by Sarah Carr, Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel, April 2, 2004
One by one, the teacher points to the letters of the alphabet.
The 5-year-old boy does not recognize "A." He cannot name "B," either.
"C," "F" and "Q" all elude him.
A familiar worry builds in the teachers at Malaika Early Learning Center
as they interview the boy. His mother hopes to enroll her son mid-semester
in a 4-year-old kindergarten class. But with only eight weeks left in the
school year, the teachers wonder whether they can prepare him for the
start of 5-year-old kindergarten in the fall.
"It's scary to me," said Keona Jones, the director of the center.
If the boy starts school so far behind, will he ever catch up?
It's a question that haunts educators around the country as they struggle
to close a yawning achievement gap between students of different races and
economic backgrounds. By some estimates, Wisconsin leads the nation in the
disparity between high school graduation rates for white and
African-American students.
Many researchers see the root causes of this gap in the early years. There
is a growing conviction that even good schools cannot do enough for
students who start far behind.
"If we send kids to kindergarten with this big gap, we can be pretty sure
that as things stand, the gap is not only going to remain, but will get
bigger," said Deborah Stipek, the dean of Stanford University's School of
Education.
Increasingly, educators are focusing on preschool programs as a critical
step in making up the deficit, and they are developing - or being pushed
to develop - programs that are more overtly academic than ever.
Nationally, some programs are cutting nap time; others have instituted
more formal assessments. Literacy blocks - the jargon for early language
and reading programs - are becoming as common as wood blocks.
Although Wisconsin requires only half-day kindergarten for 5-year-olds,
and nothing for 4-year-olds, the number of school districts offering
full-day kindergarten has ballooned from 119 in 1996 to nearly 300 last
year. Many private schools are making the same changes.
Some of the push is coming from middle-class families with two working
parents. But it is also part of a larger, national effort to try to ensure
that all students - whatever their income level - get off to a solid
start.
The evidence behind the movement is strong, although many experts caution
that preschool programs should be designed carefully and youngsters not
pushed too hard. One study found that the poorest children had been read
to an average of 25 hours total by the time they start kindergarten; the
richest, 1,000 hours. Students who are not read to - or even talked to
regularly - struggle to learn how to read during their elementary years.
And if they struggle in reading, everything else falls apart.
'No daydreaming'
At the start of the day, the children at Malaika are bleary-eyed but busy.
Kevion is showing off his 4-year-old muscles for a visitor. Dashayla is
crying. Alana is daydreaming. Jaylen is working industriously - at least
when he is not arguing with Kevion about who has bigger muscles. All the
children in the 4-year-old kindergarten program qualify for state-funded
tuition vouchers, meaning their families have relatively low incomes.
Malaika, a private program, opened last fall in the Brewers Hill
neighborhood.
The task this morning is to study a series of dinosaurs and identify which
comes next in the sequence. Their teacher, Sabrina Chisum, wants them to
finish quickly, so the group can move on to another lesson by 9 a.m.
Catching Alana's eye, she says firmly: "No daydreaming. We've got a lot of
work to do."
Chisum's charges vary dramatically, both in academics and social skills.
Jaylen walks into the classroom and gets right to work on the dinosaur
pattern work sheet. Within 15 minutes he has successfully completed the
exercise, corrected a classmate who misspelled his name, and grown very
excited upon learning that new books have arrived.
He is one of about five in the class who Chisum thinks will do well when
they start kindergarten in the fall. She's worried about three others.
Another has made large strides but is still "riding the fence." The
weakest student will most likely be held back unless he improves
dramatically.
But she takes heart when considering the gains made since last fall. One
boy, who could recognize only 10 letters and count to 17, can now
recognize the entire alphabet and count to 50.
Some of the parents read to their children regularly, she said. Others
rarely do so.
"When I came in," she said, "I was like, 'Oh, my goodness, where do I even
begin?' "
Range of skills
Over the last few decades, several education researchers have focused on
the gulf that exists between students on the first day of kindergarten.
"The range is from knowing how to write first and last name and all the
letters of the alphabet to not being able to use a pencil or even
scribble," said Monica Helfenbein, a kindergarten teacher at Milwaukee's
Allen-Field Elementary School."The best prepared are the ones who have
support at home. They talk about their day at bedtime; they are read to;
they have visited a library; they had someone at home show them what their
name looks like."
One of Stipek's studies looked at the motivation levels and cognitive
abilities of 4- and 5-year-olds, broken down by socioeconomic class. She
found that all the pupils were eager to learn, but that children from
poorer families performed significantly worse on cognitive tests.
"There is a huge disparity when kids start school," she said.
Some researchers disagree, arguing that the disparities emerge later.
"We've found, by and large, that kindergartners have the skills that
teachers say they need to have," said Darcy Olsen, formerly of the Cato
Institute and now president of the Goldwater Institute, an education think
tank based in Arizona. "Most of them know their ABCs and early numbers."
Olsen said that "some children do not have a good start, but the vast
majority of kindergartners have a promising start and it is in their later
years that achievement declines."
But other educators, policy-makers - even families - are convinced that
focusing on early childhood educational programs will pay off later with
lower incarceration, dropout and teen pregnancy rates.
