Kindergarten Rx: More Play, Fewer Tests -- Politics Daily

Kindergarten Rx: More Play, Fewer Tests -- Politics Daily

by Linda Kulman
06/18/09

One morning a couple of years ago, when my child was newly installed in kindergarten, I dropped him off in the school cafeteria, hugged him goodbye, and started to leave as teachers filed out with their students in tow. That's when I heard the principal announce, "Parents, if your child is crying, you need to stay."

I turned around.

For the next month, each school day started with our then-5-year-old clinging to my husband or me, as we alternately tried to comfort him or pry him loose. It took concerted bribery -- M&M's, sticker charts, and trips to the toy store -- for the daily drama to end.

It wasn't that he suffered from sensory issues, had been mismatched with his teacher, or any other of the myriad possibilities we considered during those weeks of misery during which he talked of dropping out.

It's that kindergarten is a lot to adjust to. Too much so, according to a report called "Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need Play in School," recently released by the nonprofit research and advocacy group Alliance for Childhood. A survey commissioned by the group of 254 kindergarten teachers in Los Angeles and New York revealed that they spend two to three hours a day teaching and testing their young charges in reading and math, while play or "choice" time accounts for 30 minutes or less.

As playtime dwindles, what's being lost is the one component crucial to the development of creativity, emotional stability, and empathy. Young children "try on every aspect of life while they're playing," Joan Almon, a co-author of the report, said at a recent briefing before Congress. "They use play to discover themselves and the world around them." Roberta Gollinkoff, an educator and expert on how children acquire language, added: "It's not play or learning. And playful learning is how children learn best."

Far from being a waste of time, play, in fact, is essential to a child's development-physically, intellectually, and psychologically. Marguerite Kelly, co-author of The Mother's Almanac, who writes a parenting column in The Washington Post called "Family Almanac," says, "You want them to do as much play as they can. Rolling a ball into a hole in the ground or pitching a penny into a wastebasket. You want them to climb up and down, up and down. They're in the housekeeping corner working out relationships."

There's a long list of lessons that children were once expected to learn in kindergarten, notes Edward Miller, co-author of the "Crisis" report. "A lot of them had to do with being a good citizen, learning to consider other people, learning to get along, learning to give in sometimes, learning to take turns."

One reason for the increased emphasis on academics and testing at such a young age is the push by politicians and educators to close the gap between rich and poor, white and minority students. Along with the No Child Left Behind Act, and its call for greater accountability in the classroom, unprecedented emphasis is now being placed on early childhood education to bring at-risk kids up to speed. Barack Obama's 2010 budget seeks $1.78 billion for early childhood education, a 78 percent increase over 2009. Other programs such as Title I bring the overall total to approximately $2.1 billion. And billions more have been requested for Head Start.

Another reason academics are being accelerated is the U.S. phenomenon known to marketers as KGOY -- kids growing older younger -- driven in part, by moms and dads, who, as Peggy Orenstein points out in the New York Times Magazine, "want to build a better child." Why else would expectant parents wire the womb for Mozart?

But the problem, says Miller, is that expectations for young children have changed, but children themselves have not.

Among the factors that remain the same is that children younger than 8 are notoriously unreliable test takers, according to the National Association for the Education of Young Children. They might be able to recite the full alphabet one day and recognize only five letters the next. While anyone taking a test can be affected by external circumstances, the number and variety of things that may affect a young child on test day are "hugely larger" than what may affect an adult, Miller says. The result is a 50 percent chance of an erroneous outcome -- "the same," he adds "as flipping a coin."

The second problem with testing young kids is one of validity -- does the test actually measure what it's supposed to? Miller says the answer is no. The relationship between a child's ability to recognize a certain number of syllables, say, at age 5 and progress toward becoming a reader "is really, really tenuous."

Besides faults with the testing process, whatever advantage kids might accrue early on -- the kind that makes moms and dads crow over Junior's ability to whip through Harry Potter while still in Pull-Ups -- doesn't make them better readers in the long run, according to a study conducted by the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation.

In Germany, where education reform in the 1970s transformed traditional kindergartens into centers for cognitive achievement, researchers found that children in play-based classes were not only more advanced readers and mathematicians by age 10 but also excelled in creativity and their ability to express themselves orally. They were better adjusted socially and emotionally. As a result, Germany switched back to "old-school" kindergartens. And in Finland, which outscores other industrial countries, children begin first grade at age 7 after six years of play.

On the other hand, adults who put too much pressure on children before their natural love of learning has clicked in risk setting the kids back, even burning them out. "The child gets the idea that they're not actually good at it," Miller says. "If you're told that you're not good at something, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who are told that they're tone deaf have a very hard time after that learning to sing."

The trend of loading up on phonics, math, and standardized tests is slowly pushing downward to preschool, with unsettling consequences. Almon reported at the congressional briefing that the expulsion rate for preschoolers is growing, with 4.5 times more boys being expelled than girls. "For me, as an early childhood educator, it's a red flag that says 'Too much sedentary time.'"

"Enough," says Kelly. "Watch children play. Let them set the routine. That's what they should be doing. If a kid goes to school semi-regularly and has even mediocre teachers, he will learn how to read and write by the third grade."