The move from play-based preschools to increasingly
rigorous kindergarten classrooms is rough, for both kids and
parents.
A Good Schools for All listener, Sally Cox, called in to share
her story about a particularly jarring transition from preschool to
kindergarten. She said she thought her son was well-prepared, but
kids in his kindergarten class were expected to be reading by
October, and her son quickly fell behind.
“I think the alignment issues between expectations in
kindergarten and how children are prepared in preschool really need
to be dealt with,” Cox said.
Hosts Scott Lewis and Laura Kohn dig into the big
transition problem, which is worsening thanks to a ratcheting
up of academic expectations for kindergarteners. Transitional kindergarten, or TK, a public-school
program offered to kids born between Sept. 2 and Dec. 2 as the
first step of a two-year kindergarten class, has been one attempt
at closing the early education achievement gap.
TK is great for the small number of kids who happen to be born
at the right time, Kohn said, but as a public policy it’s pretty
terrible.
“It’s this privilege, this entitlement that’s only available if
you happen to get pregnant and give birth in a certain little
window,” she said. “What we’re giving away is a free, extra year of
public schooling to the oldest incoming kindergarteners.”
Kohn’s not the only one with a TK pet peeve. Gov. Jerry
Brown has proposed combining three state-funded programs:
preschool, transitional kindergarten and a rating system.
He wants to strip away existing requirements and give local school
districts more control over how they use the money as long as they
prioritize providing early education services to low-income and
at-risk kids.
One big problem with the proposal is the lack of any additional
funding, said Matt Doyle.
Doyle’s the executive director of innovation at Vista Unified
School District. He came on the podcast this week to talk about
Brown’s proposal and share some of the things his district has been
doing to help ease the transition between preschool and
kindergarten.
“We have actually identified the transition from preschool into
kindergarten as probably the single
greatest transition the child can make as they develop
their cognitive academic abilities for college and career,” he
said. “So for us this is the No. 1 issue.”
Got thoughts, opinions or experiences with this? Call
619-354-1085 and leave your name, neighborhood and story so we
can play the voicemail on future episodes.
Number of the Week
6,846: That’s the number of
transitional kindergarteners we have in the San Diego region. The
program just launched three years ago and it’s seen a big increase
since its inception. There was a 67 percent increase in TK
enrollment from the 2013-2014 to last year, and this year’s
numbers are expected to see an even bigger jump.
What’s Working
The Quality Preschool Initiative: The
program rates the quality of state-funded preschools and head
start programs in San Diego County. It’s working because the
San Diego County Office of Education is implementing the program
effectively. The results of the program aren’t publicly
available yet, but they will be soon.Subscribe to Good Schools for All on
iTunes or get the
RSS feed here. Stream it
here.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
