Where have all the kindergartners gone?
hechingerreport.org
hechingerreport.org
Zoom bores my daughter. She doodles through class. The classes are deliberately short (30 min sessions) because good luck keeping two dozen kids engaged for longer through zoom. As the article mentioned, the social aspect is definitely missing. My 3rd grader gets a bit of it through breakout rooms with a couple classmates, but kindergarteners are too young for that, so most of classes is just sitting waiting for your turn to blurt out 3 words.
Academically, I'll be honest, school is a lowest common denominator. School is going over spelling sight words and counting to 100. My daughter has early 2nd grader reading skills and knows multiplication from playing games.
The same iPad that sucks so badly for zoom sessions is also a portal to the largest educational resource in the world. At this day and age of data abundance, academic success is what you make of it.
The social aspect is still largely missing, but since we're all stuck at home, my kids get to spend a great deal of time together. This means they fight a lot, but I suppose learning to handle conflict is also part of developing social skills, so </shrug>
My daughter’s kindergarten class has multiple break out sessions per day via Zoom. The break out sessions are managed by the teacher.
Remote learning for young children is tough, but I see good teachers making it tolerable. Luckily, out kids are going back to in person schooling after Spring Break is over.
by the end of this mess some kids are gonna be left so far behind i don't even know if they can ever catch up
Unfortunately I hear you that not everyone gets so lucky :(
Waldorf kindergartens don't have anything which resembles standard Prussian pedagogy. No desks, no assignments, none of that, and you aren't expected to read or write. It's mostly freeform play, we also learned to bake bread.
Everyone turned out fine. Rudolph Steiner has some, let's say idiosyncratic, theories of child development, but I think his basic thesis that children don't need to learn reading, writing, and maths, before their brains are ready for that information, is sound.
Kindergarten won't be to early for some children, but it will be too early for many. The ones it isn't too early for are just going to learn those things.
These kids are going to be fine, or more accurately, the damage will be from living through the global trauma, not from ordinary kindergarten being interrupted. I feel real compassion for the kids whose parents are forcing them to sit through Zoom school, though. To me it's clear this is the worst of the available options.
If I want to be snarky, it apparently does not give feel for how social history happens either.
Your Waldorf experience was my Kindergarten experience in a US public school in the 80s.
I still have the cookbook we made and remember fondly making all the recipes in class.
Marigolds are still one of my favorite flowers because we planted them in milk cartons to bring home on Mother's day.
I also remember looking up the teacher's skirt because we all sat on a rug in the middle of class rather than desks.
There was also this hippy-ish woman who literally drove up in a VW microbus -- crazy that I remember that -- and who taught us a bit about music. Singing and clapping along to syllables are the bits that come to mind.
One other thing is that there were no fences around the school.
It was a good way to grow up, and I'm going to do my best to ensure my kids get at least some of this.
We've also had forest kindergartens for some years now, and if the missus and I ever have kids, they will 100% be attending one of those.
FWIW that belief is considered basic developmental science in Germany and informs the early education system there (at least). Maria Montessori was inspired by his work and her system seems for whatever reason to be more accepted in the US.
I was on the school board of a German language school in the US and some of the American parents were frustrated at their kids not being drilled from age 4 or 5 (typically they had a German-speaking spouse who didn't understand that Gadgrind expectation). All the kids, to the best of my knowledge, came out fine but they all of course had parents who could afford (or whose companies could afford) to pay for private schooling so it's the worst of anecdote vs data.
Also all the teachers had masters' degrees, which is unusual in the US but I don't know if that was the result of the German government's selection or was par for the course.
I suspect the GP was talking more about things like Steiner's belief that a child shouldn't exit kindergarten until they lose a baby tooth. Or that any illness a child develops was something their souls chose before birth, and therefore things like vaccination deny the soul. Or how different races came from places like Atlantis or Lemuria...
Anthroposophy is a whole thing.
Play and social learning is why we enrolled our kid in early childhood with Waldorf, but Anthroposophy is why we got out.
My mother hated it; they told her it was not appropriate that I was already able to read.
Perhaps your fancy kindergarten wasn’t as different from public school as you thought?
I went to a NYC public school in the 80s. We didn’t even start phonics until grade 1.
Some first-graders are capable of that -- but yes, certainly not a reasonable baseline expectation for that age.
If you find it unreasonable to expect a smart first grader to be able to read Harry Potter, then my reaction is that either written English is unexpectedly much more difficult to learn for a child compared to written Russian, or American parents and teachers are doing an unexpectedly bad job of teaching it.
I based my earlier response on what I knew from others as children. But, seeing your response and those of others in this thread, perhaps I was mistaken. Then again:
>American parents and teachers are doing an unexpectedly bad job of teaching it.
I can't speak for American parents but American teachers aren't so good in general.
When I went to school, we began significant reading in grade 1, when I was 6. NYC public school kindergarten at that time was half day, and focused on social activity, counting, letter recognition, etc. My younger brother was effectively reading on his own at age 4 before kindergarten, mainly because my sister was a huge reader and they read together constantly. She also has a natural talent for teaching.
Remember that kids are very different. My son was born in early January, he has a classmate born in early December. Teachers have to work with both extremes, as well as kids in various family situations that affect social development. There are also brain development factors that apply and don't necessarily level out until 7/8 years old.
