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July/August 2006
by Michael Sadowski
While participation in high-quality prekindergarten
(preK) programs varies widely among racial and socioeconomic groups
(see The
School Readiness Gap), kindergarten attendance in the United
States is virtually universal. Some 98 percent of children attend
some form of kindergarten before entering first grade, according
to data from the Education
Commission of the States (ECS). Yet a look beyond these initially
encouraging attendance figures reveals stark inconsistencies in
hours spent in school, program focus and quality, and alignment
with prior and subsequent schooling.
The most obvious disparities in kindergarten attendance
across the country involve the length of the school day for kindergartners,
according to the 2005 ECS report Full-Day
Kindergarten: A Study of State Policies in the United States.
Overall, the percentage of children who are enrolled in full-day
kindergarten programs has been steadily rising, from about 25 percent
in 1984 to more than 60 percent today. But only nine states, all
of them in the South (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi,
North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia), currently have
policies requiring that districts provide full-day kindergarten.
By contrast, eight states (Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, New Hampshire,
New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania) do not require
districts to offer kindergarten programs at all.
What’s more, terms like “full-day
kindergarten” and “half-day kindergarten” mean
very different things in different places, according to a 2005 online
article from the journal Young
Children. Whereas full-day kindergarten is defined as 1,050
hours per academic year in Wisconsin, it is about a third shorter,
720 hours per year, in Florida. And the number of hours defining
half-day kindergarten range even more widely, from 165 hours per
year in North Dakota to 577 hours per year in Missouri. So while
virtually all U.S. children attend kindergarten, kindergarten can
last for six hours a day in one school and just two hours in another.
“Kindergarten, especially full-day kindergarten,
is not an integral part of K-12 instruction in this country the
way people assume that it is,” says Kristie Kauerz, former
program director for early learning at the ECS and author of both
the ECS report and the Young Children article.
Another area of inconsistency is in program quality.
A collaborative group of early childhood experts from educational
advocacy groups, including the American Federation of Teachers,
the ECS, the National Association for the Education of Young Children,
and the National Education Association, recently formed to promote
consistency and equitable access to high quality kindergarten programs.
Among the basic principles the group has agreed on as indicators
of high-quality kindergarten are:
- class sizes that are small enough to “facilitate
high-quality teaching”
- rich, research-based curriculum that can support
the learning of children from a variety of backgrounds
- staffing by degreed, certified teachers with
specialized training in early childhood education
- collaborations that facilitate transition
from early childhood learning experiences and to the later elementary
grades.
Both class sizes and learning standards for kindergarten
vary widely from state to state and from district to district. Most
state policies on kindergarten do not even include specific provisions
regarding class size, despite evidence that smaller classes are
associated with learning gains for young children, Kauerz notes.
“I have colleagues in New York City who
are teaching 32 kindergartners at a time,” she says.
On the issue of teacher qualifications, only three
states (Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Oklahoma) specifically require
by statute that kindergarten teachers be certified in early childhood
education, according to Kauerz. In states where preK teachers are
certified one way (or not at all) and kindergarten teachers have
a standard K-6 elementary certification, it can be difficult to
provide children with a continuum of learning experiences from preK
to kindergarten to the elementary grades.
“We need an early childhood education
credential for all kindergarten teachers,” Kauerz adds. “Kindergartners
learn very differently from sixth graders.”
For Further Information
Education Commission of the States Online Interactive
Kindergarten Database. Includes state-by-state profiles and comparisons.
Available online at www.ecs.org/ecsmain.asp?page=/html/publications/home_publications.asp
K. Kauerz. Full-Day Kindergarten: A Study
of State Policies in the United States. Denver, CO: Education
Commission of the States, July 2005. Available online at http://www.ecs.org/html/Document.asp?chouseid=6241
K. Kauerz. “State Kindergarten Policies:
Straddling Early Learning and Early Elementary School.” Beyond
the Journal: Young Children on the Web (March 2005). Available
online at www.journal.naeyc.org/btj/200503/01Kauerz.asp
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