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ANDREW REED/EDSOURCE
EdSource
Should kindergarten be mandatory in California?
Karen D’Souza
March 3, 2021
Long before the first day of school in first grade, some children may
be far behind their peers. That was true even before the pandemic, but
a heightened awareness of learning loss has added a sense of urgency to
the matter of how to close achievement gaps in the early grades.
The vast disparity in skills that students bring with them when they
first go to school is one of the key factors that struck Sen. Susan
Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, in her 17 years as a public school teacher and
principal. She also discovered that the gaps tended to widen over time.
“One of the things that really made me sad was watching a first-grade
student not know how to hold a pencil or hold the book upside down,”
said Rubio, “while the student next to him is writing in complete
sentences, reading at a second-grade level and talking about the
science experiments they did over the summer.”
That inequity is one of the key reasons Rubio introduced Senate Bill
70, which would require all students in California to complete one year
of kindergarten before entering the 1st grade, beginning with the
2022–23 school year. Kindergarten is not compulsory in California and
most other states, although it is mandated in 19 states and the
District of Columbia, according to the Education Commission of the
States, a research group that tracks education policy. Children are
required to be enrolled in school at age 6 in California.
“Our teachers are struggling tremendously. I think the best way we can
support them is having students go up the grade levels being prepared,”
Rubio said. “I also know as a teacher that the disparity only grows
exponentially as kids go to third, fourth and fifth grade. So I
definitely want to make sure that we capture these students early in
the years.”
Some childhood advocates, noting that early learning experiences are
foundational for all future academic pursuits, have long supported the
idea of making kindergarten a grade that cannot be skipped. An
estimated 5% to 7% students do not enroll in kindergarten, according to
the California Kindergarten Association, in an average year. An
official count won’t be available until the California Department of
Education releases its enrollment data in March, but many experts
suspect the number who have opted out has ballooned during the pandemic.
THE ORIGINS OF KINDERGARTEN
Friedrich Froebel, a pioneer of early childhood education, founded the
first “kindergarten,” or the children’s garden, in 1837 in Germany.
Froebel was a lover of nature who believed that children need to be active learners.
His experiences in the garden, experts say, convinced him that hands-on learning was the best way to educate.
“We believe that all children have a right to a developmentally
appropriate early childhood education. Even though the numbers of
children who were skipping kindergarten were relatively low
pre-pandemic, we want to bring that number down closer to zero,” said
Gennie Gorback, president of the California Kindergarten Association.
“If changing the status of kindergarten to mandatory helps more
children to access high quality early education, then it is absolutely
worth it.”
Early learning gaps, experts say, can haunt a child all the way through
high school graduation. Research shows that low-income students are
less likely to enroll in kindergarten, perhaps setting the stage for
future challenges.
“The disparity is not only visible in terms of the competencies of the
child but also in terms of the engagement and the participation,” Rubio
said. “We need to make sure that this doesn’t happen.”
Over the years, lawmakers have launched various attempts to mandate
kindergarten but these pushes have been countered by those who point
out that it would be expensive to do so and that many parents wish to
make the choice for themselves.
One key issue may be that kindergarten is no longer the gentle and
play-filled introduction to the school that many adults fondly
remember. Nowadays, there are math sprints and spelling tests, as well
as finger painting and storytime. A 2016 report found that children
spent a smaller percentage of their kindergarten day on activities like
art, music and theater in 2010 than they did in 1998, according to a
study by the University of Virginia.
“There are some people who are very out-of-touch with today’s
kindergarten standards,” Gorback said. “But anyone who has had a child
attend kindergarten in the last ten years or who has any stake in the
education system should know the value of kindergarten.”
Without kindergarten to help build critical skills in reading and math,
some students may fall behind. The common core benchmarks, some
teachers say, put a lot of pressure on children to meet expectations
they might not yet be ready for.
“Kindergarten should be mandatory because of the new common core
standards placed on our kindergartners. They are expected to be reading
by the time they finish kindergarten, to understand addition and
subtraction concepts as well as many more standards,” said Janet Amato,
a first-grade teacher in San Mateo. “Some things might be
developmentally appropriate for some children but not for all
5-year-olds.”
However, some early childhood advocates believe that the emphasis on
academic rigor in these early grades comes at a cost. They believe that
children learn most effectively through play-based techniques.
“First grade has been a play desert for years. It’s kindergarten that
has lost its playful nature, for the most part, recently,” said Beth
Graue, director of the Center for Research on Early Childhood Education
at the University of Wisconsin. “I would argue that programs for young
children should support all areas of development and that doesn’t make
it a matter of play or learning. It’s a matter of being more
intentional in how we combine the two.”
Some experts suggest that since most children in the state do generally
attend kindergarten, this legislation might not have that much impact
on educational outcomes, but it may have symbolic power, influencing
the way parents think about kindergarten.
“It makes the point that kindergarten is important,” said Deborah
Stipek, an expert in early childhood at Stanford University.
“Absenteeism is higher for the youngest children. I think some parents
enroll their children but view the program as good but not necessary.”
Read this and other stories in EdSource
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