Nancy Bailey is a retired educator who has seen the damage wrought by No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the nonsensical grandchild called Every Student Succeeds Act. We can say now with hindsight that many children were left behind, we did not make it to the Top, and every student is not succeeding.
Nancy knows that the greatest casualty of these ruinous federal laws and programs are young children. Instead of playing, instead of socializing, instead of living their best lives as children, they are being prepared to take tests. This is nuts!
Nancy explains in this post (originally from 2021 but nothing has changed) why the status quo is harmful to small children and how it should change. I should mention that Nancy and I wrote a book together—although we have never met!
EdSpeak and Doubletalk: A Glossary to Decipher Hypocrisy and Save Public Schooling https://a.co/d/bXKYsZG
Here’s Nancy on what kindergarten should be:
Let’s remember what kindergarten used to be, a happy entryway to school. Children attended half a day. They played, painted pictures, dressed up, pretended to cook using play kitchens, took naps on their little rugs, learned how to take turns, and played some more. They listened to stories, proudly told their own stories, described something unique about themselves during show-and-tell, mastered the ABCs, counted to 10, printed their names, and tied their shoes. They had plenty of recess and got excited over simple chores like watering the plants or passing out snacks. They had art and music and performed in plays that brought families together to generate pride and joy in their children and the public school.
Then, NCLB changed kindergarten in 2002. The Chicago Tribune described this rethinking well, which I’ve broken down.
In some schools, kindergarten is growing more and more academically focused–particularly on early reading.
The pressure to perform academically is trickling down from above, many experts say, because of new state and federal academic standards.
. . . in one Florida classroom some children “cried or put their heads on their desks in exhaustion” after standardized achievement tests.
One Chicago public school kindergarten teacher quit in part because of what she considered unrealistic demands of administrators who expected kindergartners to sit all day at desks, go without recess and learn to read by year’s end. The teacher wanted to create centers for science, art and dramatic play but was forbidden.
In some places, kindergarten, once a gentle bridge to real school where play and learning easily intermingled, is becoming an academic pressure-cooker for kids, complete with half an hour of homework every night.
Some parents are alarmed enough that they’re “redshirting” their children, holding them back from kindergarten for a year so they will be more mature.
So how will they rethink early childhood again? Instead of kindergarten being the new first grade will it become the new third or fourth grade, with more standards piled onto the backs of 5-year-olds?
What happens to the children who are developing normally and can’t meet the standards, or children who have disabilities and need more time? Will they be labeled as failing, sorted into the can’t do kids who get bombarded with online remedial programs?
The harder they make early learning for young children, the more likely parents will seek more humane alternative placements that treat children like children.
It’s time to start caring more about the children and less about driving outcomes or results that don’t make sense.
I am sharing the best standards for children of all time, written by now-retired teacher extraordinaire, Sarah Puglisi.
Here’s a sample. Please go to the link and read all 100 of them. Then bring back kindergarten!
Retired teacher Nancy Bailey has a way of putting school issues into perspective. In this post, she explains what recess is, why it’s important, what it is not, and why parents should beware of the programmed substitutes that are offered up instead of real recess. The war against play began with the Reagan-era report “A Nation at Risk,” then went into high gear with the passage of George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” law and was reinforced by NCLB’s wicked stepchildren: Race to the Top and the Every Student Succeeds Act. What everything since 2001 stressed was the importance of test scores, not children’s health and well-being. Play in the era from 2001-2023 was a waste of time that would be better spent practicing for the next test.
Bailey wrote:
The lack of breaks for children and the misrepresentation of what constitutes recess continues to flourish.
School reformers try unsuccessfully to replace recess. But recess is not Playworks, Phys.Ed., meditation, or Brain Breaks controlled by adults who tell children what to do, denying them the ability to learn academic and social skills that recess provides when children are free to learn.