My beef up the thread was that some hyper-vigilant parents expect teachers to achieve the possible, but improbably, because they have decided that little Johnny is a genius. The same people will pay $10,000 for soccer leagues, etc.
Reading in English (i.e. decoding written symbols into pronounced words) is not that hard a skill for typical kids to learn at age 5 if they have done a few years of listening to books read aloud every day, but it does require direct focus for like 15 minutes per day for 6–12 months, and one-on-one help from an adult makes that a lot easier.
> Perhaps your fancy kindergarten wasn’t as different from public school as you thought?
I went to US public school for kindergarten and first grade, then a Montessori school for grades 2-5. I don't recall desks in kindergarten, but they were definitely out in full force for first grade. The Montessori school didn't have desks for every student, and it sounds similar in some of the other ways: no assignments, more hands-on learning, more play (think we got something like an hour of recess), etc.
There's also likely regional variation. I have a friend who moved to SV, but moved to Redwood City because he thought the public schools closer to San Jose were too cut throat and competitive, and some parents sent their kids to cram schools. I wouldn't be surprised of that kind of attitude rubbed off on the kindergartens and made their curriculums too aggressively academic.
I'm suspicious that we in the West have become obsessed with formalism. What can be measured must be measured. Do kindergartens really need a "curriculum", like I've heard in the US.
I can't help but think we're missing the wood for the trees here. As with everything in life, quantity is not the same as quality. Are we providing kids with a good education, or are we treating education as some kind of manufacturing process with a quota system?
Did they? We have no data. Maybe they did better, maybe they did worse, maybe it makes no difference and everyone turns out fine. But it behooves us to collect a little more data before we toss out the current system. The only hard data I have on Waldorf schools in my area is that they have the lowest percentage of vaccinated kids: <50% vs >90% for public schools. That makes it a hard no for me, and should be cause skepticism in the Waldorf system.
Can't force us to keep cameras and microphones on, though. School doesn't care. It can check attendance, so it's good with the state.
My anecdotal experience is once kids get to around 5, they start really wanting to form consistent social relationships. Also, if the child has younger siblings, generally they crave some “alone time” but not to be by themselves, to be with other kids their own age without their siblings.
Basically what I’m trying to say is parents do what you’re talking about, but the older kids get, the more they need and it’s not as simple as you’d expect.
She also google meet expert now, she pins her friends to see what they are doing. It was quite amusing the first week where the teacher taught a bunch of 4 and 5 years old how to use google meet and the IPad with large print outs of all the icons.
Although the article talks about the issue of first grade readiness, I think the bigger problem schools are going to face is that there will be an enormous range of returning students.
Some students will have had very little academic exposure (due to lack of technology/broadband/area for learning) and some students will have had their education supplemented by their parents. The impact of these supplements can be tremendous, since they are personalized to the specific student. Also, students have more spare time out of school, since Zoom school takes up fewer hours than regular school (no bus ride, shorter lunch, no time spent lining up to wash hands or getting backpacks).
Schools will have to decide how they want to deal with the great disparities that they will see next fall (across all grade levels). My guess is there will be much less stigma attached to repeating a grade than in normal times. I hope this is the case, because it would not be in the best interest of under-performing students to pass them along to the next grade if they're not ready.
Amazingly, this was a parent whose kids attend one of the wealthiest public schools in SV (Woodside Elementary, where even the teachers drive luxury cars...).
Also if the parents really want to and help the child, it’s entirely possible for them to be reading, counting and doing basic math by age 4.
I don't see, and haven't found in relevant reading or experience, any way reading that early is more valuable to the child than anything else they could be taught.
All it really announces is what skills the most influential adults in the kid's life value.
Just don't push them, if they don't want to. If they show an interest, feel free to teach them.
As best I can remember, I taught myself to read by nagging my parents constantly about what certain words were and how to spell them. This would have been around four years of age. I knew it was a secret adult code with mystical powers. And I wanted in real bad.
I do wonder if the child simply wanting to learn to read is a factor. Perhaps some do not see any use in it, just misery. For me, while I was a quick learner compared to most, it still wasn't easy. I remember frustration and, because I was four or five, some literal tears. If I did not have a strong motivation, or if I had more difficulty with the concept, or if I had a really negative experience, would I have been more prone to developing a mental block of some kind, or an aversion to the effort?
Expose them to numbers, letters and reading. If they are interested they’ll soak it up and learn almost by themselves. If not, it’s fine to not push it - as you say it will get hammered into them in due course.
Learn to listen to your child :)
Sometimes we do things just for fun.
If your kid enjoys learning how to read, and you have the time, by all means, teach them.
It's also only very poorly correlated with better academic outcomes overall.
Young children learning to read isn't usually about their own innate ability. It's about whether they have someone who reliably puts in the hours with them. It probably also helps to model the behaviour, so they see you reading books yourself in your spare time.
You end up with no books that are an appropriate reading challenge but also developmentally appropriate, and a kid who is really bored in school and not using the time to build good study and homework habits.
I think it's a neat party trick to have a kid who is 4 and a fluent reader, and that it has some utility... but I might emphasize different things if I had it to do over again.
