Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Report Estimates 1/3 of kids not ready for K
Kindergarten used to be considered a place kids learned how to learn, with simple lessons on how to sit still and recognize shapes and colors.
Today, by age 5, they?re expected to count to 100, know whether shapes are two- or three-dimensional, and read most pronouns, according to state standards. In Tennessee, too many are showing up without those skills, causing alarm for early education officials as the state moves its curriculum forward in leaps.
A report released today by the National Institute for Early Education Research says state-funded pre-kindergarten does well at instilling those skills, but only 21 percent of Tennessee?s 4-year-olds are enrolled. In Florida and Oklahoma, the figure is more than 73 percent.
For Tennessee children who can get in, those classes are among the best in the nation, the curriculum hitting nine of 10 nationally accepted benchmarks. The problem is the number of children who don?t qualify ? and don?t get the prerequisites in private programs or at home.
The institute estimates a third of children nationwide arrive at kindergarten unprepared, although the number can be tough to measure. It?s a figure U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called ?staggering.?
?The goal for the country is to get that down to zero absolutely as fast as we can,? Duncan told The Tennessean last week.
Some state changes are under way, such as evaluating teachers in early grades, adding depth to the curriculum and making sure those who work with children ages birth to 5 have more rigorous standards based on that new curriculum. The Early Childhood Advisory Council is working on a more encompassing definition of kindergarten readiness and hopes that, as the state rebounds financially, lawmakers will pump more funds into pre-K programs.
Lindsay Ferrier, a blogger for cafemom.com, noticed when her daughter Gigi entered Harpeth Valley Elementary in Bellevue two years ago that some children were ahead of the pack.
She realized they had a common factor: They had gone through preschool and learned to write their name, knew the alphabet and could read a little.
So as her son Jack, 4, prepares to enter kindergarten at the same school this fall, she hasn?t home-schooled him as she did Gigi, but enrolled him in preschool part time. She and Jack do workbooks and skill-building activities at home, too. That way, he will be both socially and academically ready, she said.
?Sitting in a class for seven hours is a challenge when you are away from your loved ones ? and then you throw in these new standards,? she said. ?It?s tough if your child doesn?t have those basics down.?
No uniform testing
It?s difficult to measure kindergarten readiness because the state has no formal definition of what that is and because school districts use different ways to test 5-year-olds? skills. The tests even vary from school to school within districts.
In Metro Nashville, the number of kindergarten students who are behind could be more than 35 percent, officials say. Depending on the school, students entering kindergarten are either simply screened for delays or given a fuller assessment to see whether they know shapes and patterns, are able to share toys or can recite the alphabet.
Metro?s leadership and learning department is interested in moving to a common kindergarten test.
?It has been several years since we were using the Brigance Screens (readiness test) districtwide,? said Paul Changas, Metro?s executive director of research, assessment and evaluation. ?Our numbers were around 33 percent to 35 percent of students being flagged at risk in terms of kindergarten readiness at that time, and I would expect it to be a little higher now with the higher numbers of economically disadvantaged and non-English background we serve.?
Some Middle Tennessee parents elsewhere say they?ve already observed a change in the pace of kindergarten.
Stewarts Creek Elementary kindergarten parent Yasmine Mukahal of Smyrna said she didn?t realize that kindergarten had advanced so much until she enrolled her daughter, Zeina, this school year. Zeina is required to cut out words from her mother?s Us
Weekly and Redbook magazines to form sentences and distinguish whether a book is based on real events or the creative mind.
?You think kindergarten is coloring and fun, but no, this is hard-core work,? Yasmine Mukahal said. ?She comes home with homework every night except on Fridays.?
New standards
Much of the push comes from the new Common Core Standards being adopted by 48 states. It will cost Tennessee at least $2.95 million in federal grant money to implement the curriculum, throwing out state content that is no longer vital for college readiness to focus more heavily on lessons that are.
Soon, Tennessee will be tested on the same standards as much of the nation ? tests that require students to think critically and apply what they?ve learned to real-life situations.
Some schools already voluntarily adopted Common Core in their K-2 classrooms, and spring Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program tests for students in grades 3-8 will include sample questions based on the new standards that let education leaders know how far behind students are.
The math curriculum starts being phased in next school year. All grades will use the curriculum for math and reading by 2013-14, with new standardized tests by 2014-15.
Under the new Common Core kindergarten standards, children are asked to count to 100 by ones and tens; identify the front cover and title page of a book; and use a combination of drawing, verbal cues and writing to narrate an event in sequence and give a reaction to what happened.
It would be easier to get all kids doing that with better access to pre-K programs.
Decreased funding
Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, an advocacy group for better and more widely available pre-K programs, said 22 states, including Tennessee, increased enrollment in the past decade.
The institute?s report out today, The State of Pre-School 2011, looked at access, funding and quality of state pre-K programs as well as 10-year trends.
Although enrollment increased, state funds collectively decreased by almost $60 million in 2010-11, and per-child spending declined $145 from the previous year.
?Our key finding is that preschool expansion over the past decade garnered great attention, but something else happened that got less notice: Funding slipped,? Barnett said. ?That means we?ve taken a giant step backward as a nation.?