Recess is unstructured play. It’s supervised (supervision is critical) but not controlled by adults. It’s one of the easiest and inexpensive ways to help children flourish in school, and studies have highlighted its importance.
Removing recess from the school day involved one of the terrible school reforms in the ’90s connected to high-stakes standardized tests, with the bizarre belief (see A Nation at Risk) that children need more classwork without breaks.
After a while, adults realized the severe health problems that could arise if children don’t have breaks. Still, now they focus on physical activity and need to understand the significance of the critical social interactions children learn during recess.
In some places like Florida, parents have had to fight for a recess mandate, where they are always at risk of losing even 20 minutes of recess. Fortunately, the legislature allowed 20 minutes for now!
Recess involves unstructured play. As Mr. Rogers said, Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is the work of childhood.
Conflict resolution and working out difficulties are critical parts of recess and another critical variable involving what children learn with unstructured play.
Playworks
The Pulse’s reporter Grant Hill, a Philadelphia NPR/PBS station, recently reviewed recess and its role in conflict resolution, especially after COVID-19. In Getting Better at Resolving Conflict, the recess discussions are at the end, and Hill covers recess’s importance. I get a short spot criticizing Playworks. The CEO misinterprets what recess involves and seems not to understand the impact of controlling what children do. This is not actual recess.
Playworks is a nonprofit run by volunteers from Americorps. It cashes in with donations from various outside corporations, people who likely confuse actual recess with an organized version of what is like Phys. Ed.
If charitable organizations were looking to assist with play and actual recess, they’d seek out poor schools with lousy playgrounds and fund those or find a way to offer children actual recess.
It’s also insulting to hear volunteers in a nonprofit getting donations and tax dollars say one of their purposes is to show teachers the importance of play. If Americorps volunteers want to work with children, they might consider becoming teachers.
Playworks is not alone in skewing the meaning of recess. Recess has been replaced with other inadequate substitutes like Phys. Ed., meditation, and Brain Breaks. Some classes have children sitting on bouncy balls, thinking that nonstop balancing keeps them on their toes!
Please open the link to learn about other efforts to supplant recess.
No wonder Jeb Bush wrote an opinion article defending his so-called reforms, especially high-stakes standardized testing.
The Republican-controlled Legislature is moving to dismantle the structure that Bush created when he was governor. Some legislators wanted to cancel recess but the outcry from parents made them drop that idea.
The Florida Senate backed away Tuesday from plans to end the state’s recess requirement after objections from “recess moms” but moved ahead with proposals to scrap key, and controversial, parts of the Republican education agenda.
The Senate’s fiscal policy committee agreed by an 18-0 vote to end policies ushered in by former Gov. Jeb Bush more than 20 years ago. Those include requirements that high school students pass two exams to graduate and that third graders pass a reading test to move on to fourth grade.
Under the bill approved by the GOP-dominated committee, students would no longer have to pass an Algebra 1 and a language arts exam to earn high school diplomas. But the 10th-grade language arts exam would count as 30% of a student’s final grade in 10th-grade English classes, just as the algebra exam already counts as 30% of the final grade in Algebra 1 classes.
The bill also would allow third graders who failed the state reading test to be promoted to fourth grade, if that is what their parents thought was best.
Jeb Bush’s allies objected to the changes and said they would water down standards. It’s not yet clear whether DeSantis will go along. Moms for Liberty also objected.
But Republicans in the Senate have pushed and supported the measures, and two committees have now approved them.
Senate President Senate President Kathleen Passidomo introduced the proposals in a memo she sent to senators last month that was titled “Learn Local – Cutting Red Tape, Supporting Neighborhood Public Schools.”
The idea, she said, was that after the Legislature expanded school choice (HB 1) earlier this year, making many more children eligible for private school scholarships, it should look in its 2024 session to remove regulations on public schools, which serve the bulk of the state’s students.
In the memo, she called the ideas “bold,” “controversial” and, she conceded, ones that might “not make it across the finish line.”