At the same time, calling out math problems to the back seat was a way that I kept kids busy during road trips, and I wouldn't change that at all :D
What? It's just the opposite. What about the books that a parent typically reads kids that age at bedtime? Those are generally above the reading level, but at the developmental level.
Indeed, the whole annoying thing with kids learning to read is that -- at least for kids who have been read to frequently -- their taste in books is well above the "see spot run" level that their reading is at.
At age 4 and 5, my kids were into Ramona, Roald Dahl, Charlotte's Web, Pipi Longstocking, etc. It took them til age 6 or 7 to be able to read those comfortably.
Learning to read early is in no way a curse, or a "party trick." For my kids, and many others, it has instilled a love of reading. Also the notion of a "party trick" is gross, like it's something the parents do to show off. The kids who learn to read early do so because they are interested in it.
> At the same time, calling out math problems to the back seat was a way that I kept kids busy during road trips, and I wouldn't change that at all
Ah, so you're just biased against kids who read early.
Conversely, rather than be held back by not reading as early, I wish there were more opportunities for students who were well past their peers but not so much that they could skip a grade. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks to not having much choice in schools is being stuck with the lowest common denominator of expectation for students.
I also think a lot more kids would be academically able to skip a grade than currently do. Skipping forward can be a nightmare socially, unless you do the skip really early and not more than a year or so ahead.
When I was in 3rd grade the teacher actually told my parents to move me to a better school if they could - and they were willing/able to afford the tuition to send me to a good private school, but I liked my friends and refused to switch. I wish there were a good way to disentangle the social and babysitting elements of school from the academic ones somewhat. That could allow students to progress at a more personalized pace.
All those "adult-directed" books, heavy on pictures, etc-- are not optimal for a skilled early reader. Yes, they can read them, but they read them fast.
There's also what e.g. Lexile calls "NC" https://lexile.com/parents-students/find-books-at-the-right-... -- nonconforming. These are great. Simpler, developmentally-appropriate situations, higher level writing. But there's not many... E.g. you can't even find the book they name as an example anymore.
When you have a kid who is ready to read chapter books with long words, but all of them talk about social situations he doesn't really have the experience to understand, you have a problem. My boys would read books and know everything that happened in them... but really not be able to understand why someone would do something described or how they'd be feeling in a given situation.
> Learning to read early is in no way a curse, or a "party trick."
It's not a curse, but it's not well-correlated with better outcomes.
> For my kids, and many others, it has instilled a love of reading.
My kids eventually got back to a love of reading, but the hole in reading material around 2nd grade and having to read below-level books was a speedbump in it. And it's still hard. My 4th grader should be reading young adult books, but he still thinks kissing is gross...
> like it's something the parents do to show off.
Oh, trust me, that applies too, to plenty of families.
> Ah, so you're just biased against kids who read early.
??? I say that my kids read very early above. My kids could have read Charlotte's Web at age 5, and given you the play by play, and known an appropriate amount of the vocabulary... but they would not understand any of the subtexts or real messages until much later.
sure, teenage romance novels are inappropriate for a 10 year old, but there are plenty of adult adventure stories that do make sense to a 10 year old even if they don't understand every detail in it.
white fang, horatio hornblower, adventures of people traveling the world on bikes, horseback or other ways were among my favorites where i can't remember anything inappropriate for any age. i think huckleberry finn too, but i didn't read that one myself.
in fact i don't even remember reading anything that was targeted at a particular age. but even among childrens books i think there is plenty of choices with a wide age range. roald dahl, erich kästner and many other well known childrensbook authors have written stories that are enjoyable at a wide age range.
i find it hard to imagine that there wasn't anything enjoyable for your 2nd grader.
Do most kids actually feel it's gross, or do adults and other kids just condition them to say they feel it's gross?
I remember in kindergarten a girl named Meghan playing some kind of trick where she trapped my hand and then kissed me as if it were some kind of punishment. I remember feeling a bit awkward, but also good about it. Meghan was the one girl I invited to my birthday party later that year.
I remember starting to tell my mom the story about being kissed that day after school, being a bit worried she might make fun of me. I'm sure she was just trying to help me process my feelings, but I felt like the way she asked me how I felt was very leading. I got worried my mom would make fun of me and so I lied and said I found it gross.
Now, I think misread my mom, and maybe I'm projecting, but I think a lot of kids like kissing much earlier than they'll admit.
The next year, we went to different schools. That year we prepared for at least a couple weeks for the first teacher going into space. We all went into the school library to watch the Space Shuttle launch. It exploded. Teachers were visibly shocked. I announced that it exploded, and a teacher told me "No, Karl, we don't know what happened. Let's go back to our classrooms now." and I responded "Those are the rocket boosters. The rest of it is gone. It exploded." With 20/20 hindsight, I would have prepared something better than a transparent lie, but it's hard to blame them for lying. At that age, I didn't have a sense that adults lied, but I realized sometimes they hid information from kids. I had heard rumors that "Santa is just your parents" from older kids. That was around the time I brought up the reality of Santa with my parents, and their response was "well, what do you think?". So, I didn't feel lied to or angry about the shuttle explosion, but I remember feeling confused as to why something was being hidden.
