![So You Wanna Cut Kindergarten? Huh? [Political Physics]](https://fierceandnerdy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/kindergarten.jpeg)
So You Wanna Cut Kindergarten? Huh? [Political Physics]
Kindergarten is a German word that literally means “children’s garden.” According to Wikipedia, kindergarten “is a form of education for young children that serves as a transition from home to the commencement of more formal schooling. Another definition, which overlaps with early childhood education and preschool, is education for pre- and emergent-literate children before the age of six or seven. Children are taught to develop basic skills and knowledge through creative play and social interaction, as well as sometimes formal lessons.”
I went to kindergarten. My husband went to kindergarten. My mom went to kindergarten. I just assumed that my kids would too. I had no idea that kindergarten was not mandatory. So when my husband and I were touring pre-schools for our son (we recently learned that our pre-school will be closing in three months) and the executive director mentioned that kindergarten was not mandatory in NJ I thought she was joking. And then we she insisted that she was not, I thought NJ had lost it’s mind.
But upon further research I found that NJ was far from alone. According to a petition, entitled “Help Children Succeed: Make Kindergarten Mandatory in All 50 States” posted on Change.Org, “in all but 14 states, kindergarten is not mandatory for children.” Yup, kids are only required to go to kindergarten in AR, CT, DE, LA, MD, NV, NM, OH, OK, RI, SC, TN, VA and WV.
Even though kindergarten is not mandatory in most states, it is offered. The majority of school districts around the country offer free, full or half day kindergarten for children. According to Faqs.Com, “about four million children in the United States attend kindergarten, over three million of those in public schools.” But that may be about to change.
As states around the nation look to tighten their belts, which has meant slashing aid to local municipalities and school districts, districts, too, are forced to look for ways to cut their bottomlines. And one of the options being considered is to get rid of kindergarten. Plans are underway or in discussion to cut kindergarten programs from full to half days or altogether in Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and Harrisburg. In my home state of NJ, cutting kindergarten has been or is on the docket for discussion for school boards across the state.
And why not? We are in the midst of tough times so we need to make tough decisions right? I mean the latest job report says that the national unemployment rate is 9.1%. The economy is still limping along. Funding is tight from the federal level on down and we need to make cuts. So let’s cut kindergarten. Good idea right?
Not!
According to the Foundation for Child Development, “Many people like to believe that American children are generally doing quite well in school. But by the Fourth Grade, more than half of White and Asian American children cannot read at grade level. For Latino, Black and American Indian children, the numbers are even worse. More than 80 percent cannot read at grade level by Fourth Grade. Most of the children who do not master the fundamentals of elementary education will require costly remediation in middle and high school. Many will struggle to avoid dropping out of school. Some will end up in prison, and most will not be able to lay claim to the American Dream. Children’s success in school and in life must be built on a foundation of seamless learning during their earliest PreK-3rd school years.”
And in an article on Philly.Com, W. Steven Barnett, Co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University said, “Numerous studies have shown that full-day kindergarten increases achievement in grades one through three. The amount of time children spend in kindergarten does matter. Cutting that time in half [or eliminating it] would create problems down the road, compelling teachers to spend more time on remedial courses and causing some students to be left back.”
Bonnie Betley and Lolita Brache went a step further in their article, “Early Childhood Education Key to School Success” on HomerNews.Com. They noted that “research has shown that children who have a high quality preschool education will do better in the primary grades, are more likely to complete high school, to go on to higher education, and therefore will have better jobs and be contributing members of our society.” Furthermore, “the numbers prove that for every dollar spent on early education, about $9 will be saved in remedial education, juvenile delinquency and incarceration costs.”
And the real elephant in the room is how a decision to cut or get rid of kindergarten will have a greater, negative impact on low income families who cannot afford pre-school. No kindergarten or half-day kindergarten will mean that lower income children could be at a significant disadvantage entering first grade. Samuel Meisels, president of Chicago’s Erikson Institute, a child-development graduate school, notes that “poor children generally start school with skills a year behind those of more advantaged students [already], so slashing kindergarten time only worsens their chances.”