Many of the Senate’s suggestions have broad support from school superintendents, administrators, teachers and parents.
Representatives from the Broward, Orange and Seminole county school districts all showed their support Tuesday, for example.
Simon noted that Florida’s new standardized test, FAST, is a “progress-monitoring” exam given several times a year starting in pre-Kindergarten. “We’re able to find those students much earlier on in the process,” he said, making the current third-grade rule unnecessary.
Although the gloomy claims of that influential document have been repeatedly challenged, even debunked*, it continues to control educational discourse with its assertion that American schools are failing. “A Nation at Risk” led to increased testing, to the passage of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind in 2002, to the creation of Barack Obama’s Race to the Top in 2009, to the release of the Common Core standards in 2010.
Despite nearly a quarter century of focus on standards and testing, policymakers refuse to admit that these policies have failed.
And nowhere have they been more destructive than in the early grades, where testing has replaced play. Kindergarten became the new first grade.
But says Bailey, the current Secretary of Education wants to ratchet up the pressure on little kids.
She writes:
In What Happened to Recess and Why are our Children Struggling in Kindergarten, Susan Ohanian writes about a kindergartner in a New York Times article who tells the reporter they would like to sit on thegrass and look for ladybugs. Ohanian writes, the child’s school was built very deliberately without a playground. Lollygagging over ladybugs is not permitted for children being trained for the global economy (2002, p.2).
America recently marked forty years since the Reagan administration’s A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform which blamed schools as being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.
Berliner and Biddle dispute this in The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools. They state that most of these claims were said to reflect “evidence,” although the “evidence” in question either was not presented or appeared in the form of simplistic, misleading generalizations (1995, p. 3).
Still, the report’s premise, that public schools failed, leading us down the workforce path of doom, continues to be perpetuated. When students fail tests, teachers and public schools are blamed, yet few care to examine the obscene expectations placed on the backs of children since A Nation at Risk.
Education Secretary Cardona recently went on a bus tour with the message to Raise the Bar in schools. Raising the bar is defined as setting a high standard, to raise expectations, to set higher goals.
This is through New America,whose funders include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Waltons, and others who want to privatize public education. Here’s the video, Kindergarten as a “Sturdy Bridge”: Place-Based Investments, describing the plan focusing on PreK to 3rd grade. This involves Reading by 3rd and the Campaign for Grade Level Reading.
Cardona says in the announcement:
Getting kindergarten right has to be top of mind for all of us, because what happens there sets the stage for how a child learns and develops well into their elementary years and beyond.
Ensuring that kindergarten is a sturdy bridge between the early years and early grades is central to our efforts both to Raise the Bar for academic excellence and to provide all students with a more equitable foundation for educational success. The kindergarten year presents an opportunity to meet the strengths and needs of young learners so they can continue to flourish in the years to come.
Raise the bar? Kindergarten is already the new first grade. What will it be now? Second? Third? Fourth? What’s the rush? How is this developmentally sound? One thing is for sure: there will still be no idle time for children to search for ladybugs.
Few bear the brunt of A Nation at Risk,as do early learners whose schools have been invaded by corporate schemes to force reading and advanced learning earlier than ever expected in the past.
If kindergartners aren’t doing well after all these years of toughness, higher expectations, and an excruciating number of assessments, wouldn’t it seem time to back off, instead of raising the bar higher?
Editor’s note:
*James Harvey and I will discuss the distortions contained in the “Nation at Risk” report at the Network for Public Education conference on Oct. 28-29 in Washington, D.C. James Harvey was a high-level member of the staff that wrote the report. He has written about how the Reagan-era Commissuon in Excellence in Education “cooked the books” to paint a bleak—but false—picture of American public schools. Please register and join us!
Mike Miles doesn’t think children need recess. As a military man, he thinks recess is a waste of time. But he backed down to parent pressure to allow recess. Great to have an authoritarian superintent who makes all decisions (not). Satisfying to see that at least once, he listened to parents.
Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles announced on Tuesday that he is changing the recess schedule at schools under the New Education System to allow for more unstructured play time for kids in response to a push from parents.
All students in pre-K through fifth grade classrooms in the 85 NES and NES-aligned schools will now have a single 30-minute recess period each day, according to the district, an increase compared to a former schedule that included two shorter breaks for the lower grades and no recess in fifth grade.
“Teachers shared that they believe these modifications will limit lost learning time and maximize high-quality instruction, and we’ve heard from many families that they value unstructured free play time for their students,” Miles said in a statement. “We were able to make these changes without sacrificing high-quality instruction time and we believe this will enhance the environment in our schools and support student achievement.”
The change marks a big win for an HISD parent advocacy group called Free Play Houston, whose members have written letters, met with administrators and orchestrated an email campaign in recent weeks in an effort to push for more recess time for NES students, pointing out that shortening recess time may stand in violation of state law and HISD board policies.
“We are overjoyed that a child’s right to play will be respected and valued this school year,” the organization said in a statement on Tuesday, thanking those who emailed HISD leadership about the issue. “Houstonians have long known that all children need an unstructured play time during their school day. Decades of research shows that recess not only promotes social and emotional skills that become fundamental learning tools, but that recess also benefits students by improving their memory, attention, and concentration.”
Before these changes, the latest version of the NES master schedule allowed for one 15-minute recess in the morning and one 15-minute break in the afternoon for kindergarden through fourth grade students, with no additional time built in for getting students to and from the playground, according to Brooke Longoria, co-founder of Free Play Houston and an HISD parent.
Additionally, the former schedule included no recess for fifth grade students, with district administrators saying their physical movement needs would be met through Dyad programming like martial arts, dance and spin bikes, along with PE class.
Steve Nelson is a retired educator. In this post, he contrasts the demands of the fake “parental rights” folk with a genuine agenda for the rights of parents and children:
As is true in many aspects of current American politics, the right wing conservatives dominate the discourse on education. As is also true in other aspects of current American politics, it seems not to matter that they are wrong – terribly wrong – and are gradually unraveling the critically important institution of public education.
The assault is on two broad fronts:
*The persistent efforts to privatize education through charter and voucher schemes, accompanied by defunding traditional public schools and diverting support to all manner of incompetent opportunists.
*An overlapping campaign to bring more Christianity into publicly-funded education and remove any and all references to race, gender, sexuality and normal functions of the human body.
In service of these goals they have successfully captured the PR realm, with groups like the attractively named Moms for Liberty. Who wouldn’t love moms or liberty?
The most damage is being done with legislation at the local and state level. Right-wingers have taken control of school boards and many gerrymandered state legislatures. Once again, these zealots have seized the PR reins by using the inarguably appealing mantra of “parental rights.” What parents want their rights taken away? So, the significant body of laws and policies that already protect the rights of parents is being absurdly enhanced with laws and policies that give parents the “right” to dictate what books children can read, what bathrooms children can use, and what public health measures can be exercised. They also claim the right to micromanage curricula, thereby ensuring that a white, Eurocentric, Christian, heteronormative experience is enjoyed by all. Ozzie and Harriet are applauding from the grave.
We liberals and progressives have done a piss poor job of responding in kind. Lots of folks (like me!) opine passionately to minuscule effect, given that our readers are in the hundreds or, rarely, thousands. There are politicians and pundits who argue against the nefarious work of this loud, conservative minority, but we are seldom, if ever, on the offensive.
We too need slogans and initiatives with catchy names that capture the imagination.
Perhaps:
*Moms for Keeping Crazy Moms Out of Our Schools and Libraries.