Another year or two later, my grandmother became very ill. I remember coming down to the basement quite a bit after my bedtime and finding my dad at the Apple IIe. When he asked me why I wasn't sleeping, I told him I was worried, and asked him how we knew heaven existed. Thank Goodness Dad gave me an honest age-appropriate answer, explaining that he hoped there was a heaven but didn't have any evidence, and trying to explain that worrying about it wasn't fruitful. Anything less honest could really have screwed up my trust in any authority figures for a long long time.
In general, I think kids understand way more than they let on.
Addendum: Meghan and I were back in the same school starting in 9th grade, and we were in the same 9th grade science class. She told me "My mom said we were in the same preschool." I'm not sure if she was trying to see if I remembered my crush. I wasn't interested in her in high school, but I did remember that the Gobots paint-by-numbers painting she gave me as a birthday present in kindergarten was still hidden away between my bookshelf and the wall. No socially awkward 14 year old is going to admit to a mad kindergarten crush on a girl who doesn't remember who they are, so my response was just something like "Oh, okay."
> I responded "Those are the rocket boosters. The rest of it is gone. It exploded."
Of course, the truth is far worse-- the rest of it was not gone.
I agree that we should try and tell kids the whole and honest story about as much as possible.
And kissing might not be "gross", per se, but it sure is weird, and not something that we really understood back then-- one of those adult things that was kind of out of our world. And did we have the tools to explain that nuance, when people are looking at us funny, when we're 6?
You seem to have been implying in all your posts that it's not just "not well-correlated," but that it's explicitly correlated with worse outcomes.
Use of such scientific terminology implies that there is evidence of this. Is there?
I'm saying there's barely any signal of being an early reader years later in academic performance (and some of what little remains may be explained by those with disabilities being less represented in early readers), and there's plenty of small practical downsides. Therefore, it's something that's OK if it happens, but quite alright if you go down another path.
And there's especially little evidence of receiving explicit reading instruction in school earlier results in better academic outcomes. But lots and lots of parents now try and seek out more "academic" kindergartens and pressure their kindergarten to spend more time on literacy skills.
You can even find studies that show minor disadvantages in later performance from earlier reading instruction (e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08852... ) but I don't really believe these.
You said it leads to "You end up with a kid who is really bored in school and not using the time to build good study and homework habits."
That's what I've been pushing back against. Perhaps in your personal anecdote it did, but I don't think it's fair to say that parents should discourage their kids from reading early because they'll get bored in school and do worse.
I don't think there's any evidence that your personal "downsides" are necessarily the norm in any way, or that they are worse than the "downsides" of a kid who takes their time learning to read (which can also exist).
I agree that there's no evidence that there's an advantage, but you've certainly been saying that there are disadvantages, and I don't agree that those are much beyond anecdotes.
They do show up in the study I posted, and there's about 60 years of literature on a high prevalence of later underachievement, increased truancy, etc on students that enter school above academic level.
You can even find individual very alarming data points, like https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2713445/
(Please don't jump on me for it being 1920's era education; I understand the limitations, but if you want results from a lifelong study, the early data points need to be a long time ago).
> but I don't think it's fair to say that parents should discourage their kids from reading early because they'll get bored in school and do worse.
I've never said that. Indeed, again, I've said mine read early. If I had it to do over again, I might lend a little less support to reading in particular and choose other things to spend time on.
> you've certainly been saying that there are disadvantages, and I don't agree that those are much beyond anecdotes.
I haven't been trying to say that. Based on both the literature and my experiences, I personally believe that it's quantitively neutral with respect to later academics, and that there are some qualitative downsides and upsides. In the parent community at my school, there are some that very aggressively push reading at their 4 year old, and--- given the literature and my experience, I believe there is no reason to do this and it may create harms.
This is just an anecdote, but... I have 3 kids that are incredibly academically strong according to the assessments of their teachers... who are also way quicker than most of the students I teach to burst into tears at the first sign of difficulty, and are able to get away with much lower levels of attention given to their work than peers. There will be a reckoning, at some point, when they end up facing appropriately challenging material in school and don't know how to deal with it.
What are things you'd have wished to spend time on instead?
So, maybe substitute reading to them for some of that time, and looking at science books, and playing with microscopes, etc. Note we did all of those things too, but I'd change the proportions a bit.
It is true I read a bunch of books in early elementary years that I definitely did not have the ability to understand on a higher level, like Animal Farm and Frankenstein. But I still think I got a lot out of the experience. It's funny because I was totally glued to those books at the time, but then when we started reading "real" books for school around grade 7 I lost interest. Perhaps my early fascination was more with the mechanics of language than it was with any broader themes or symbolism. Or maybe I just hate being told to do things, probably a bit of both.
So yeah, I think reading early can be great and if the child is showing an interest in that it is great to encourage. I wish the teachers/admins at my school were as helpful as my parents/peers, but instead they forced everybody to do assignments using a particular pool of books each year based on age. In first grade my mom ended up doing a "book report" on Make Way for Ducklings because I straight up refused.
I do agree it shouldn't be pressured if the child isn't into it though. Different kids are different, so of course schooling is going to require different approaches.
See, and that's its own bummer. Make Way for Ducklings is a gorgeous book. Its Lexile measure isn't shabby for a 1st grader, either... but it's not a great book for kids to read on their own (hence it is "AD" -- or adult-directed).
