Evie Hudak Colorado State Board of Education

a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District

IT’S PRESCHOOL EDUCATION, STUPID!

The Chicago Tribune recently had an article with the headline “It’s Preschool Education, Stupid!” This play on President Clinton’s campaign motto about the economy is indicative of a new area of focus for many politicians. While I believe that a pre-kindergarten education is essential for many children, I fear that it could be proscribed in a form that is counterproductive, especially if the true nature of school readiness is not understood.

As soon as the No Child Left Behind Act passed, I thought to myself that in order for children to become competent on state assessments by the 3rd grade, many of them would need a preschool education. Coincidentally, the reauthorization of Head Start was in the Congressional queue shortly after the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, causing the President and Congress to look at early childhood education. They have proposed changes to Head Start that are somewhat similar in part to NLCB, which is where my fears come in.

Much research as been done about early brain development and learning, in such notable reports as From Neurons to Neighborhoods and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study by the National Center for Education Statistics. What has emerged about school readiness is that it really isn’t about knowing the alphabet, being able to count, or knowing colors and shapes. Kindergarten teachers overwhelmingly agree, saying that ready children are those who can control their impulses and cooperate with others.

The National Goals Panel, which came from Goals 2000, identified the following domains for readiness: physical well-being and motor development, social and emotional development, language development, and cognition and general knowledge. Physical well-being starts with good birth weight and refers to good physical health, including dental health. Adequate social and emotional development means that children follow directions, take turns, and are not disruptive. Language development refers to having an age-appropriate vocabulary. Even the last domain, cognition and general knowledge, is mostly about having the ability to grasp abstract concepts and knowing about different kinds of people, places, animals, and environments – not necessarily literacy and numeracy.

I believe that the given order of these domains is no coincidence. My theory is that they are in a hierarchy similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – that development in the first domain must take place before a child is able to work on the next higher one, and so on. Physical well-being and motor development must come first, followed by social/emotional development, then language development, and finally cognitive development. For example, trying to help children increase their language when they are hungry or in pain will be unsuccessful.

Yet Head Start now requires an assessment of children that involves both literacy (letter recognition) and numeracy (counting). Head Start is a program for 4-year-olds who come from a high-poverty environment. Such children are known to possess much smaller vocabularies than their more affluent peers. Ruby Payne’s research shows that the language used by the lower class is lacking in abstract concepts. Many poor children grow up in households that not only lack books, but also lack intellectual stimulation. Many have experienced various traumas associated with high-poverty environments; in fact, some research contends that growing up in extreme poverty is in itself traumatic. Focusing on the cognitive domain in assessment may divert Head Start programs from the other domains that are necessary to work on first.

Early childhood assessments should be used to enhance teaching and learning. Unfortunately, it appears that what is being proposed for the National Reporting System (NRS), Head Start’s assessment, is something entirely different. The Head Start Bulletin says that the President’s “Good Start, Grow Smart” initiative – which is the basis for the new Head Start proposals – involves “a systematic, nationwide approach to assessing every child’s school readiness” utilizing “the latest research on how to enhance children’s early literacy, language, and math skills.” It proposes to use this assessment “to document Head Start’s effectiveness nationally” and “to aggregate and report data nationally.” What’s more, the U.S. Department of Education said that this “accountability program will indicate how well children in individual programs are performing relative to the skills identified as prerequisites for effective kindergarten performance. Accountability results will be made public.” This is high-stakes testing! In preschool!

It reminds me of a political cartoon that recently appeared on the editorial page in The Denver Post after the proposed changes in Head Start had been reported. In the cartoon, a mother tells her husband that their little daughter has been accepted “into the accelerated honors kindergarten program” because of “her preschool proficiency test scores." Clearly, cartoon is pointing out the absurdity of high-stakes tests for preschoolers.

Preschool classrooms should not be mini versions of elementary school classrooms. What is developmentally appropriate for 4-year-olds is to play, sing, and listen to stories. Furthermore, early development is episodic and uneven. Albert Einstein didn’t speak until he was 4 years old; by today’s measurements, he might have been diagnosed as cognitively disabled. We need early childhood classrooms to be flexible enough to accommodate the different timelines of children’s development. We shouldn’t be forcing them all into the same mold, using the same expectations for all 4-year-olds throughout the nation. The NRS has jokingly been referred to as “a weapon of mass instruction.”

A better way to measure the effectiveness of early childhood education is the way the Colorado Preschool Program (CPP), a program for at-risk 4-year-olds, is measured. Children from CPP are tracked into elementary school to see how they score on the 3rd grade CSAP. If a program is effective, it will produce long-term success. CPP kids are not subjected to additional high-stakes assessments. The program is allowed to do its developmentally appropriate work with children prior to kindergarten, and its success can be documented later on.

The country’s fixation on academic achievement should not extend to early childhood. Let’s hope that Congress won’t be stupid about preschool!