*Parents for the Rights of Teachers to Teach Without Nut-bag Interference
*Citizens for Keeping God Safe in Our Churches and Out of Our Politics
*Parents of Black and LGBTQ Students Who Won’t Take This Shit Anymore
Nelson then lists an educational bill of rights that the overwhelming majority of parents and teachers would likely endorse:
Then, if and when we can get the crazies under control, the parents in the majority can address the actual needs of children. What might happen if a grassroots effort gathered momentum and demanded that schools and school systems adopt this Bill of Rights?
Bill of Educational Rights
The undersigned insist that our school(s) and all teachers:
Open the link to read Steve Nelson’s Bill of Educational Rights.
Start the New Year right with constructive, common sense ideas from Nancy Bailey. Nancy is a retired teacher with more knowledge in the smallest digit of her smallest finger than the average “reformer.” Unlike the reform sloganeers, she truly puts children first.
Nancy starts with a few sensible suggestions of things you can do, then proceeds to identify what matters most in building good schools that meet the needs of children.
She opens:
As we approach 2023, let’s make this the year to unite for the common good to reestablish and promote public education for all our children.
A public school system relies on a country that values education for all its children no matter family religious beliefs, the color of one’s skin, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability. Americans collectively fund public education because those schools belong to us. They reflect the never-ending societal changes that make us better people.
In your community, look to see how you can serve the students in your public school. Get to know your local schools and their difficulties by attending school boards. Seek to support not break down the school.
Volunteer to help a teacher
Tutor a child
Attend a school function like a school play or sports event
Ask what skills you might have that could be useful for the school or children
Be a part of career day and explain your work
See if you can support sports, the band, or other extracurricular activities
Seek to shore up your local school by helping fund a school initiative if possible
Attend school board meetings seeking to show support
Brainstorm ways you and others can get behind your public schools
We care about everybody’s child through public education. We know that the annoying teen next door may grow up to discover a cure for diseases, or they could be the plumber who fixes our pipes during a winter freeze. As a nation, we believe that all our children matter, not just for what they will someday do for us, but because they are our children!
There are many reasons for Americans from both political parties to hold hands regarding their public schools because we all want our children to get the best education possible.
Open the link to read her list of the necessities of a good school.
If crazy extremists are showing up at your local school board meetings, participate and protect your local schools. Consider running for the board yourself.
Dale C. Farran was one of the lead researchers in a study of the effects of an academic pre-kindergarten program in Tennessee. The study concluded that the children who participated in the program eventually fell behind those in the control group who were not in the program.
In an article on the blog of DEY (Defending the Early Years), Farran expressed her views about child development. She used the metaphor of an iceberg.
She wrote:
Years ago, few teachers believed that children should be taught to read in kindergarten; a more recent survey shows that 80% of kindergarten teachers now think children should know how to read before leaving the grade.
As recently as 1993 the great majority of kindergarten teachers did not believe an academic focus in preschool was important for children’s school success.
However, concern for the “fade out” of pre-kindergarten effects has led several researchers and policy makers to argue for a stronger academic focus in those classrooms, including the use of an intentional scripted, academically focused curriculum.
Not only do effects from pre-k classrooms fade, but also results from one study of the longitudinal effects of pre-k attendance conducted by my colleagues and me demonstrated that in the long run the effects turned negative.
A greater focus on academics for three- and four- year-olds is not the solution.
As an author of the recent paper on long term effects and as a primary investigator on the only randomized control trial of a statewide pre-k program with longitudinal data, and, finally, as a developmental psychologist whose career focused on young children’s development, I have thought extensively about what the causes of these unexpected effects might be.
I AM PROPOSING AN “ICEBERG MODEL OF EARLY DEVELOPMENTAL COMPETENCIES.”
The tip of the iceberg, the section floating above the surface, is composed of things that are easily measured.
These types of skills have recently been characterized as “constrained” skills meaning they are finite and definable.
All standard school readiness assessments focus on these types of skills.
But they do so because assessors believe that the skills represent deeper competencies.