I don't know if I knew any math at that point, but I feel like I could probably count up to 5.
But I was the oldest, so neither of them figured out that was unusual until my pre-k teachers pulled them aside after my first day and were like, "Did you know smeej can read? Not look at pictures and make up a story. Lots of kids do that. I mean books without pictures." My folks thought nothing of it.
Even now, I'm told the way I read is weird. I don't read a word at a time. I read blocks of text several lines long all at once. I don't have to subvocalize each word.
In the end, it all comes down to how this child is developing, not how some abstract theoretical child "ought" to develop.
The trouble with schooling is that it's trying to make one size fit too many. Separating classrooms by ages instead of educating children in flexible cohorts based on interest and skill makes kids who develop later--or even just who are chronologically younger than most of their classmates--feel "dumb," but it doesn't have to be that way.
There's no reason any child needs to learn at the same pace as any other, or even that children need to learn subjects in some sort of balance.
It might simplify things for the instructors, and their instructors, but it happens at the expense of the children.
Hello, spirit brother!
> Separating classrooms by ages instead of educating children in flexible cohorts based on interest and skill makes kids who develop later--or even just who are chronologically younger than most of their classmates--feel "dumb," but it doesn't have to be that way.
I agree this would be superior to what we have (here in the US.)
I recall how a friend of my wife once watched our daughter. We were both so incensed upon our return when we found our daughter glued to the television having watched cartoons like a zombie.
Don't be such tyrants, let her be a kid and do something different for a change.
> Yes, I am judging you, because you were incensed because she watched cartoons once.
What a strange reading. We, plural, weren't incensed due to her watching a "cartoon once" but because she had been dumped in front of a television for hours without adult supervision, without interaction with her siblings or friends, without books or going outside, or anything else.
Not everyone views dumping children alone in front of cartoons for hours on end to be a reward.
(In contrast, some of my German friends boast proudly of riding a bike at that age.)
In what language? English, Mandarin, Malay?
I'd be amazed if it were Mandarin at that age.
I won't say it's possible for every kid but it's definitely not impossible.
I think intelligence is a factor, but the innate desire to read is critical.
I.. I just don't understand. Kindergarten is babysitting, you don't need be prepared for 1st grade.
It's also tremendously disrespectful to kindergarten teachers who work hard to create an environment where the students learn and develop. It's a harder job than you might think.
You also might be interested it's not just kindergarten that's important, but also pre-K that shows significant and measurable life improvements, hence the current push for universal pre-K.
(Of course I'm referring to in-person kindergarten and pre-K where tons of data exists on this.)
You're conflating 'enabling development' with teaching. One of those things is important at age 5-6, and the other is not - it's difficult to stop children from learning things at that age. There are not 'skills' that need to be imparted before 1st grade, there are behavioral examples that need to be set in a social context.
> That is completely and utterly factually untrue.
You certainly seem certain.. if you study the topic at a bit more length that will go away.
Without kindergarten, I would've been way behind when I entered first grade. There was a presumption of foundational knowledge on day one there.
Sure these are things that a kid that goes to the library will probably already have had exposure to, but the thing is that not all kids are at that level.
I have many years of experience both in teaching and in educational policy and technology across K-12 and higher ed. In this particular case, I don't think I need to study it more but thanks. :)
> There are not 'skills' that need to be imparted before 1st grade
Again, that's false. There are absolutely skills and knowledge related to reading and numbers, for instance, that are explicitly taught and practiced and which determine an expected baseline for entering first grade.
I don't know where you'd get the idea that there aren't concrete educational standards for kindergarten.
Perhaps, to put on their shoes (confidently tell the left from right shoe), say, by slipping onto already tied ones, or velcro-style shoes.
Would not expect kids to master ties till 6-7 yo.
Besides, the modern laces are so damn slippery and thin that they often require double ties to stay fixed.
Whether this is developmentally or pedagogically appropriate is a different discussion, but's it's the reality in most of the US.
COVID Kindergarten is worthless.
My youngest is in first grade now, and is about the most eager-to-please and attentive child you'll ever find (haha, not the older two). But when he's been remote it's been only barely viable...
Correlation usually doesn't indicate causation.
Head Start was a lot more than just early education. It was social services, nutrition, mental health services, and even the employment of some parents of the Head Start children. I should be clear that I do not mean to claim the total absence of benefits of kindergarten. I was exaggerating. The position I will stake is that I believe the benefits are likely very minor, even outside of COVID, and especially for affluent children.
That was a good use of our time.
Well designed studies find ways to exploit the enrollment structures. E.g. you let a randomized group of n kids on the wait list who wouldn't end up with services jump the wait list and compare them to n kids stuck on the wait list. Or you randomize half the kids you help to half-day and the other half to full day.
What you describe shows up in "benefits" of various charter school structures. The charter school kids do better than the kids in comparison schools... but if you compare the charter school kids who won the enrollment lottery to those not offered admission, they usually don't look better.
I think this is taking "correlation doesn't always prove causation" a few steps too far, right off a cliff. There are difficulties with reasoning from correlation, but saying it "usually doesn't" indicate correlation is too bold, especially in experiments where confounders have been controlled for. [1]
[1] (And don't get me started with the semi-clever types who ask if this or that variable has been controlled for when the study or the article about the study explicitly says it has. Save us all from halfwits trying to teach experienced researchers their business.)
