Here’s what “kindergarten-ready” really means.
Deciding where to place a child in care is a major decision for any family, and different centers and home-based care locations will often tout their ability to prepare a child for kindergarten. But what does it really mean to be kindergarten-ready?
The answers, according to experts, might not be what you’d expect. The best thing a child can learn at a young age isn’t the ABCs or counting to 20, or any of those other early benchmarks in memorization so long associated with young learning. The most important indicators of early learning come not through book learning, but through strong relationships with their caregivers, where they build up the social-emotional learning skills, which allow children to thrive in a classroom setting.
“There are three things that kids need to learn at young ages: attention shifting, inhibitory control, and working memory,” said Tyson Barker, a developmental psychologist and director of Early Childhood Precision, Innovation, and Shared Measurement (EC PRISM) at the University of Oregon. “Those skills were predictors of so many things.”
This translates into kids being able to pay attention to a teacher while confronted with distractions, or control their impulse to snatch a toy or push a classmate, and follow basic two-step commands (“wash your hands, then sit down”). Barker and other experts find this information can be a surprise to parents, who believe that kindergarten readiness translates to a knowledge of numbers and letters–things that can be readily measured and compared–rather than the softer, social-emotional skills.
Today, there is more understanding of what a child learns that stems from improvements in the field of neuroscience, including non-invasive tests and observations. “We know that early brain plasticity and early relationships are really important. What happens in early childhood has an impact later in life,” Barker said.
“We’ve had this nuanced realization that there are many skills not part of the traditional academic suite that are really critical to succeeding in school,” said Rebecca Parlakian, Senior Director of Programs at Zero to Three, a non-profit focused on early childhood. “We began moving away from the teacher driving the knowledge as compared to teacher and child discovering things together.”
A Shift Towards Academics, Then Back Again
The initial shift toward academics in early childhood education was precipitated by a Reagan administration report in the early 1980s about the failure of the current education system, with the recommendation that states adopt more rigorous educational standards. Those standards were later codified under No Child Left Behind, signed by President George W. Bush in 2002, which required more standardized testing for elementary school children.
“The way to boost test scores was to ‘teach to the test,'” Rebecca said. Teachers began to use more direct, rote instruction to teach kids, and these methods trickled down to early education. Kindergarten became more academic and structured–moving away from play based learning–and there was an increasing pressure on preschool programs to prepare children for those environments.
But by 2010, a growing body of research had indicated that children learn better through engaged play rather than rote instruction. Around the same time, improvements had been made in neuroscience, to create less invasive ways to study the way a child’s mind worked. There was a realization, explained Rebecca, that “babies and toddlers are not just shrunken down kindergarteners. There are developmental differences from older children, and they access learning in different ways.”
Measuring Quality
So, how do you know if the child care option you choose for your family will accomplish all the necessary social-emotional learning to keep your child on track for success? One problem is that social-emotional skills and relationships are difficult to measure when assessing the quality of an early childhood program. The lack of a comprehensive federal measurement system means that each state comes up with its own quality standards, which are tied to reimbursement and access to resources. Experts say there’s a continuing disconnect between how systems and institutions grade early care settings as “high quality” and what the science shows matters most.
“When we look at the quality frameworks that we use, a lot of those standards are still cognitive development-oriented. We don’t have as many tools to measure social-emotional development,” Natalie Renew of Homegrown, an organization committed to improving access and quality of home-based care, said.
“Assessment scores in Head Start and other quality systems are high stakes,” Natalie said. “But there can be issues around equity.” For example, some assessment tools score classrooms highly when there are photographs of children and their families hanging up around the room. For programs in predominantly Muslim communities, taking or posting family photos is not culturally appropriate, Natalie explained. Without the understanding of that context, a program could be penalized for its quality review–leading to adverse outcomes for the student it serves, despite the teachers doing what was best for their social-emotional development.
Renew believes more significant investment is needed in studies and research on quality, particularly relationship quality, that takes into account the feedback from parents, caregivers and the community. “A good assessment tool and related improvement system should tell programs what they do well and build around on that strength,” Natalie said. “It should reflect the work that the program does and what their families value.”
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Here’s what “kindergarten-ready” really means.
Experts explain how kindergarten preparedness is misjudged–and what recent discoveries can tell us about cognitive development.