They measure these skills somewhat like taking a finger-prick for evidence of the information the assessments provide into other more important characteristics of children.
BOTH THE FOCUS OF CURRENT PRE-K PROGRAMS AND THE PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGIES EMPLOYED FOCUS ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY ON THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG SKILLS.
Many who have been in early childhood for a long time testify to the changes in classrooms.
I believe these changes are accelerated by the process of subsuming preschool into the K-12 system.
In many states the department of education administers the pre-kindergarten program, and the program behaves like an additional grade level below kindergarten – the classrooms are open for the school day (5-6 hours a day) and the school calendar (9 months a year).
The classrooms are most often in elementary schools, where the push down from the K- 12 system is almost impossible to avoid.
Many of the elementary schools are older and unsuitable for younger children – no bathroom connected to the classroom, the requirement to have meals in the large cafeteria, and no appropriate playground.
These physical features mean that children spend a lot of time transitioning from the classroom, necessitating a high level of teacher control as children walk through the halls and endure long wait times.
Descriptions from a number of large studies of the instructional strategies used in current pre-k classrooms show them to be dominated by whole group instruction focused on basic skills (the tip of the iceberg).
TEACHERS TALK AT CHILDREN A MAJORITY OF THE TIME, SELDOM LISTENING TO CHILDREN, AND MULTI-TURN CONVERSATIONS ARE A RARE OCCURRENCE.
Learning opportunities that involve other than right-answer questions are almost never observed, and a high level of negative control from teachers characterizes many classrooms.
This content focus and the teaching strategies, I argue result in a detachment of the tip of the iceberg from the deeper skills under the surface.
Thus, children can score well on school readiness skills at the end of pre-k – especially on those related to literacy – but not maintain any advantage by the end of kindergarten when all children attain these skills with or without pre-k experience.
The tip of the iceberg skills no longer symbolizes those under the surface.
They are no longer the visible and measurable aspects of more important competencies.
Only when the deeper skills are enhanced should we expect continued progress based on early experiences.
A very different set of experiences likely facilitates the development of those deeper skills.
We have known for many years that the developmental period between four and six years is a critical one.
Neuroscience confirmed the importance of this period for the development of the pre-frontal cortex.
The pre-frontal cortex is involved in many of the skills described in the model as being below the surface.
Research does not provide good evidence for which experiences facilitate the development of important skills like curiosity, persistence, or working memory.
But research has demonstrated the importance of these kinds of skills for long term development.
For instance, some argue that early attention skills are more important than early academic skills as predictors of long-term school success including the likelihood of attending college.
In a large longitudinal study, researchers identified the importance of the development of internal self-control during the ages of four to six.
Some children with initially low self- control developed self-control during early childhood and had subsequent better outcomes via what the researchers called a “natural history change.”
Whether an intervention-induced change would yield the same positive outcomes is an open question.
So far, no early childhood curriculum has been able to bring about sustained changes in self-control or any of the below- the-surface skills listed above.
WHAT IS CLEAR IS THAT CHILDREN FROM MORE AFFLUENT HOMES ENTER KINDERGARTEN SCORING HIGHER ON SCHOOL READINESS SKILLS.
Moreover, they maintain that advantage across the school years.
But they did not learn those “readiness” skills from a didactic pre-k experience.
While these children may have had magnetic alphabet letters to play with, for example, parents did not sit them down in front of the refrigerator and force them to learn the letters.
Most of those tip-of-the-iceberg skills were learned through a variety of experiences and the opportunity to learn through interactions with adults and friends.
For these children, measuring the tip does provide information about the beneath the surface competencies that are so important.
Guidance may come from comparing the developmental contexts of families who are economically secure to the pre-k classroom context.
Children of economically secure families are more likely to succeed in school, more likely to matriculate in a two or four year college and more likely to graduate when they enter….