This is specifically called "shallow dismissal" in the HN rules (used to be "middle-brow dismissal"). Basically this is when you don't read the article and reply with something that sounds smart and applies in the general situation, but not here because the authors knew that too.
"Kindergarten" in many cases means something as simple as "human contact instead of bad TV" and "difficult nutrition for the day".
I don't plan to "teach" my infant anything till he is 5 or 6. Is this a bad plan?
Which isn't true (you learn languages earlier than that) but I wonder what things it is true for.
You'll teach him to hold your hand when crossing roads, not running out in front of cars. You'll teach him the way you walk to the local shops and back, you'll teach him that kicking you in the crotch is bad, and that he should say "sorry" and not do it again.
You'll probably hang out with neighbours and teach him how to share toys and not fight over them.
All that kind of stuff matters, and is important.
We started taking our child to kindergarden in Finland when he was 1, he'll be going there until he starts proper-school at 7. Mostly they play, draw, listen to stories, sing etc. It's not academic in any sense, but he still learns.
Probably the most important thing he learns is to get dressed and be social with other children of a similar age. He has friends he likes, people he doesn't like, and often these change over a period of weeks/months.
I fully expect he'll be able to read in one/two languages by the time he starts school. We read to him every night, and usually I stop and say the "fox in ?" and point to the word - half the time he'll say the right word, half the time he'll be like "I don't know that word". At first I though he'd memorized the dialog, but when I switch to a new book he's never seen before he still recognizes simple words like "cat", "dog", "hat", "car", etc.
I don't think I'm teaching him to read, we rarely sit down and do anything for more than a few minutes, but he's picked up a lot of things. Like one day he said "That tram is 10", and now he knows about tram-routes within the city "This tram goes to the library", "This tram goes to the swimming pool".
One thing I do when the weather is nice is say "We need to buy cake, where is the cake shop?" He says "go left", "go straight", "go right" and gives directions which we follow. Sometimes he's either confused, or perverse, and sends us in the wrong direction. But that's OK, nice days are worth wasting. But with all that normal stuff we're teaching him stuff, whether it is academic or not.
from: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/07/28/128819707/the-...
I don't understand - isn't her private preschool just another form of kindergarten? What's the difference?
Because expecting your kid to be in an educational videoconference at age 5 is a nonstarter.
In the US, kindergartens are typically much more academic than elsewhere (while preschools generally have no academic curriculum).
When I was five, we still had half-day kindergarten, and that was more than enough for the very modest and realistic scholastic expectations. Those consisted of learning the letters, doing circle time to go over the weather and the days of the week and count how many days of school we'd endured, and a healthy charge of playing with blocks.
Public schools have to deal with both precocious children and those who are essentially feral, and this problem seems to be getting worse as the atomization of society progresses.
It was strongly encouraged that you keep your child home, but if your parents were doctors/similar there was no qualms about the kids going to daycare. Ours certainly went for the duration.
We pay €250/month for that, which is very cheap.
But it gives me some idea about why the amount of parents who think starting school a year later might be good idea for their kids.
It seems like that one year difference will get kids tracked with “the smart kids” and that gap will likely widen rather than narrow over the years.
It’s not catastrophic, but it does seem like it’s at least relevant, and possibly important.
Not by holding anyone back mind you, but by making sure every kid has the opportunity to make the most of the huge amount of time they spend in school.
If it comes down to learning speed, great, not a big problem, if a 9th grader is behind because of how K-6 is structured, fix that.
It's better to just accept that kids are different. It's not a problem that some kids run faster than others. It's not a problem that some kids are interested in art and others are interested in cars.
I like programming. Others detest it, but like cooking. Viva la difference.
The comment I replied to was speaking about 1st grade placement having trajectory. My point is that this being true is a failure of the educational system. Each kid should get their best outcome regardless of whether they enter 1st grade on that track or not.
I can agree with that as a goal. Their best outcome is going to be different from everyone else's.
Here, the concern is that if the kids learn them around age 6, their trajectory could be permanently altered-- never having a chance to catch up even if capable-- because of the system's tracking of learners.
I simply don't buy that.
The reason is simple - elementary school teaches kids at such a glacial pace there is no problem for kids catching up who started a bit late.
For example, I missed the first half of 4th grade. The teacher proposed that I be held back a grade because of all that I missed. My mom put her foot down and said no way. The teacher was skeptical, but within a few days it was abundantly clear that I hadn't missed anything at all. The 4th grade class simply had not perceptibly advanced in 3 months.
P.S. when going through my dad's papers after he passed a few years ago, I ran across report cards from before first grade. They all thought I was "slow". People should just lighten up about academic performance before age 6. It doesn't mean anything for the vast majority of kids. I wouldn't even worry about it until 3rd grade.
College was a total shock, I had to work hard.
I think it varies a lot by school system. There are places-- mostly lower income, disadvantaged places-- where joining a higher track again is very hard.
> The teacher proposed that I be held back a grade because of all that I missed. My mom put her foot down and said no way.
This kind of advocacy is often missing, too.
> The 4th grade class simply had not perceptibly advanced in 3 months.
