As the tentacles of Ed Reform reachdown into the earliest years, forcing standardized tests on young children, Defending the Early Years is there to block the monster from strangling the children’s loveof learning.
In this short video, early childhood educator Kisha Reid explains what young children need most to thrive.
Play. When children play together, they collaborate. They solve problems. No one fails. They work and play together, as equals. Good practice for the real world.
If you are a parent or grandparent, you know that little children need less screen time, not more.
In this alarming post, blogger Wrench in the Gears quotes from transcripts where some deep thinkers (including Nobelist James Heckman) discuss ways to lure the little ones online, to give them digital badges, and scheme to come up with the right ways to sit them in front of computers.
She begins:
“This is another post with clips culled from talks given at the Center for the Economics of Human Development’s working group, Measuring and Assessing Skills: Real Time Measurement of Cognition, Personality and Behavior. It was held at the University of Chicago in February 2018. I previously shared a segment called from “Math to Marksmanship” with Nobel Prize economist James Heckman, Gregory Chung of UCLA-CRESST and Jeremy Roberts consultant to PBS Kids.
“Below are ten additional excerpts from that talk. I watched all two hours and pulled highlights, so you don’t have to. Topics covered include: game-based learning for pre-schoolers; how to get pre-readers to create online accounts; how digital games can be used to identify “Big Five” behavior traits; and a real doozy, Dr. Heckman’s half-joking suggestion that gamification and incentives of pornography for adults could encourage parents to have their children use online games more often. No, really.”
Denisha Jones speaks out here about the outrageous misuse of tests for children in kindergarten in Florida.
Incoming kindergarten students are tested online and their scores are published! This is child abuse.
Jones is an early childhood specialist, lawyer, and a recent addition to the board of the Network for Public Education.
She went to Miami and interviewed leaders of the “I Am Ready” Resistance Group, who described the harm that Florida’s tests do to children.
Julia Musella told Jones:
”’I am ready’ was born in direct response to the inappropriate testing of incoming Kindergarten children by computer and then publishing the scores in 2018. This disgraceful labeling of more than 50% of Florida’s Early Learning centers as failing to prepare children for kindergarten created an outcry from early educators across the state. We had enough years of being voiceless so we created an online petition through Change.org to then-Governor Rick Scott demanding the scores be taken down and comply with the statute on assessments. At the same time, we launched a public Facebook page, registered “I am Ready” as a nonprofit corporation to serve as an advocacy group, and encouraged local groups of providers to launch private Facebook pages to dialogue with each other.
“Our hope went beyond the short-term goal of having the scores eliminated and the assessment changed to meet the statute, although that was something we used to engage the community statewide. Our long term goal was to organize, galvanize and start a movement that would be the voice of Early Learning and small business owners who are in the business of education throughout the state. We were in it for a long term permanent organization that would use voter registration, voter mobilization (locally and statewide) and education of legislators to give a voice to young children, who are voiceless.”
Defending the Early Years
Response to Le, Schaack et al. study, “Advanced Content Coverage at Kindergarten: Are There Trade-Offs Between Academic Achievement and Social-Emotional Skills?”
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2019/01/24/advanced-academic-content-kindergarten-study/
Advanced academics in kindergarten?
Questionable science and a misleading news story
“New research says the kids are all right” in kindergartens that emphasize advanced academics, according to a January 24 headline in Chalkbeat.We strongly disagree.
The study in question, published online by the American Educational Research Journalon Jan. 4, 2019, has severe limitations, and it is based on so many questionable assumptions that no meaningful conclusion can be drawn from it. At the same time, reports of its supposed findings, like the Chalkbeatstory, muddy the waters of a vital conversation about how young children learn. Even worse, this problematic study and the uncritical reporting of it are likely to be used to defend pernicious policies and practices that almost all early childhood educators agree are hurting children.