GOVERNMENTS IN MOST HIGHLY DEVELOPED COUNTRIES HEAVILY SUBSIDIZE THE CARE FOR YOUNG CHILDREN PRIOR TO SCHOOL AGE.
Nordic countries all provide a child supplement to parents, which most parents use to offset the modest cost of the government-subsidized group care, care that looks nothing like U.S. pre-k programs.
These programs stress different sorts of competencies in young children, capabilities like “participation” or the ability to be a functioning member of a group (not sitting “criss-cross applesauce” for 20-40 minutes during large group instruction).
The programs stress self-reliance and independence, the ability to make good decisions and to be responsible for one’s actions.
Most of these countries delay formal instruction in academic skills until children are six or seven. Their children do quite well in international comparisons in the later grades.
Concerns about the accelerating academic focus in early childcare education are being voiced by many.
I hope this “iceberg” model will provide a useful visual depiction of the danger of concentrating on basic skills instruction in pre-k.
I hope also that it will help people understand why getting early childhood right is so important and the imperative need to fix the childcare situation in the U.S. for families of poor children – in fact for all our children.
Pre-k is not the magic bullet policy makers hoped it would be. Quite the contrary. The reason it is not may lie with the unavoidable focus of the program when it becomes part of the K-12 system.
He noted that the long-term effects were negative.
He usefully points out that the German government conducted a similar study in the 1970s:
The German government was trying to decide whether it would be a good idea, or not, to start teaching academic skills in kindergarten rather than maintain kindergarten as purely a place for play, stories, singing, and the like, as it had always been before. So, they conducted a controlled experiment involving 100 kindergarten classrooms. They introduced some academic training into 50 of them and not into the other 50.
The graduates of academic kindergartens performed better on academic tests in first grade than the others, but the difference subsequently faded, and by fourth grade they were performing worse than the others on every measure in the study. Specifically, they scored more poorly on tests of reading and arithmetic and were less well-adjusted socially and emotionally than the controls.
The Germans, unlike we Americans, paid attention to the science. They followed the data and abandoned plans for academic training in kindergarten. They have stuck with that decision ever since.
The newly reported Tennessee study of pre-K was carefully designed and focused on academic skills.
Yet the students in the academic-intensive pre-K program fell behind the control group in later years.
The major findings of the study are that this expensive, carefully planned pre-K program caused, by 6th grade, reduced performance on all academic achievement tests, a sharp increase in learning disorders, and much more rule violation and behavioral offenses than occurred in the control group….
The most striking finding in the study, to me, is the large increase in diagnosed learning disorders in the pre-K group. It seems possible that this increase is the central finding, though the authors of the report don’t make that claim. Previously I’ve discussed evidence that learning disorders can be produced by early academic pressure (here) and evidence that being labeled with a learning disorder can, through various means, become a self-fulfilling prophesy and result in poorer academic performance than would have occurred without the diagnosis (here). It would be interesting to know if the deficit in achievement test scores was entirely the result of poor performance by those diagnosed with a learning disorder.
A related possibility is that the early academic training resulted in shallow learning of the skills, sufficient to pass the pre-K and kindergarten tests but which interfered with subsequent deeper learning (an idea I discussed here). That could account for the finding that the deficit produced by pre-K grew over the years. As years go on, success on tests may depend increasingly on real understanding, so anything that blocks such understanding might show up more in later grades than earlier ones.
Another possibility is that the pre-K academic grind and pressure caused children to develop a hatred and rebellious attitude toward school. This might account for the increased rule-breaking and offensive behavior of the pre-K group as they went through elementary school. The same rebelliousness might also have caused the children to take their lessons less seriously, which could, over the years, result in an ever-greater gap between them and the controls in test scores.