Good curriculum has looping, where you hit the same kind of topic from different angles separated in time. I'm teaching bright kids in middle school, and I'm finding that you need to hit something about 3 times before even the bright kids will retain and be able to minimally apply it. (With the exception that every now and then something will be interesting enough that a few students will go and figure out everything about it on their own).
Looping means that if kids miss a bit it'll generally be OK (there won't be huge perceptible gaps in knowledge/ability).
By 7th grade, everyone is in pre-algebra or algebra, and we're looping back over properties of operations and exponent rules, even though everyone, especially in algebra, should know them already.
(uh... except for 11x12 and 7x8, which are for some mystical reason impossible for some to remember).
The public school I was in-- algebra I was not offered in 7th grade, but we were definitely not doing times tables in pre-algebra in 7th.
My kid had a hard time with 7x8 until discovering the mnemonic that 56 = 7x8 (5, 6, 7, 8).
As for the 11 times tables, you can go all the way up to 18 if you know these two rules:
one-digit number x 11 is the one digit written twice (e.g. 6x11 = 66)
two-digit number x 11 is the two-digit number written again, but with the sum of the two digits written in between the original two digits (e.g. 11x12 = 132)
There is a more complicated rule for multiplying 11 by larger numbers, but most people don't know their 11 times tables past 10 or so anyway.
In my 7th grade class, they definitely were. Though I suspected that some of the laggards figured out they could avoid learning new material by pretending to not know the tables.
This was definitely happening in high school. Kids deliberately pretended to not understand "molar mass". They managed to derail an entire semester of chemistry class with that.
This isn't necessarily in a good way all the time, though. I'm prepping to sub for an 8th grade life science class for a month. It looks like so much is covered. I'd rather cover 3-4 of these topics deeply with an emphasis on concepts and evidence for these concepts than to skip through 20 of them quickly and with so much emphasis on taxonomy and rote.
And several of the graphs in the textbook bug me because the units are clearly not right...
But that's not really my complaint about public schools. My complaint is they don't teach accounting or how business works. These two are fundamental to participating in a free market economy. It's clear to me from reading comments on newspaper articles that very, very few people understand what a profit is or how business actually works.
Ignorance of how basic finance works dooms a lot of people being a lot poorer than they would otherwise be. Teaching some basics here would be a great anti-poverty program - and a very cost-effective one.
Ages 9/13 on standardized tests of reading/arithmetic are improved, but age 17 has been fairly stagnant. It is somewhat confounded, though, because more people are still in school and tested at age 17 than before-- graduation rates are about 5% higher. And 37% of students are taking at least one AP class which covers subject matter that would previously be taught in college.
Scope and pace of education is increasing, but as your question points out-- it's not clear whether it's really resulting in better outcomes.
> But that's not really my complaint about public schools. My complaint is they don't teach accounting or how business works.
Yup, a whole lot of this is in AP Microeconomics, which is a bit of a rare course to be offered. (I've already decided what I'm teaching for 2021-2022, but maybe I should take this on for 2022-2023).
A lot of the stuff kind of shows up in algebra-- somewhere between algebra I and algebra II depending upon program. Lots of math problems of quadratic optimization where you're given inequalities describing units / raw materials / whatever and a polynomial describing income and an expression describing costs and have to find the maximum profit point, etc, along with analysis of simple and compound interest. But understanding how to do these problems and really understanding the concepts are different matters.
> clear to me from reading comments on newspaper articles
Don't judge humankind from what you read on newspaper articles! :D
Anyhow, the two most valuable classes I took outside of college was a 2 week course in touch typing, and a 2 week course in basic accounting.
The accounting class was taught by a guy who said he used to be the the salesman at a car dealership. We got to talking, and he said the biggest problem customers had was failing to understand the finance part of the deal. The wealth of the customer was directly related to his understanding of finance.
The poorer customers always wanted the worst deals. He'd try to explain to them why those were poor options, and their reaction was always suspicion that he was trying to scam them.
By the way, I've had car dealers and bankers try to slip crap by me on the terms. My dad once moved to a new town to take a job, and was negotiating mortgage terms with the local bank. The bank manager went on and on feeding my dad crap, and my dad would just nod. Finally, the manager asked him what his new job was, and my dad relied "head of the finance department at the college." He told me the manager tried to crawl under the table. :-)
I agree they get conflated or the articles pick the least favorable comparison. But it's not like this is absolutely broken --- the market values company X (allegedly unprofitable) at $10B but they pay effectively no tax --- could be a legitimate complaint. And people who are upset about things often will make arguments that, when calm, they might know are not strictly true or fair.
Some might even argue that the value of government services they receive are proportional to their asset value, not their income.
> The accounting class was taught by a guy who said he used to be the the salesman at a car dealership. We got to talking, and he said the biggest problem customers had was failing to understand the finance part of the deal. The wealth of the customer was directly related to his understanding of finance.
You have no idea how much trouble I've had just getting dealerships to take a check, because they want to play these games.
> Finally, the manager asked him what his new job was, and my dad relied "head of the finance department at the college."
LOL.
It's awfully easy to lose a lot of money. Corporations do it all the time. Take Boeing in the last year, for example. I saw a statistic once that half of American corporations have a loss for the year in a typical year.
