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Liv Ames for EdSource
EdSource
What happens to children who missed kindergarten during Covid-19 crisis?
Karen D’Souza
January 28, 2021
Many California parents dreaded returning to remote learning last fall,
but they did it anyway, holding onto hopes of going back to campus at
some point during the school year.
But for those whose children were just entering kindergarten, the
decision to commit to distance learning was a far tougher choice:
Wrangling a 5-year-old in front of a computer screen for several hours
a day requires constant supervision, technical assistance and cajoling,
an impossibility for many working parents, particularly essential
workers and those juggling multiple children.
Faced with the rigors of distance learning, some kindergarten parents
decided to keep their children in preschool, a safe and familiar option
that allowed the in-person interaction that small children crave.
Affluent parents may have also opted to send children to private
schools, which often have the larger campuses and smaller class sizes
that make in-person instruction safer. Low-income families may have
opted out of schooling entirely during the strife of the pandemic.
Early childhood advocates warn that some of these children may well struggle when it is time to go to first grade in the fall.
“That first year is so important. This learning is crucial to the rest
of your education. At that age, their brains are on fire. A year of
development at that age is like 10 years for us,” said Patricia Lozano,
executive director of Early Edge, an early education advocacy
organization. “We need to start thinking about what will happen next
year. How will we help these kids?’
A University of Oregon report found that about 17% of 1,000 families
surveyed nationally chose to delay kindergarten last fall. State
enrollment numbers have not yet been compiled, but many school
districts have posted lower enrollment numbers in kindergarten compared
to previous years. Los Angeles Unified reported a 14% decline, while
Oakland Unified saw a decline of about 9% and Long Beach Unified
reported a drop of about 10%. It should be noted that some of these
students may have left the state or switched to private schools or
homeschooling during the pandemic.
The state’s largest school district, LAUSD had about 6,000 fewer
kindergartners show up this fall compared to last year. Superintendent
Austin Beutner noted that the biggest drops in kindergarten enrollment
are generally in neighborhoods with the lowest household incomes.
At Kidango, a nonprofit organization that runs many Bay Area child care
centers that serve mostly low-income children, about two-thirds of the
children who were eligible to go into transitional kindergarten last
fall, a bridge between preschool and kindergarten, opted to stick with
preschool instead. That was an option because child centers were
allowed to remain open.
Early childhood advocates say kindergarten is a pivotal period that
sets the stage for the rest of the elementary school years. While many
students have likely suffered learning loss during Covid, it may have a
far greater impact on incoming first-graders simply because of where
they are in their development. Missing early milestones in reading and
math skills, some worry, may set students up to fail as the workload
increases.
All children may face some challenges getting up to speed in the fall
but early childhood experts suggest that low-income children who missed
kindergarten might confront the steepest hurdle.
“They will definitely need help. It’s probably less of an issue for
kids from backgrounds in which they are receiving a lot of support at
home, who will likely catch up,” said Philip Fisher, an expert in early
childhood at the University of Oregon.
Unless the learning loss is addressed, some children may struggle to
keep up with their peers, widening the already troubling achievement
gap between the well-heeled and the cash-strapped.
“Without kindergarten, many low-income children, in particular, will be
far behind starting first grade, and schools will need plans to deal
with the problem,” said W. Steven Barnett, senior co-director of the
National Institute for Early Education Research, based at Rutgers
University.
While some school districts will be flexible about placement, working
with parents to assess where the child best fits, many will stick to
the age rules on grade enrollment. Kindergarten is not mandatory in
California although most children in the state usually enroll.
“It is up to each district,” said Gennie Gorback, president of the
California Kindergarten Association, “but I have not heard of any
district that is flexible about age requirements for enrollment. So, if
a child’s birthday falls into dates of entering first-graders, the
child will be placed in first grade regardless of their schooling the
year before.”
Some early childhood experts say parents should be given the option of
placing the child in kindergarten instead of first grade, and they have
some allies in the Legislature. Assembly Bill 104, introduced by Lorena
Gonzales, D-San Diego, would give any parent or guardian the authority
to request that their child be held back a year.
Others believe that summer school or after-school tutoring would help these children catch up.
“First grade is now more like what second grade used to be,” said Paula
Merrigan, a transitional kindergarten teacher. “You have to be ready
for it. We need to set them up to succeed.”
There are also those who suggest that the playing field has never been
level in first grade. It’s always been up to teachers, they say, to
help all children find their footing.
“Even if you have a first grade class of children who all attended
kindergarten, you will have substantial variation in skills and
maturity. Having some children who missed kindergarten will expand the
variance. It will make it harder, but it’s not impossible,” said
Deborah Stipek, an early childhood expert at Stanford University. “It
also depends on how effective the first grade teacher is at addressing
kids with varying needs.”
One key strategy may be giving teachers the leeway to tailor the pace
of the curriculum to fit the needs of the children instead of sticking
to the usual benchmarks.
“Differentiated instruction, adjusted to children’s needs, is the most
important factor in effective teaching and the most difficult. It takes
a great deal of training and support,” Stipek said. Instead, “some
schools use a curriculum that demands pacing. I’ve never been a fan of
that, and I think it’s particularly ill-suited to the current
educational context. Never has there been a greater need.”
Some experts also note that even kindergarten students who persevered
with distance learning may need extra help moving into first grade.
Some will have fallen behind in math. Others will stumble in social
interactions, having spent much of this school year staring into a
screen. Many of these fledgling students may have never learned how a
classroom works.
“Next year’s new students will need time to learn ‘how to do’ in-person
school. Teachers will have to explicitly teach how to behave in a
structured learning environment. Next year will require teachers to do
a lot of assessment and differentiation,” Gorback said. “Luckily, early
childhood educators are pros at meeting children where they are and
helping them to grow.”
Perhaps most pressing is the concern that many children may remain
traumatized about issues beyond the classroom, such as the instability
of housing, food and health care, which have been exacerbated by the
pandemic. Teachers will need extra help to address these issues,
experts say, which extend beyond learning to mental health.
“For many of these children, it may be terribly difficult to cope,”
Lozano said. “They might have been behind their peers even without the
pandemic and this has made it worse.”
Read this and other stories at EdSource
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