The authors of the study themselves acknowledge three serious limitations in their work. First, it is a correlational study that says nothing about causation. In other words, the positive outcomes that they claim to see may be the result of factors other than the ones they tried to measure. Second, the measure they used to calculate the amount of time devoted to teaching advanced skills in the classroom was subject to a high level of uncertainty. And third, the very definition of “advanced” has widely varying meanings, and the researchers had no way of knowing how such “advanced” content was actually being taught.
In fact, this study is flawed in even more troubling ways:
That drilling children on content can boost test scores in the same year (which happened here only to a moderate extent) is thus unsurprising and means little. The authors avoid mentioning that, while their study was just correlational, other experimental research contradicts their conclusion. The most rigorous of these was the High/Scope Comparative Curriculum Study, which followed students to age 23 and found powerful evidence of the negative effects of early academics—evidence that did not clearly emerge until years later.
“Of 12 social or behavioral measures, there was a statistically significant (and quite small) effect on only three,” writes education policy analyst Alfie Kohn. “And with respect to kids’ aggression, anger, sadness, anxiety, etc., there was no short-term effect, positive or negative, as a result of teaching academic skills for an unspecified length of time using unspecified methods—according to the teachers themselves.”
Behaviors that would get you a low social-emotional skills score in this study—like not putting your toys away promptly or acting out—are more likely to occur in play. Those that would get you a high score—like completing tasks and following rules—are more likely to occur in a highly structured academic classroom. With this rating system, therefore, children in kindergartens with a lot of free play might, for that very reason, look like they have lower social-emotional skills than children in kindergartens where behavior is more rigidly structured and controlled by the teacher.
The authors fail to acknowledge what every wise teacher understands: kids learn to be better adjusted through play. “Those kids in lessons, with less play,” writes Boston College Research Professor Peter Gray, “don’t have the opportunity to exhibit the kinds of behaviors that (a) would lead to low social-emotional scores and (b) would provide the experiences needed to gain social-emotional competence. If we rigidly control children they may look more competent than if we allow them free play, but we also prevent them from learning to control themselves through experience.”
The authors’ conclusion, “that advanced academic content can be taught without compromising children’s social-emotional skills,” is not just unsupported by their own evidence. It is irresponsible in light of convincing contradictory findings that they have completely ignored.
This study will undoubtedly be welcomed by the corporations producing new academically oriented curricula and tests for young children. It is likely to further the proliferation of high-pressure academics and the loss of free play and child-initiated learning in kindergarten—trends that have already led some of our most experienced and talented early childhood teachers to quit the profession in frustration and despair.
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This statement was prepared by Defending the Early Years in consultation with early childhood researchers, practitioners, and advocates. We are especially grateful for the assistance of Alfie Kohn, Joan Almon, and Professor Peter Gray. For more information, contact Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin (geralynbywater@gmail.com) or Blakely Bundy (blakelybundy@comcast.net).
Alfie Kohn responds here to the research study claiming that little children need academic rigor and that it’s good for them to start academic studies young. Thanks to Ann Cook of the New York Performance Standards Consortium for asking Alfie to respond.
You mentioned this new study in AERJ, which ostensibly found that teaching advanced academic content in kindergarten is beneficial in terms of academic achievement as well as “social emotional skills”: https://is.gd/FNLhjW. I’ve had a chance to read the study itself, and I am not impressed.
1. This is not a comparison of kids randomly assigned to academic vs. nonacademic conditions. In the kindergartens they looked at, virtually all teachers reported teaching academic skills that were coded as advanced (94% ELA, 99% math); the teachers’ self-reports of how often they did some teaching of those skills were correlated with the outcome variables. “How often” was measured as number of days a month the teacher said she taught those skills, with no measure of how much time was spent at each session (which the researchers conceded) and also with no attention to how the teachers taught (e.g., via direct instruction vs. embedded in play or projects).
2. That drilling kids on content can boost test scores that same year (which happened here only to a moderate extent, incidentally) is unsurprising and means very little — both because such tests are a lousy indicator of intellectual proficiency (in general, and particularly for young children) and also because a body of earlier ECE research shows that any such advantage tends to melt away after a few years.