When speaking out against the Philadelphia School District’s proposal to reduce kindergarten from a full day to a half day, Meisels “acknowledg[ed] that many districts must economize during dismal financial times, but said that Philadelphia’s decision to halve the kindergarten day was akin to ‘cutting its own throat.'”
Think he sounds extreme? Well, I agree with him. Yes, school districts and utilmately us taxpayers will save money initially, but we’ll pay dearly for it on the backend. Just think about the potential impact on the United States ability to be competitive in a global context if we are laying an adequate educational foundation.
Kindergarten is a no-brainer for me. There are some things you cut and some you don’t.
I think Preschool should be required just like K-12. The earlier a child starts to learn the better he or she will do in the long term.
Fun fact: Kindergarten is not required in ANY state, because your children are your responsibility and every state recognizes that fact in that they all allow homeschooling.
Before you roll your eyes and say, but, but it’s unrealistic! I’m going to ask you why? We have been passing our children off to the public schools for over a century now and getting worse and worse results. And still we weep and wail and gnash our teeth and try to solve the problem by saying if only we did it more or longer or with more money, we’d get better results. We’ve tried all of that. It doesn’t work.
A much larger indicator of children’s success in school than Kinergarten attendance is the involvement of the parents in the academic progress of their child. Even though I’ve home schooled my kids their entire academic careers, I am not anti-school. I had a certificate (I let it expire). I taught 4th grade for three years before becoming a SAHM. I know there are parents who are busy to the point that they will never, no matter how much they want to, be able to educate their own kids and put food on the table. There is a place for schools. I”m down with that.
Even the schools you hear being touted as examples for FINALLY finding success with the group education model know this fact. They haven’t taken the kids any earlier. They involve the parents in teaching their kids and they make the kids accountable for their learning.
Kindergarten is a bridge. It makes sure the kids know very, very basic math concepts like shapes and the concept of putting things together and taking things away (adding and subtraction, though usually without focus on learning the “facts”); learning the alphabet and how to write the letters and learning very basic phonics; some simple concepts like there is this thing we call “weather” and exercising is good for our bodies. All of this is stuff that parents can and should be teaching their children in their every day lives as they go about their day. Getting your child’s mind primed for the learning that comes in first grade is not something that takes a lot of time out of your day. We’ve just been conditioned to believe that learning happens when kids go off to school.
The truth of the matter is that kids are learning constantly at 5 years old, and they don’t need to be in a classroom with 30 other kids to do it. (50 at one school I worked.) The real value of Kindergarten to the public schools and the students is that it teaches the kids the mechanics of school. How to walk in a line. How to ask and wait to use the bathroom. The teacher is the boss. You have to have patience when you are surrounded by a swarm of other children your age. This is how you “do a worksheet.” Show me how you “listen to a teacher.” These behaviors, too, can be primed at home by teaching children basic manners, so that when they enter school as first graders, the teacher can teach the kids how to have school manners (something they still have to do anyway) and move on from there.
My brother didn’t go to kindergarten. My brother is a successful mechanic with tons of extra certifications under his belt because he sought out extra learning. Ahh, a lowly mechanic… Say that next time you need a car fixed. His job is quite recession proof, too, and he loves his work.
My kids didn’t go to kindergarten. The reason we started homeschooling is because my kids would have been 10 days shy of being 6 when they started kindergarten because of the cut-off and at 4 they wanted to learn to read. So, I taught them. And then I ruined them for school. By the time they were ready to start kidergarten, my kids were doing second grade curriculum.
Unrealistic exceptions, you say! The voice of privilege! Hardly. I grew up in a dirt poor, single parent family in a small town who got free lunch through my whole academic career. My mom just taught us constantly, because we were her kids and it was her job, not the schools’. My family is doing all right now, but when we started homeschooling, we were below the poverty line and relying heavily on objects around the house and in the world, as well as online resources and the library.