Frances Campbell, a researcher working on what is known as the Abecedarian
Project, has found that children who receive high-quality child care and
education from their earliest months go on to perform better academically,
complete more years of education and have children later in life.
"Our argument is that even at a high cost, quality child care is still
cost effective," she said.
At Malaika, academics are built into the day's activities, so Jaylen,
Kevion and the rest are learning when they think they are just having fun.
Chisum moves deftly from one topic to another to stay ahead of fleeting
attention spans. In a short time, the children have hop-hop-hopped like
bunnies, run-run-run like dogs, and swum-swum-swum like goldfish. They've
reviewed the months of the year. They've heard their teacher sing about
"Callie the Cat," with its abundance of "C" words. They've pointed to
numbers between 1 and 20 on a bulletin board, and spelled the numbers
aloud.
Even at that pace, a few of the children cannot behave appropriately, and
are sent to the "unhappy chair." At this age, academic success is closely
linked to behavior. When Tahniya is sent there for insulting a classmate,
she starts to whimper and tear up.
As the students and Chisum discuss what would happen if dinosaurs came
back to earth, Tahniya keeps repeating "I'm sorry" in a louder and louder
voice, until she is heard.
"Sorry for what?" Chisum asks.
"I don't know," Tahniya replies.
She remains in the chair for the next few minutes.
During the rest of the morning, the students review their numbers, tell
how many dots there are in a picture, read books to themselves and have
"rhyme time" - where they have to fill in the blank in a rhyming riddle.
They create rhythms by jumping, clapping and snapping, review the words of
the week - camptosaurus (a type of dinosaur), cat, cake, candy and cupcake
- and trace other "C" words on work sheets.
By the time lunch has arrived - cheeseburgers and french fries - Chisum
seems pleased with the progress.
"You are all going to be super in kindergarten," she declares.
Moving carefully
Many preschool programs are beefing up their curricula and adding hours to
the school day. At Malaika, the day typically starts by 9 a.m. and ends at
3:15 p.m.
"Twenty years ago, people would have said, 'That's too much for a
4-year-old; we are pushing them too hard,' " Jones said. "Now we
understand that to close the achievement gap, we have to have more minutes
of instructional time."
The achievement gap is not the only factor fueling the trend.
New welfare laws have sent parents with younger children back to work, and
scrambling for schooling options. Middle-class parents with busier work
schedules are demanding more extensive preschool. And President Bush's
education reform act, No Child Left Behind, puts the heat on schools to
begin preparing students for standardized tests at younger and younger
ages.
At local Head Start centers, teachers say they have always taught reading
and literacy. But now - under pressure from Washington - they are
evaluating children's skills in more formal ways to ensure they are making
progress.
Milwaukee has dozens of Head Start centers, usually run either by
Milwaukee Public Schools or the Social Development Commission. The federal
program is aimed at giving low-income 3- and 4-year-olds a jump-start on
school.
At the Milwaukee Public Schools' Center for Children - Head Start, 500 E.
Center St., administrators introduced a new report card about two years
ago. Children are assessed on dozens of different skills, from being able
to write their name to table behavior at mealtime. Before, assessments
were done informally.
"Every year, there's a little bit more pressure to make sure they are
ready for kindergarten," said Linda Betancourt, a Head Start teacher.
Gerry Fisher, a teacher at a different Head Start site, said the increased
emphasis on academics can be problematic.
"There's so much paperwork that I wish we had a little more time to
actually sit on the floor and work with the kids," she said.
She hopes Head Start does not lose its holistic approach to working with
3- and 4-year-olds, which she said includes a focus on health, family and
social needs.
Fisher remembers one girl who arrived at Head Start with severe pain in
her mouth. It turned out that she had a cavity in every tooth. She worries
that teachers in a more traditional school environment would not always
have the time to deal with such issues.
Stanford's Stipek said she supports "academically rigorous" preschool - if
it's done well. She cautioned that changes need to be made carefully.
"My concern is that in our rush to deal with this we might put kids into
programs that are going to make them very unhappy campers," she said.
"Let's look at what middle-class parents do. They help their children
learn through much more informal strategies than what I see being
promoted."
She criticized preschools that subject children to drill-oriented phonics
lessons, for instance, or ax nap time.
Some parents value the emphasis on academics and say it has motivated them
to work more with their children.
Bridgette Holloway, whose 4-year-old daughter Shila attends the Head Start
center on Capitol Drive where Fisher teaches, noted that "there is a big
difference between day care and Head Start. Day care, to me, is just play
time and naps."
Motivation not enough
Malaika still makes time for naps after the intense morning activities. On
this afternoon, Jaylen is restless, and asks Chisum intermittently how
much nap time is left. Most of the other kids doze quietly. Finally, about
two minutes before the lights go on, Jaylen falls asleep.
He sleeps and sleeps, through snack time and the beginning of playtime,
through the repeated prodding of Chisum to wake up.
Eventually, when the other students are immersed in making dinosaur soap,
Jaylen wakes up.
"I like all kinds of school," Jaylen says. "I like all things."
Jaylen is, in fact, ahead of most of his classmates. But Stipek's research
at Stanford has found that even lagging youngsters are motivated to do
well. They have no idea they are behind - until it's too late.