Tennessee spends, on average, $4,620 per child per year compared with $4,151 on average nationally and served 21 percent of the 4-year-old population, up from 2 percent a decade ago when state-funded pre-K was piloted. The national average is 28 percent.
Bobbi Lussier, the state Department of Education?s assistant commissioner of special populations, says funding has stayed steady. Tennessee pays for pre-K for only its low-income 4-year-olds to close achievement gaps. A few states have pre-K for all 4-year-olds, while 11 states have no funded programs.
?I think the feeling is, once our state recovers economically, that we need to really look at expanding the programs to serve more children,? Lussier said.
Robertson, Polk and Bedford counties have 60-70 students each who qualify but can?t get in because there are no empty seats, she said.
Local school districts fund some of their own pre-K programs, and there are federally funded Head Start programs plus church-run and private schools offering pre-K curriculum. It?s up to parents to be sure the schools aren?t providing only day care but also the proper academic preparation.
An impact at home
Lussier and Linda DePriest, Metro?s assistant superintendent for instructional support, said parents can make a huge learning impact at home in their children?s early years, even if they can?t get them into a pre-K program.
Parents can ensure their children have rich experiences simply by taking a walk and counting things such as leaves on a tree or buds on a flower. Reading to children daily and then asking them questions about a story and characters and just talking to children also can be powerful.
?It?s exposing them to print and developing their listening skills, which tie in well when they go to school,? DePriest said. ?It helps them listen and develop vocabulary.?
Re: Report Estimates 1/3 of kids not ready for K
I don't find the numbers shocking, yet I do find this push to teach kids to read younger and younger disturbing. It isn't necessarily developmentally appropriate.
Our principal showed our schools reading test scores and in K and 1st they are way higher than the national average, yet by 5th grade they are at/below the national average so obviously the gains in the early grades aren't maintained.
I think this article stands out more to me, because DS1 just read superfudge and Fudge's Kindergarten experience was nothing like current K experience described in the article.
I get increased standards, but the standards should be increased where it is appropriate (probably higher standards in 3-6 but K-2 should be more about exploring and hard core reading instruction not introduced until 1st grade.
Above Us Only Sky
I agree. I'm impressed and concerned at the same time about some of the stuff my son brings home from first grade... like he's learning subject verb agreement as a formal lesson, possessives, etc. All things I don't think I had formal lessons on until 3rd grade.
Above Us Only Sky
I'm troubled by those expectations for kids coming into K. I remember clearly my test for counting to 100, towards the end of K. The rest of the kids would watch a movie while the teacher pulled us out 1 by 1 and sat at the back of the room and counted for her (no aides so there was no one to teach the rest of the class while she tested).
I don't understand the rising expectation for incoming skills, but lowered expectation for outgoing skills at the end of public education. What are they doing in between?
My Chart My Nest Bio
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120410/NEWS04/304100017/TN-kids-lack-skills-kindergarten
Above Us Only Sky
I was surprised that my daughter had to be able to construct a sentence with proper punctuation and all. She speaks really well and I think that helps her. At the same time, I am wondering if she will retain this year.
i agree with this. Not to mention the fact that for kids who don't come from 'good' homes, they may not have parents who have encouraged them to learn these things pre-K. They need to be able to learn these things IN kindergarten. Does that make sense?
Here are some of the homework sheets my daughter gets.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlwooten/7054241313/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlwooten/6960198627/
I try not to correct her so she can learn from it.
I can't even think about this
It makes me panic as a parent that I feel like we are basically going to have to start doing extracurricular teaching in K.
We both work FT and I want my kid to do other stuff too that kids do like sports. Not spending our evenings learning about nouns in K.
CRAZY.
Those standards seem lofty for K.
Our school district offers publicly funded Pre-K only for low income kids. Our DD is in a preschool which has a curriculum - but it's still primarily play-based, as it should be.
I know our kids will do well, because they have involved parents. I feel for the kids who don't - because they are being set up to fail with standards such as those, set for their entrance into the public school system.
I am sofucking disturbed by all of this.
I don't give ashit quit frankly if my kid can identify three dimmensional shapes by the time he is five. I do however want him to run around outside using his imagination and learn about the things he is curious about. I think he will be more than prepared for K.
ew ew ew ew ew
Our education system is sofuckedup.
I know in our district so many kids have to be low income and so many kids can be high income. I know when it was time for our oldest daughter to go to pre-k, the application asked about our income and I told the administrator that I probably wouldn't qualify as our income was way about the top bracket. She said that we should still apply because the law mandates that we have so many kids that are not low income. (I guess it stemmed from issues in the Greenwich school system or something.)
part of the reason it's happening is because kids are older now when they're in K, thanks to the legions of red-shirters. when kids turn 6 at the beginning of the year it's fine to have them start reading because it's age appropriate. unfortunately, it's not GRADE appropriate.
This is really concerning. Have they thought that the kindergartners are behind because they aren't developmentally ready to do those things, rather than the reason being they weren't prepared?