I never — NEVER — would have thought my kids were capable of reading as well as they could as early as they could unless I’d put on my big girl panties and done it. If other parents would try on their big girl panties, too, regardless of whether they use the schools or not, our academic success rates would skyrocket.
It’s great that we can offer services like Kindergarten to families who want it when we have the funds to afford it. But there are communities out there who don’t have the funds anymore. If you can’t pay for your house, you lose your house. If local governments can’t pay for the services? You lose the services. It’s sad to lose something we’ve gotten used to, but Kindergarten is not anything to lose sleep over when every single one of those children has a parent, be it natural or foster, who can accept the fact that their job is no longer being outsourced and that they need to get back to doing it themselves.
Anne, I am truly trying to understand your comment. I work in government so I understand the need to make hard choices. I get that government is bankrupt at almost every level and that means the squeeze is coming from the federal government on down. But what I am talking about is doing the cost benefit analysis on all budget cutting decisions not just kindergarten and realizing that some decisions (e.g., cutting kindergarten, subsidized healthcare for the poor, etc.) hurt us as a society more than they help. And if that is too fluffy for you then let’s talk competitive advantage. NPR just ran a story a few days ago and how US students are falling behind their counterparts around the globe. We are losing our competitive advantage which in an increasing global economy had serious implications for our country. Kindergarten – sound foundational preparation – is part of that context.
In addition, though as a parent I support your argument that parents play a strong role in the educational development of their children, I think it ignores the realties of social (and typically) racial class divisions in this country. When I was a child my mother worked two and sometimes three jobs to support our family. She did not have the opportunity to sit and read to or with us, though I know she would have if she could have. There are a lot of families in this country in similar situations…parents who are busy trying to make ends met and yet still cannot afford pre-school. So what happens to their children?
I applaud your brother and I am sure he is quite successful (oh and by the way I have never thought of mechanics as lowly as cars are more computerized today than ever and it takes some serious skills to fix them and I am not sure why you would assume that I did). But his success does not negate the research that shows that children that have a high quality pre-school education have higher success indicators.
Bottom line, as a country, state, municipality, school district, etc. we need to do the cost benefit analysis and make sure the choices we make do not have negative outcomes that impact our economic viability in the long-term.
Anne, I am truly trying to understand your comment. I work in government so I understand the need to make hard choices. I get that government is bankrupt at almost every level and that means the squeeze is coming from the federal government on down. But what I am talking about is doing the cost benefit analysis on all budget cutting decisions not just kindergarten and realizing that some decisions (e.g., cutting kindergarten, subsidized healthcare for the poor, etc.) hurt us as a society more than they help. And if that is too fluffy for you then let’s talk competitive advantage. NPR just ran a story a few days ago and how US students are falling behind their counterparts around the globe. We are losing our competitive advantage which in an increasing global economy had serious implications for our country. Kindergarten – sound foundational preparation – is part of that context.
In addition, though as a parent I support your argument that parents play a strong role in the educational development of their children, I think it ignores the realties of social (and typically) racial class divisions in this country. When I was a child my mother worked two and sometimes three jobs to support our family. She did not have the opportunity to sit and read to or with us, though I know she would have if she could have. There are a lot of families in this country in similar situations…parents who are busy trying to make ends met and yet still cannot afford pre-school. So what happens to their children?
I applaud your brother and I am sure he is quite successful (oh and by the way I have never thought of mechanics as lowly as cars are more computerized today than ever and it takes some serious skills to fix them and I am not sure why you would assume that I did). But his success does not negate the research that shows that children that have a high quality pre-school education have higher success indicators.
Bottom line, as a country, state, municipality, school district, etc. we need to do the cost benefit analysis and make sure the choices we make do not have negative outcomes that impact our economic viability in the long-term.