3. The only potentially meaningful finding, then, concerns social-emotional outcomes. But…
a) The effects they primarily looked at dealt with compliance (self-control, persistence, attention, following rules), and there’s reason to wonder whether these are always beneficial to the child, even if they’re convenient for the teacher. The researchers did ask about internalizing and externalizing behaviors, too, but I’m not convinced these measures would have captured most of the potentially negative effects of developmentally inappropriate teaching, particularly if it took place for sustained periods and was done by direct instruction (which, again, we don’t know).
b) All the social skills and behavioral effects were rated by the same teachers who taught the academic content, not by independent evaluators (let alone by independent evaluators blind to the type of instruction).
c) The ratings were all made that same year. Some long-term ECE studies have found delayed negative effects of this kind of teaching.
d) Of 12 social/behavioral measures, there was a statistically significant (and quite small) effect on only three — which didn’t include internalizing or externalizing behaviors. So the most that could be claimed on the basis of this study is that, with respect to kids’ aggression, anger, sadness, anxiety, etc., there was no short-term effect, positive or negative, as a result of teaching academic skills for an unspecified length of time using unspecified methods…according to the teachers themselves. And of course no attention was paid to the opportunity costs of academic instruction in terms of what the children didn’t have a chance to do during the time they were being taught reading and math. Meaningful benefits of such instruction? Not shown here.
The U.S. Department of Education recently announced that a key policy post was given to a person who previously worked for the Walton Family Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation. She came through Leadership for Educational Equity, which is TFA’s political training program. Vouchers for babies?
Meet the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education’s New Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Programs
Hello, Early Learning Leaders!
I am excited to introduce myself. I am Annie Hsiao, and I have joined the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) as the deputy assistant secretary for policy and programs. In this role I will provide leadership for OESE’s discretionary grants, including the early learning work and ED’s collaboration with the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to administer the new Preschool Development Grants — Birth through Five program.
Most recently, I was the senior advisor to the acting assistant attorney general of the Office of Justice Programs at the U.S. Department of Justice. In that position, I advised on policy, strategy, and programs in the division charged with awarding all of the agency’s grants, promoting crime reduction, and supporting victims of crime; as well as with public safety, rule of law, and juvenile justice reform. Prior to that, I was the director of strategic partnerships at Leadership for Educational Equity, a program manager at the Charles Koch Foundation, and a program officer at the Walton Family Foundation. I also served as the director of education policy at the American Action Forum, and, with an appointment from the George W. Bush administration, as the director of government and community relations at the National Endowment for the Humanities.
I am originally from California, and earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and Asian American studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a master’s degree in education policy from Harvard University.
OESE and the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) look forward to continuing their partnership to promote positive learning experiences for our youngest learners!
During this busy time of the year, we hope you take time to check out some of the resources we are highlighting this month, including exciting work from the Early Learning Research network and a great opportunity from our colleagues at HHS for individuals interested in promoting developmental screenings to become an Act Early Ambassador.
The New Republic, usually a liberal publication, recently published an article recommending vouchers instead of universal pre-K in public institutions.
Defending the Early Years, an organization that fights for developmentally appropriate education for young children, issued the following response:
The experts at Defending the Early Years find fault with the premise of the article which pits family support and high-quality preschool education against one another.
Haspel is correct, we need greater family support, starting with maternal and paternal paid leave for the first year of life; but we also need publicly funded rich, progressive, play-based early care and education for young children until they start formal school. As we learned after Hurricane Katrina, giving people money does not ensure that their life will improve.
The U.S. has never had the political will to spend the billions of dollars it would take to provide universal coverage. Recognizing the estimated $70 billion a year “preschool market,” investors are happily filling in the gaps in an ECE mixed-market system that has long been broken.