It's easy for wealthy individuals to lose money in a year, too. See Donald Trump.
Same for art actually. If art mattered more, we would cared about making kids like it and teaching all kids to draw.
Me, my coordination is poor. It takes a lot of training for me to even get to the point where most people start. But it doesn't matter to me, as I'm good at things other people are bad at, and fortunately I enjoy doing those things and people pay me to do it.
Nobody would pay me for my athletic ineptitude, my musical disability, or my artistic malfunction. And so what. Viva la difference.
That does not actually happen to that often in tracked school systems. Seriously.
Overall, being tracked higher is correlated with better life outcomes and higher life satisfaction. So I don't think the "majority" ends up the way you state.
It's not like the schools are saying "you stumbled over your th-words when entering first grade, so no AP English for you 11 years later", but rather that small differences within the kids themselves becoming self-reinforcing. As WB says in a sibling thread, the only way to break the cycle is to slow these kids down, which is antithetical to me (and hopefully everyone who cares about the kids).
Like what if we tripled the number of teachers?
The kids are self-tracking at least as much as the school is formalizing it. You could have pretended there wasn’t an advanced math group, just like you can not officially keep score in soccer. The kids still know.
* Where the lower-third of the class gets with instruction with slightly too difficult material and not quite enough coaching.
* Where the middle-third gets with excessive coaching on slightly too easy material.
* Where the upper-third gets on their own with little help, occasionally bored by and impeded by the path of the overall class.
This is somewhere affluence matters-- if you have parent volunteers showing up and hanging out to intensively coach (under the teacher's direction) the lowest readers and to challenge / help higher readers pick out books... it makes a big difference on how well class time is used. The teacher can aim square for the middle. And the stronger kids get some enrichment and opportunity for further growth.
Why the 33rd percentile? Because a classroom with 1/6th of kids not getting it at all and 1/6th kind-of getting it.. is infinitely more workable than a classroom with 1/4th not getting it at all and 1/4th kind-of getting it.
I suspect there’s 100x more parental involvement and targeted enrichment activities outside of school than inside of school.
But having a couple parents show up to reading time and teachers' aides... makes such a big difference in K-1.
I don't know, imo people who worry about whether kids are tracked smart are more likely to push them to learn everything too soon.
But the actual big issue with kids that go to school sooner then ready is not that they don't look smartest. It is that they look troublemakers due to being unable to focus as long as needed, they play instead of paying attention, get into trouble as a result. It does even out after some years, but still implies very crappy years for both kid and parents. Ability to stay on task makes massive difference in how long and stressful homework is.
To be clear I am glad I was taught to read but regret nobody else was.
Kids are also memorization machines. Letters are pure memorization. But kids also forget things fast. Our oldest learned the letters by 2, forgot them, then re-learned them at 4.
That said, everyone develops in different areas at different rates. I definitely think parents tend to push their kids more than they need to. Lots of this stuff is just when the kid is physiologically ready to do it. Pushing them when they aren't ready just adds pointless stress.
Math: https://www.myflvs.net/course-previews/elementary/Math_Grade...
English: https://www.myflvs.net/course-previews/elementary/Language_A...
If I recall correctly, studies of head start programs have shown that the effects are significant at first but tend to fade over time?
If you take disadvataged kid and give him good kidergarten, first years in school are easier. 8 years later, those kids are basically product of their elementary school. You can't conclude anything else.
You cant conclude what will happen if all the kids are less prepared, or what would happen with kids who have great support whole time.
(Larger than this in some cohorts, e.g. when the mother's education level is very low).
In my opinion, if they really cared about kids that were less well off, they would provide them with credits or vouchers to let parents decide what is best for their kids.
This sounds like the exact problem I would hope to avoid. Further incentivizing those who can pay out-of-pocket for their children's schooling would presumably create an even more lopsided public schooling system for those who cannot afford any additional expenditure. It may also decrease incentives to improve public schools in those areas. In the US, there are public school districts that can compete in quality with the most desirable private schools, so it's reasonable to assume that there's room for improvement elsewhere.
Also, your comment makes an assumption that caring about kids means allowing parents to decide what is best for their kids. I'm sure this can be true, but it seems unfounded in something as abstract as schooling methodology.
Poverty is the main driver here. Not some "school choice" nonsense.
In Florida, we've been in-person for any parent who wants it since the beginning of the school year. By now, 90% of families have opted back in to full-time in-school. I assume that preferences from around the country must be similar. I don't see how voters and taxpayers in full-remote areas aren't in outright revolt. I can't imagine being a state or local politician and trying to run for re-election on that platform.
One parent was complaining that the return to school in their district was doing zoom meetings from a classrom instead of at home.
Me? I left CA when I saw the writing on the wall back in May. My kids have been doing in person school for the entire 2020-2021 school year.
https://www.heritage.org/data-visualizations/public-health/c...
tldr: they moved to Israel, because there's no virus no more
Most of what I did there were hands on activities (arts and crafts, stuff with play dough, explorations into non Newtonian fluids) and socialising. Oh I talked to a police officer for the first, and so far only time.
I wasn’t doing much academic learning, which is a the part of school that translates to online the best.
Not to mention I simply wouldn’t have been able to focus on a teacher on a screen, although I suppose that part is changing as children’s relationships with technology advance.