Is Kindergarten Ready for them?

As parents understand and advocate for what is best for young children, policy makers struggle to catch-up and apply knowledge and understanding to practice.

Currently Kindergartens rarely reflect in design and teaching strategies the neuroscience research which supports best practices. This is demonstrated by a lack of meaningful playground time, long periods of desk work, early literacy activities that are flashcards or scripted dittoes paired with teacher verbal direction, and homework. Too often administrators, principals and K-teachers have a deficit in their education - it is possible to teach and/or administrate a kindergarten class without one course in Early Childhood Education. Increasing their knowledge and understanding by requiring Child Development training would possibly lead to developmentally appropriate kindergartens.

Please consider this recent alert from Child Care Information Exchange (bold italics by Kathleen Seabolt): As the Pew Center on the States concludes its 10-year initiative to advance pre-kindergarten for all three and four-year-olds, it has released the final report of its Pre-K Now campaign, "Transforming Public Education: Pathway to a Pre-K-12 Future", which strongly advocates that policymakers transform public education by moving away from our current K-12 system. One key recommendation is that the K-12 system incorporates play-based, child-centered approaches into its classes. The report states...

"Direct instruction has an important place in classrooms, but those dominated by teacher-centered approaches tend not to maximize learning. Instead, teachers trained to convert child development research into practice know how to complement direct instruction by structuring and facilitating activities in which children have a more dynamic role: creative play, working with manipulatives, independent or small group projects. These teachers are at the ready to provide feedback and to help children connect what they are doing to targeted concepts. Such intentional practices, common in high-quality early programs, foster social-emotional development and cognitive skills by giving children opportunities to exercise their curiosity and bring their own experiences into the learning environment."

As parents find their voice and advocate at local and state levels for 0-5 best practices in the Kindergarten classroom, the learning environment will change and become a place that seeks to meet every child's needs from exactly where they are at cognitively, physically and socially-emotionally. Kindergarten Readiness will cease to be a fearful phrase that panics parents, and become a mandate for every school district. Kindergartens, are you ready for them?

http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/sites/allianceforchildhood.org/files/file/kindergarten_report.pdf