Still another possibility is that the deficit shown by the pre-K group was caused not so much by what was done in pre-K as by what did not happen there. Four-year-olds need lots of time to play, create, socialize, take initiative, figure things out on their own, and learn to manage themselves. The time spent in academic training is time that they cannot spend on learning the much more important skills that come from self-directed activities. Perhaps the pre-K children were less prepared for school, especially the later grades of school, because they had not had the usual opportunities to learn how to manage themselves before starting school. This suggestion is consistent with previous research showing better long-term outcomes for play-based preschools and kindergartens than for those that have an academic component (here).
I suspect that all these hypotheses have some validity…Regardless of the mechanism, it is now abundantly clear that we should stop even thinking about teaching academics to tots. We should finally make the decision that the Germans made half a century ago and stop formal academic training for children below age 6.
How likely is it that our policymakers will learn from the science?
I received this request, which looked as though it might be fun.
Please consider sharing this nation-wide challenge for middle school students with your audience. There are images and a video link below. Please let me know if you have questions or would like to talk with leaders at the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site. Thank you!
Indianapolis, IN …The Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site has just announced the launch of Project POTUS, an opportunity for students in grades 6-8 across the nation to put their research, writing and video editing skills to the test.
Since the founding of our nation, there have been nearly half a billion American citizens. Of those, over 12,000 of us have served in Congress. Just 115 have become Supreme Court Justices. Only 46 citizens have become President of the United States. There’s something exceptional about each POTUS – good, bad, or otherwise. And the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site wants students’ help to tell the world why … in one minute or less.
Project POTUS calls on students to research an American President and create a one-minute video representing the president selected. Student videos are then submitted for review by a citizen jury, who will select a winning video project for each American president. The results from the inaugural Project POTUS initiative will be featured in the first ever ’46 Presidents in 45 Minutes,’ a compilation of students’ winning projects to be released following the closing of the contest in May 2022.
“The value of Project POTUS comes not only from the potential for it to be fun and original, but also from how closely it matches up to standards teachers use in the classroom,” said Molly Beausir, Russell and Penny Fortune Project POTUS Presidential Fellow with the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site. “The project emphasizes civics, history, research and communication skill building. And with the shift of project-based classroom learning to include virtual and hybrid options during the pandemic, the timing couldn’t be better to put those school laptops to good use.”
“It’s a fun and unique initiative for students, individually or in groups, to get creative and participate in a national video project with their peers,” said Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site President and CEO Charles Hyde. “The program is an interactive way for students across the country to share what they’ve learned about our country’s presidents firsthand, drawing from their knowledge of history, civics, and leadership. Ultimately, we’re excited to help facilitate peer to peer learning, which Project POTUS plans to do in a nationally significant way.”
It’s also an opportunity for students, caregivers and educators to take part in an educational project that could possibly win students and classrooms scholarships. For the inaugural Project POTUS in 2022, the citizen jury will award over $5,000 in prizes to students, with one grand prize winner for the best video overall winning a $500 award and a VIP prize package. There’s plenty of time to pick a president and work on the project – video submissions begin on Presidents’ Day, February 21, 2022 and will be accepted through Tax Day, April 15, 2022.
Have a video-savvy student or budding history buff in mind? For more information, and for project guidelines, please visit projectpotus.org.
Recognized as one of the top 5 things to do in Indianapolis by Tripadvisor, the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site celebrates the remarkable legacy of America’s Hoosier President. The museum is a national historic landmark situated within easy walking distance of downtown Indianapolis and the bustling 16th Street corridor. The 1875 Italianate mansion is exquisitely restored and has an exceptional collection of more than 10,000 artifacts. Daily tours of the property include a 75-minute guided tour through the Harrison house and private quarters. Highlights include an awe-inspiring collection of Gilded Age finery, paintings, furniture and personal presidential gifts and mementos. The privately operated, non-profit organization receives no direct tax support and is dedicated to sharing the life stories, arts and culture of an American President to increase public participation in the American system of self-government. Find out more at PresidentBenjaminHarrison.org. Media Contact: Angela Tuell | angela@commredefined.com | 317.567.9126
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