Rigors of Kindergarten Increase While Funding Disappears
Local school districts scramble to find the dollars for full-day kindergarten
If it’s been 30 or more years since you’ve attended kindergarten, you might be shocked by the changes you’d see if you visited a 21st century kindergarten class.
Not only have the children coming into kindergarten changed but so has what is expected of them. Today, children are coming to kindergarten smarter, savvier and most certainly more technologically advanced than 30 years ago. “The social fabric of our lives has changed,” says Ann Richards, a 17-year kindergarten teacher veteran. “Society has changed and this changes how kids come to school.”
Richards, who teaches at Desert Willow Elementary School in the Cave Creek Unified School District (CCUSD), says that when she first started teaching kindergarten about half of her students came in with preschool experience. Now, she says, it’s surprising if she has any child that didn’t go to preschool in her class. “Parents’ expectations are off the charts,” she says. “The race to read is incredible.”
Over at Horseshoe Trails Elementary School, also in CCUSD, Sherri Rambo, a National Board Certified Teacher who has been teaching kindergarteners for 12 years, echoes what Richards says. “We have a lot more tech savvy kids coming into our classrooms,” she says. “This changes connections in the brain. We need to meet that challenge and meet their needs.”
Rambo started teaching kindergarten in 1989 before she took time off to raise her own family. She says the kindergarten students of 1989 learned their colors, letters and letter sounds (though they didn’t always get all of them by the end of the year), counted to 30 and identified numbers 1 through 10. She adds that a lot of classroom time was spent on socialization.
These standards have changed dramatically just in the past 20 years. Now, kindergarteners must know 40 site words, all letters and their sounds and be able to decode (read) simple words, interpret charts and graphs, sort and classify, compare and order objects according to their attributes and count to 50. And even though these state standards are rigorous, CCUSD takes it to the next level by expecting their kindergarten students to count to 150. Teaching the six components of writing has been added as a kindergarten standard most recently. Now, kindergarten students are expected to identify the six components of writing and actually keep journals to apply these components. “Fifteen to 20 minutes of writing each day helps students apply all the other skills,” Richards says. “Writing helps the reading along.” In addition to all this, kindergarten teachers are also presenting units in science, social studies and socialization.
“We learned a lot more about how children learn to read in the past 10 to 12 years,” Rambo says. “We know what to do and how to do it. We also know that the process for reading takes time and setting that foundation takes time.”
Unfortunately, time is the very thing that has been taken away from all kindergarten students in Arizona in the past year when the State unceremoniously pulled funding for full-day kindergarten. This step backwards for the state is in direct opposition to national trends. In 2000, almost 65 percent of all kindergarteners attended a full-day of schooling according to the Education Commission of the States. This is up 40 percent from 1979. Yet, despite the lack of funding, CCUSD, along with many surrounding districts, made a commitment to fund a full day of schooling for all incoming kindergarteners (costing CCUSD $475,000) by reducing operating expenses, increasing all K-12 class sizes by one and eliminating positions such as school nurses and librarians. “A solid foundation in the first year of school is imperative to continued academic success as we add more content standards to our students’ plates and prepare them for the 21st century,” says CCUSD Superintendent Dr. Debbi Burdick. “In examining our own district achievement data over the six years where we provided all-day kindergarten, we saw a strong upsurge in student success.”
In fact, since 2006 when all-day kindergarten began in CCUSD, the number of students that tested as proficient in Writing on the AIMS test has risen by 15 percent. According to district kindergarten teachers, this academic achievement would certainly suffer if all-day kindergarten was taken away. “We’d probably only have time to teach the three Rs and not be able to educate as deep and wide,” Rambo says. “The world is in constant change, and we have to change with it. Thirty years ago, a half day met the needs of young children. Today, we have to teach kids to sustain themselves in a global society.”
According to Rambo, kindergarten students are tested regularly throughout the year to make sure they are all progressing along the learning curve. This quality control of academic achievement allows for early intervention in the form of additional individualized instruction for those students lagging behind. Because of these measures, all students enter first-grade on track or higher. “Students must be prepared for the rigors of first-grade,” Rambo says. “Today, there is so much more expected in first-grade. There’s very little review at the beginning of the year, and instruction moves quickly.”
But academics are not the only thing that would suffer if the district could no longer afford to pay for full-day kindergarten. Supporting and teaching social skills is a pivotal part of kindergarten and affects the emotional well-being of a child, now and in the future. And both Rambo and Richards say that even with a full-day of kindergarten, they wish they had more time for teaching social skills. Without a doubt, the socialization of kindergartners would suffer in a half-day environment. “Down the line, the lack of social skills would show up with more children having disciplinary, communication and relationship problems,” Rambo says. “And all that can interfere with learning and affect a community when these kids become adults.”
