Letter to the Editor: Reflections on Kindergarten

Kindergarten (literally 'children's garden') is both a German word and a German invention. The kindergarten pre-school educational philosophy has been widely adopted around the world and now finds fertile ground for expansion in US public schools from 1/2 day kindergarten to all-day kindergarten (to eventually, full-day public pre-school). It is thus somewhat ironic to discover that kindergarten in Germany is not usually part of the state-supported school system, even though about 85% of German youngsters between the ages of three and six attend voluntary community and church-supported kindergartens. The irony doesn't end there. When German youngsters go on to school, there is usually no school cafeteria, as the school day typically ends at around noon or 1:00 pm. Students go home for lunch, and in the afternoon they usually have a fair amount of homework to do. So, we've incorporated kindergarten into the US public school offering and are now being asked to expand to all-day public school kindergarten while the inspiration for kindergarten in the first place was to prepare for school which, itself, in Germany, is a half-day proposition! 

What we've really done in the US is to push down into the kindergarten level, the requirements of a formal primary school curriculum instead of the concepts originally associated with Friedrich Froebel's (the 'father' of Kindergarten) inspiration. Froebel labeled his approach to kindergarten as 'self-activity'. This idea allows the child to be led by his or her own interests and to freely explore, fostering children's natural love of discovery (learning) by building on their own curiosity and discovery as naturally as gardens grow. The teacher's role, therefore, was to be a guide or facilitator rather than lecturer. We are now being led to see kindergarten as an academic leap into the future where children will, by the end of the year, know how to read and write and know numbers and arithmetic. This is completely contrary to the original concept of creating a garden-like  environment where children are allowed to blossom more from encouraging their internal curiosity and wonder at intellectual discovery rather than springing directly into a formal structure. Traditional kindergarten begins the transition from personal intellectual curiosity and discovery to the more structured environment of school, gradually. 

At a time where the national focus is on strictly 'organic' 'natural' and 'pure', it's ironic that we're putting our kindergarten experience on steroids! 

But this transition from the 'garden' approach to early education to a more formal structure didn't happen in one step. Kindergarten proved to provide fertile ground for the exploitation of the opportunity to socialize (read 'Americanize') large numbers of immigrants, by guiding young children’s behavior and assisting in 'parenting education'. Since the 1960s, researchers have noted that kindergarten education has increasingly focused on the development of academic skills, having already established the concept that kindergarten has a legitimate role in 'socializing' our youngsters. Kindergarten has not escaped the increased attention on accountability measures, including academic content and performance standards and assessments that can be attributed to the response to 'A Nation at Risk'.

It seems we don't have time for children to be children in this age of 'No Child Left Behind', leading more to a 'No Childhood Ahead or Behind'. 

That development of social skills and exploration of one’s immediate world have been squeezed out of kindergarten is not the result of present-day children being light-years ahead developmentally than a generation ago. Rather, children are being required to accommodate to the question; 'If a student is to pass reading and math tests in third grade, what does that student need to be doing in the prior grades?' The skill set required to succeed in Froebel’s kindergarten — openness, creativity — is well matched to the capabilities of most 5-year-olds but also substantially different from what is needed to meet the preparation for academic testing three years down the road. Maybe, instead of expanding the kindergarten experience to full-time, we might consider having the starting age for 1st grade be 7 years old?  Then our kindergarteners (6-year olds) would have the advanced motor skills necessary for writing, will probably have experimented with reading, would be likely to be able to decipher numerals because, yes, older children are better prepared to start an 'academic' kindergarten than the younger ones. The older kids also have important non-cognitive advantages, like being more focused and more socially adept. 

Well, guess what? Testing practices that affect upstream curricula also affect parental decisions. Children are increasingly entering kindergarten a year later because parents perceive that their child needs the extra year of development to do well (or even manage) in the academic setting as characterized by kindergarten today. Parents are coming to the conclusion that, if schools are going to require kindergarteners to perform at what has traditionally been a first grade academic course level, well then, redshirt the child and have an age appropriate matching of development and expectation. An unintended result of the parental option of accommodating the child's developmental readiness rather than the system's demands, is that the kindergarten teacher finds a wildly skewed range of abilities and behaviors in the classroom. The class is now composed of an age range of as much as two years. This age range makes it more difficult for kindergarten teachers to respond to the different intellectual and social needs and expectations of older and younger children and their parents.

In a report on kindergarten, the National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education wrote, “Most of the questionable entry and placement practices that have emerged in recent years have their genesis in concerns over children’s capacities to cope with the increasingly inappropriate curriculum in kindergarten.” 

If we're going to demand advanced cognitive and non-cognitive ability, we would do well to match that with age appropriate expectations.

A full evaluation of all-day kindergarten requires answers to (at least) the following cost/benefit questions. First, does all-day kindergarten affect the quality or quantity of education provided, or does it just lead to a substitution from one form of child care to another? Second, what are the associated costs of providing the program? Third, what effect does any change in childcare (and associated increases in labor force participation) have on child and family outcomes?

Previous studies of childcare policy offer, at best, incomplete answers to these questions. Some differences in quality or quantity have proven to be difficult to identify much less track. Not all costs or benefits are readily identifiable. There has been little evaluation on a longitudinal basis to fully identify the longer term impact of all-day kindergarten.  But, we're coming into a time period where all-day kindergarten has been a factor over a sufficient period of time to be able to measure outcome over time. 

