Getting Off to a Quick Start

By Richard Lacayo

Earlier and more rigorous schooling touches off a debate

Kindergarten used to be a playground. Then it became a training ground. Now it may become a battleground. In Los Angeles, kindergarten teachers are assigning homework. In Minneapolis, "competency tests" help decide which tots advance to the first grade. A full day of classes has become the rule for all New York City kindergartens. But in neighboring Connecticut, an outcry helped to defeat statewide full-day legislation, and more protests are being heard across the country as pressure grows for tougher early schooling.

It all began when the baby boomers put forth their own modest boomlet in the late '70s. Kindergarten classes are filling up once more. Parents are taking a hard look at the first year of school and demanding a greater stress on learning fundamentals. More are sending their children to the preschool programs that launch four-year-olds armed with the alphabet. Schools are responding by fortifying the play-oriented kindergarten curriculum with weighty matters like arithmetic and reading. "Parents now want their children to bring home a stack of papers," says Marilyn Arwood, principal of Waynewood Elementary School in Fairfax County, Va. "They want hard proof that the child has learned something."

Further pressure has come from administrators. Concern over the state of American education was crystallized in a 1983 report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education titled A Nation at Risk. Prompted by such concern, some educators are stressing that the first years of school profoundly affect a stu dent's future performance. Leslie Williams, associate professor of education at Columbia University's Teachers College, concludes, "There's a current notion that' if we start correctly on the ground floor, maybe we can fix things."

The notion is backed by a new study of disadvantaged preschoolers carried out by the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation under the direction of David P. Weikart and Lawrence J. Schweinhart. In the early 1960s, researchers began to follow the progress of 123 children from poor families in Ypsilanti, Mich. Some were enrolled in a "high-quality" preschool program. The others got no such training. The researchers have monitored the children's progress ever since. Their study has found that by the age of 19, those who took the preschool classes had proved more likely to finish high school, find jobs or go on to college, and less likely to have trouble with the law or teen-age pregnancies. They also scored higher on achievement tests. The reduced costs for delinquency and welfare, the researchers say, more than compensate for the initial expense of the preschool program.

"Rather than have children drop out later," urges Connecticut Commissioner of Education Gerald Tirozzi, "let's have them drop in earlier." But how early? Tirozzi wants to start schooling for all children at four. So does New York State Commissioner of Education Gordon Ambach, who believes that early starts for all will give poorer children the same advantages that many of their middle-class peers already enjoy in private preschool programs. A growing number of administrators agree. They are trying to accommodate the push for early education by shifting to full-day programs. About a third of all U.S. kindergarten pupils are attending school full time, up from 14% in 1970.

But the other two-thirds may not be so quick to join the expanded schedule. Some early-childhood specialists are skeptical of the proposed benefits. Louise Bates Ames, co-founder of the Gesell Institute of Child Development in New Haven, Conn., says that most five-year-olds are physically unready for a full-day program. "It's a sheer matter of fatigue," she contends. "Emotionally they aren't ready either. Five is a 'close-to-home' age, when they like to be with their mothers."

Other experts complain that the first-grade curriculum has already been pushed down into kindergarten, where pencils and workbooks now claim ever more space beside crayons and building blocks. Says Principal Arwood: "There are some children who are ready for paper-and-pencil activities in kindergarten. There are many who are not. We have a lot of social problems with kids who aren't up to those things." Bertha Campbell, head of the bureau of child development at the New York State department of education, says that demanding kindergartens create too much stress for the youngsters and can have damaging consequences. She warns, "We have data which say absolutely that if you 'structure' too quickly you kill creative thinking." Sharon Lynn Kagan, an assistant professor of education at Yale, agrees that formal instruction in subjects Like reading is inappropriate for the very young. "Kindergarten should be a readiness time," she says. "It's a time to socialize, a time to elevate the child's motivation."

Caught in the crossfire, some districts have backed away from any changes. Others are reaching out to help preschoolers before they get a chance at the Play-Doh and the Cuisenaire rods. The Missouri state legislature has financed a statewide program of home assistance to help parents spot potential problems in future pupils. In Los Angeles, 146 schools offer small children a voluntary "school-readiness" program, which helps the children learn letters and numbers and how to write their names. Says School District Coordinator June Ushijima: "Kindergarten teachers are vying for those kids. Their attitudes are in place when they reach the classroom."

The attitudes of the parents are another matter. As the controversy continues, those in a quandary may derive some reassurance from Barbara Fry, principal of Wakefield Forest Elementary School in Fairfax County. Says she: "Of course we want to develop a child's formal learning skills. But in the end, some children just need to be children." --By Richard Lacayo.

Reported by Jeanne-Marie North/New York, with other bureaus

With reporting by Jeanne-Marie North, other bureaus