in getting teeth: don’t they say you’re not ready to read until you get your front teeth?” To me, the whole thing betrayed a top-down instututional move toward segregation by ability— and an abandonment of the professionalism long-represented by Early Childhood majors who were trained to teach to the wide spectrum of abilities in K-2.
A number of district families used evaluation/ IEP process to divert their 5y.o.’s into “disabled PreK” for a year of “K-prep.” [I looked at the place & was not impressed: the high classroom walls were a jumble of horrendously-distracting wildly-colored displays; I would have chosen a calm hands-on Montessori setting w/ near-floor hands-on materials for such a class.]
My kids’ ’90-‘96 K already had a reduced quantity of play activity/ materials (by comparison to ‘80’s K), too much teacher-directed academic activity, & even parent-volunteer-run ‘computer-training’ in the hallway! So this attitude was well in the works before NCLB came along. Bailey says “For a while, parents and educators complained about this increased push to make children learn to read while taking away play. That seems all but forgotten.” It was forgotten in the crush of NCLB which made it clear to families they could forget about play-based PreK/K: the pendulum had swung to early academics, now pushed down from the federal Dept of Ed.
5 yrs later [2001], when I started working w/PreK age, their classroom spaces were dominated by the extensive play-kitchens, sand-tables et al that were standard in K classrooms just 15 yrs prior . 10 yrs after that [2010], those materials were removed from the lower-income PreK’s , replaced by tables/ chairs, “pre-reading/ pre-math circles.” Today [2019], even the classic play-based PreK’s—which are more expensive and frequented by mid/upper-mid families — have indoor play areas reduced to 20% of the space for blocks, dress-up, and some play kitchen/ work tools. However the best of the latter schools still manage ample outdoor play and lots of hands-on science, art, and music.
I hope you see from my italics that the steady stamping out of PreK/K play [and art and recess] started with the lowest-SES PreK’s in 2010, but was merely reflecting a parallel move in pubsch K that started in early ‘90’s—and has recently made incursions on all but the most stubbornly-retro play-based [& mostly expensive] PreK’s. Meanwhile families have allowed their pubsch K’s to become a virtually-play-devoid “new 1st grade.”
By the way, the move toward PreK as “early academics” did not come out of nowhere in 2009-10. In my state [NJ], it arose from the CCSS movement, which hit us first as a re-write of our [admirable] ‘90’s “PreK Expectations”, which was the beginning of a wholesale toss-out of the [admirable] NJ State Stds, which were soon replaced by “NJ Core Curriculum Stds” [word-for-word CCSS], & the gradual grade-by-grade mandate of the annual 3rd-8th “NJ ASK” assessments [PAARC]. My first inkling of the sea-change was the Jan 2010 installation of an ed-reform PreK director, replacing the [recently-deceased] circa-’70’s founder of a hospital employee daycare/PreK/K where I’d long been a for-lang enrichment special. The new director was not sui generis ; she was following NJ’s new rules for publicly-funded PreK’s, in hopes of plumping employee-family enrollment w/ local low-SES kids.
Those rules included replacing play-kitchens/ tool-workbenches & sand-tables with pre-reading/ pre-math chair-table circles [for 3&4y.o.’s], reduced seated rug-areas & outdoor playtime– & re-scheduling any parent-signup [extra-charge] enrichments [including dance, for-lang, computers, et al] to post-“curriculum”, i.e. after normal 3:30 pick-up time… In the interests of “equity.” Which didn’t make sense as this was an employee daycare where parents could dictate their druthers for curriculum. But sadly, there was a large contingent of recently-emigrated South Asian parents who were all about enforcing strict early academics on their 3/4yo kids…
I also worked longtime at another employee daycare for big pharma scientists, also founded in ‘70’s, w/a different & higher SES culture that did not support the CCSS push for early academics, & pushed back for continuation of playbased PreK/K. However, they were merged w/ a more rapacious competitor who had cut OH by privatizing employee daycare w/a mediocre commercial outfit. (To give you an idea of their enrichments: for-lang is provided via an optional canned computer program optionally available for 3-4-y.o’s at laptops on the outskirts of the classroom [no teacher supervision provided].)
I see only one minor justification for K being the “new” 1st grade—meaning 1st grade as it was in the ‘80’s and before—though I have no stats on this. In 18 yrs of working as a special for all types of regional PreK’s, I’ve noticed the 2.5-6y.o. set gradually maturing earlier, physically. They are generally bigger than they once were, and for most, coordination and cognitive devpt is parallel. So I’m down w/PreK 4y.o.’s in a play-based curriculum that includes alpha-numeric recognition, & K that includes pre-reading goals. We are far beyond that, and need to dial back.
But… when DB says some other countries still wait until age 7 to teach reading, I expect we’re talking about Finland. I’m not aware of any other such countries. And to say that they—like US 100 yrs ago?—wait to the right age, then presto-chango teach reading in one month “with phonics” is an exaggeration. First of all, in US days of yore, there were plenty who left 8th-gr w/o being able to read very well [my Dad was one—he was dyslexic], and more who left before 8th gr to work the farm. Only the privileged/ moneyed got a good education.
It has to be recognized that Finland provides publicly-funded childcare from birth, which may or may not include some alpha-numeric recognition. And the great majority of Finns send their kids to subsidized PreK at a nominal sum, for which you get personally-tailored PreK curriculum, which definitely includes pre-reading or even reading, if your kid is ready for it.. So a lot of these kids are already reading when they hit compulsive ed at age 7.
Thank you for your interesting reply that includes much information. I appreciate the reminder about CCSS and explaining how Finland has prereading before children turn 7.