Also in my area pre-K costs money (done through public school system). The tune of $200/month per child for 2 days a week. Double for 4 days a week, and not including all the extras for fund raising, pictures and monthly field trips. And the time is wonky - from 9:30-11:30. This seems to rule out everyone without a SAHP or who has extra money laying around.
I have read enough development books, especially in relation to boys, to feel very confident in my son's ability. I think he is doing great things and becoming a wonderful little man. I am not biased at all. :-)
But this is what scares me. I don't want him to be set up to fail from the beginning and start doubting himself all because of this unrealistic expectations. I am going to talk to my boss who feels very similarly about education as I do today and ask what our K system is really like. Her third child just went through it last year. Maybe she can talk me off the ledge this AM lol.
yup, all that. Same here.
half of my sophomores are not ready for kindergarten.
We have all day public pre-k WITH after-school care in our district. It could be the sole deciding factor on when we move out of this district. I guess there are only 1/2 the # of pre-k spots vs. kindergarten, and supposedly its all funded shittily, but if DD gets in I'm not gonna cry in my cheerios about the extra $800/month we would then have.
I agree. I opened this post thinking, "What is there to be ready for?" But apparently now you need to know a lot before entering K. Sad.
Do we think this is a result of overeager administrators trying to show off and get more students and/or money, or is this parents trying to make sure their kid is on the path to Harvard from day 1?
I think kids are capable of doing more than what we were asked to do in KG, even when we were in KG. But, counting to 100 by 1s coming into KG?
Counting by 10s is NBD, but 1s is a different story.
I really like the way our district does it and their goals for leaving KG seem very doable, but sending your DC to private PS certainly helps. It's a shame that the NCLB and common core standards aren't better tied to early childhood education. If we want to become better educated to maintain our competitive edge globally, we need to start there.
I wish I knew why there was such a disconnect between KG/1st gains and later elementary educational scores. As a parent, it's frustrating to see that.
Our district doesn't have a pre-K, but I think Oak Ridge does and it's not income based. It's just available, I guess.
Jackson can do everything the article mentioned (counting to 100 - I know that's above what they look for in his preschool assessments b/c it's always got a special note that he hit the goal and counted up to 100, the shapes, etc.), but it's not something we've really worked with him on specifically. IDK. He definitely excels with numbers and stuff b/c he likes math (does a lot of addition and subtraction for fun). But I parent a lot like eddy, and stay home with him. He's in his 2nd year of preschool and it's been great for him. I want him to be a kid. I don't want school to be so much freaking work. I want him to discover a love of learning (which I think we've laid excellent groundwork for) in these early years.
Related, the high school we are zoned for does the tracking program (like science/math/etc.) and I HATE THAT. I get that it can be good for kids, but as someone with a liberal arts degree, I obviously see the value in a more well rounded education and I hate that kids are supposed to know their strengths and what they should be focusing on at like 14. Jackson will not go there, period, the end. I have a feeling we are going to last exactly one year in the public schools before I yank him out and send him back to Catholic. I should have pushed for it when we were buying a house b/c my gut told me to... but I guess the upside is that our house choice gives us options since we live in a "good" school district. I'm also pretty sure that if we stay in the public schools I am going to end up arrested when I march into the school over something religion related or some of the ridiculous rules I've heard the schools have.
Oh and redshirt related - we had our first 6 year old birthday party at the end of March! I was seriously like this when I saw the invitation.
When it comes to school stuff, I wish we were back in Indiana. Not because the schools are better, but because they have a voucher program you can use that isn't income based and then my husband would have no argument for public schools (or he wouldn't fight me on it - he thinks if the schools are good, we should use the free ones - it's not about affording it for us - it's about him thinking we shouldn't pay for it when we have an "equally" good option). I have serious anxiety about all of this.
I'm not a huge MM fan, but she a million times better than this.
I wish society could wrap their heads around getting the curriculum ready for the child rather than getting the child ready for the curriculum.
It's not surprising that fantastic reading scores drop off in third grade - lots of kids are great word callers so do well learning to read, but their comprehension is lacking, so when they have to read to learn and produce that on an assessment, things get trickier. Kids should have gr. 3 and 4 to get reading to learn down before having to take a standardized test, but they don't. It makes third and fourth grade teachers look bad.thank you for saying this...i can't describe the anxiety i got when i started asking friends for preschool recs for my 3 y/o and i got the "OMG your kid isn't in preschool yet, you're a horrible parent" look. She's been home with my in laws (former teachers) who have been working with her, but stress activites (she's in a nature walk class, and cooking class, etc) over the preschool drills...but then i read this post and got nutso all over again
DD #1 passed away in January 2011 at 14 days old due to congenital heart disease
DD#2 lost in January 2012 at 23 weeks due to anhydramnios caused by a placental abruption
I also wonder how redshirting plays into this.
I'm not surprised by the numbers though. In my area many SAHMs don't send their kid to preschool. Maybe parents day out one half day a week or so but full blown preschool not so much. Either because they are "homeschooling" (informally, no real curriculum) or because they can't afford preschool.
the year I interned at Headstart the kids were learning letters, NOT how to spell, read, write, etc.
Gretchen Evie, born 7/8/2012 at 35w5d