Haspel fails to realize that by ensuring every child has access to high-quality, fully-funded, play-based early care and education, we are doing more for parents than simply giving them a voucher. Voucher experiments in DC and other cities prove that rarely do they cover the full cost of tuition. Parents will be expected to find care that matches the amount of the voucher or supplement the additional costs out of their pocket. This does not help families but instead leaves them trapped between choosing affordable care that could be lower quality or paying out of pocket for high-quality care. Instead of expecting states to abandon their role in ensuring every child begins with a solid foundation of high-quality early care and education experiences, we should encourage direct support to families and demand each state provide access to early care and education. The only thing wrong with a demand for universal pre-k is that play-based programs are often excluded by states that prefer academic instruction. If giving parents a choice is truly the end goal then we would support parents who chose play-based programs over academic instruction. And we would support parents who chose universal pre-k over vouchers.
Calling defenders of children and childhood!
Chalkbeat reports that a group of researchers conducted a huge study and concluded that academic rigor is good for little children.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2019/01/24/advanced-academic-content-kindergarten-study/
In Oregon, parents and teachers are supporting legislation to stop standardized testing before grade 3. Even better would be a ban on all such testing. Parents, say no.
For the first decade after the No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001 — putting into high gear the testing-based model of education — almost all standardized testing took place in grades 3-8 and 11. Little children were the only ones spared being subjected to the data-driven “business model” approach to learning, with its fixed testing targets and its multitude of accompanying charts and graphs.
No more. Little children have now caught up with their older siblings in the testing derby, on track to join them in taking more than 110 standardized tests by the end of high school. Yes, 110.
Teachers in pre-kindergarten through grade 2 have now joined their teaching colleagues in the older grades in the pressure cooker to produce “accountability” data to match predetermined benchmarks.
Little children are now joining their older siblings in experiencing the sidelining of art, music, creative play and other non-tested curriculum. They, too, are now spending more and more of their day in “seat time,” focused on tested subjects. They, too, are now being repeatedly “tested, sorted and tracked.”
Their teachers know this is developmentally inappropriate. They know it is clearly wrong. But they are not allowed to tell you that. They are not allowed to tell you that most high-performing countries in the world test once in elementary, once in middle school and once in high school. They are not allowed to tell you that teachers already know full well how to identify kids who are struggling with reading, writing and math.
Over the ages, teachers did not need multi-billion dollar testing corporations to tell them how to do their jobs…
One way to change things is for all of us to tell our legislators to support the “Too Young to Test” bill (HB 2318) that has been introduced by Rep. John Lively (D- Springfield). It would prohibit the state government and local districts from standardized testing children from pre-kindergarten through grade 2.
It is modeled on legislation in New York, New Jersey and Illinois. It would allow teachers to make their own professional decisions about which assessments to administer.
The second way is for parents to “Just Say No” to every form of standardized testing that they can.
This is where the ultimate power is: If parents say “no more” — by opting their children out — the testing juggernaut will begin to collapse. We could then join much of the rest of the world in giving a few well-constructed, classroom-based assessments, and save our kids from harm, save our teachers and principals from dispirited burnout and save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars a year.
Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education expert who taught for many years at Lesley University in Cambridge, writes here at Edsurge, a tech website,explaining why online preschool is a truly rotten idea.
It is a terrific article, and it begins like this:
The recent growth of online preschools, already in existence in at least eight states, gives states an inexpensive way to deliver pre-K education. But it is a sorry substitute for the whole child, play-based early childhood education that all young children deserve to have.
Cyber schools have been increasing over the last twenty years, and most programs are marketed by for-profit companies. The more recent emergence of online preschool programs opens the door for cyber education businesses to cash in on the estimated $70 billion per year “pre-K market.”
In an education reform climate that has redefined education as academic standards and success on tests, online pre-K programs are an easy sell. Parents are ready to buy into computer-based programs that will get their kids ready for kindergarten by drilling them on letters and numbers. The programs teach discrete, narrow skills through repetition and rote learning. The truth is that for children to master the print system or concepts of number, they have to go through complex developmental progressions that build these concepts over time through activity and play.
Young children don’t learn optimally from screen-based instruction. Kids learn through activity. They use their bodies, minds and all of their senses to learn. They learn concepts through hands-on experiences with materials in three-dimensional space. Through their own activity and play, and their interactions with peers and teachers, children build their ideas gradually over time.
Diane Ravitch's blog 