The new all-day kindergartens may be the cat's meow, or they may not. That's a big question on which I would invite serious considered judgment on the parts of boards of education and parents - on behalf of the children. But I can say absolutely that the evidence used to justify the programs has been exaggerated. overselling the benefits and underscoring or ignoring the costs of universal full-day kindergarten. Proponents of the new program are not holding back their praises but they aren't even hinting at questions or doubts that have been raised. It's the trap of the 'everybody knows' or 'experts agree' assertion that goes unchallenged and then becomes 'fact'.

All-day kindergarten will reportedly prepare children for Grade 1, provide opportunity for social interaction, give children a better head start in the world, let parents work, and eventually benefit the economy. But ‘play-based learning’ is simply not the same as free play. Nor does being part of a social group for seven consecutive hours address the psychological need a child of this age may have for some ‘down time’ away from the group. That proposals fail to identify the potential for serious negative effects on the child, parents and families should not come as a surprise - Chevy Volt dealers are not going to focus your attention on the possibility for spontaneous combustion - but, the lack of identification of negative effects should not lead the community to believe that there are no negative effects!  Is it, in fact, possible that the increased demands on our kindergarteners has lead to the rise of bullying and drop-out rates?  It could be argued!

So, what does all-day kindergarten cost? 

Compensation for a full-time teacher and a full-time para-educator (state law requires a 1/10 ratio of child to provider in school-age child care) is roughly $111,000 for a class of 20 or less.

A half-day would, presumably, cost half of a full day making the increase in cost from half to all-day kindergarten $55,500 in salary and benefits per class.       

(Salary - Teacher  - in 2009, the average teacher salary in Connecticut was $64,773.  Add to that Health Insurance, FICA/Medicare, Workers' Compensation, Pension, Unemployment and Annuity and you'll have a compensation package of $81,000 on average in Connecticut. Para Educator -   $30,000)

There is a cost to the private and family child care providers who would be put out of business.  (These care providers often have to meet more rigorous provider/child ratios of 1/4 or 1/6 if the ages of the children in the care group varies and depending on if the care provider is a family member or not.)

It could be argued that there is an immediate cost to the child in that the attention of the adult in the room must be divided among a much larger universe.

It could also be argued that there is an opportunity cost by allocating scarce resources to providing something to children and families who don't need it.  The vast majority of families are fully functional and are producing healthy, productive kids. Allocating resources to the broader group would seem to be wasting resources that could be either left in the general economy or directed in a more focused public program.

Full-day kindergarten and the prospect for public pre-school marginalizes the role of parents and the family in childcare. To attach a 'cost' to this impact is difficult, but to deny an impact is simply disingenuous, particularly when some of the rationale for institutionalizing childcare through all-day kindergarten is to remediate 'deficient' home care.

And, just by the titles of these studies, it must be acknowledged that the jury is definitely still out on the so-called benefits of additional time spent in a kindergarten day.  And, if you actually read these studies, you'll be even more convinced that the jury is out! 

• THE LONG-RUN IMPACTS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION: EVIDENCE FROM A FAILED POLICY EXPERIMENT, Philip DeCicca Justin D. Smith, Working Paper 17085 May 2011
• DURATION AND INTENSITY OF KINDERGARTEN ATTENDANCE AND SECONDARY SCHOOL TRACK CHOICE, Tim Landvoigt, Grit Muehler and Friedhelm Pfeiffert, RAND Working Paper Series No WR-266 July 31, 2007
• IS FULL BETTER THAN HALF? EXAMINING THE LONGITUDINAL EFFECTS OF FULL-DAY KINDERGARTEN ATTENDANCE, Jill S Cannon, Alison Jacknowitz, Gary Painter, May 2005

So, to answer the questions. First, does all-day kindergarten affect the quality or quantity of education provided, or does it just lead to a substitution from one form of child care to another? It is a fact that kindergarten as originally conceived is not what kindergarten offers today.  It would appear that all-day kindergarten accommodates an increasingly aggressive academic approach that sets standards such that parents have responded by redshirting their children to improve their child's odds of success. Second, what are the associated costs of providing the program? In Connecticut, on average, it costs an additional $55,500 for teacher and para-educator salaries and benefits to expand from half-day to all-day kindergarten.  There are other costs associated with expanding the hours of a day that a kindergartener is in public school and those include the marginalization of parent and family care, the reduction in usage or outright elimination of private child care options,  the allocation of resources broadly to address issues in a narrowly identified population, and other costs. Third, what effect does any change in childcare (and associated increases in labor force participation) have on child and family outcomes? This question has been answered in wildly different studies and with correspondingly wildly different conclusions. 

If you are finding that the proponents present an unqualified support of all-day kindergarten, they're not looking at a great wealth of informed studies that comes to conclusions identifying serious negative outcomes.  An honest answer to the third question is that successes and failures can be identified.  But, a more appropriate answer might actually come in the form of a question.  Can we accommodate the objectives of the educational system and the needs of the child simply by pushing back the starting age?

If we are finding that our commitment to education demands ever more attention, effort, hours on task or cash to produce the same output, maybe it would make more sense to focus on the objective than it does to work ever harder to feed the beast.

Submitted by: Jerri MacMillian