Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 10, 1990 TAG: 9011150039
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Patricia Lopez Baden/Education Writer
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The ceremony was simple but sweet:
"Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here in the kindergarten chapel to witness the marriage of the lovely vowel, Miss U, and her devotedly quiet consonant, Mr. Q."
Welcome to the world of developmental kindergarten.
It's a place where children learn that Q and U make words together by participating in a full-scale wedding for the two letters. Along the way they learn a little math (how many guests will attend), a little reading (about words with `kwuh' sounds`) and some social skills (passing out programs and seating guests).
If the state of Virginia has its way, this is what most kindergartens will look like next year.
In an ideal developmental kindergarten, there would be no workbooks, no phonics, no language drills, no rote memorization - much of which is standard in so-called "academic" kindergartens.
Instead, children would learn largely through play, hands-on activities and direct experiences.
State education officials say developmental kindergarten should do two things: avoid much of the burnout and stress that can plague children in so-called academic kindergartens and, not coincidentally, lower the failure rate of Virginia's kindergarteners.
That's right, folks. Those of you without children may not realize this, but kindergarten has changed a lot from the days when you spent your first school days learning to share toys, play nicely and maybe slip in some letter and number practice.
For many of Virginia's 5-year-olds, kindergarten has evolved into a rigidly structured format where they are expected to master their alphabet, numbers, simple math, phonics and, in some cases, reading itself.
While most school districts still add large helpings of fun and games, there is work to be done in kindergarten, and lots of it.
Not surprisingly, some children are unable to cope with such expectations this early in their academic careers.
In short, they fail kindergarten.
Of course, educators don't like to call it failure. They refer to it as "retention." Those too queasy to even say the r-work talk about children "needing another year to complete kindergarten objectives."
About 6.8 percent of Virginia's kindergartners will fail in their first school experience.
And that figure doesn't take in those children who don't make the cut for kindergarten to begin with, or those who, instead of repeating kindergarten, are sent to "transitional first grade" - sort of a first grade with training wheels.
Many districts have far higher failure rates. In the Roanoke Valley, Roanoke County leadys the pack, with 8.7 percent of kindergarteners failing the 1988-89 school year. Roanoke's failure rate is just below the state average, at 6.7 percent. Salem has one of the lowest rates in the state: 5 percent.
In Roanoke County schools, by far the largest number of pupils who fail a grade do so in kindergarten. In the 1988-89 school year, there were 86 failures in kindergarten, as opposed to 82 failures in grades 1 through 5.
To enter kindergarten, children should be 5 years old by December 30 of that school year. In reality, children who turn 5 after August are often given a test to determine whether they are, in fact, ready for kindergarten.
Parents sweat it out while children are asked "how many wheels on a tricycle? What is a stove for? Where would you find a cow? Which is slower, a car or a bicycle.?
Children who don't score high enough on the test often are held back from kindergarten a year, or, in some districts, placed in a junior kindergarten - which, by the way, is not to be confused with pre-kindergarten for 4-year-olds.
In fact, education officials say that while it is unlikely, it is entirely possible for a 4-year-old to start in prekindergarten, go on to junior kindergarten at age 5, then to kindergarten, then to transitional first grade and finally, at the ripe old age of 8, to enter first grade.
"It's all with the best of intentions," said Teresa Harris, state supervisor of elementary education. "But what the research is stelling us now is that maybe if children need this much preparation for first grade, we've been pushing too hard."
Prekindergarten is usually provided through private preschools, although some poor children are able to get into the federally funded Head Start preschool programs.
Roanoke and Salem both use transitional first grade, which is more academic than kindergarten, but less pressured and fast-paced than first grade. Neither uses junior kindergarten.
Roanoke County does not use junior kindergarten or transitional first grade.
The word kindergarten itself is German for "child garden," and in the beginning, Harris said, that's what kindergarten was - a safe, nurturing place where children learned how to learn, to cooperate, to respect themselves and others.
But over the past two decades, the developmental approach fell out of favor. In its place came a flurry of studies hawking the "superbaby" theory - that even toddlers could learn sophisticated material through flashcards, drill and other methods usual reserved for older children.
"We started getting more and more first-grade work pushed on us," recalled Helen Dudley, a kindergarten teacher at Roanoke's Lincoln Terrace Elementary.
When I started teaching 20 years ago, kindergarten was very developmental, very child-centered," she said. "It was a place where children were supposed to be happy. I never retained children."
But as kindergarten became faster-paced, so did first grade.
"To tell you the truth, when I did start retaining children it was because I didn't want them to go on to the frustration of a first grade where they couldn't possibly cope," she said. "I was afraid their little egos would hit rock bottom and they would be turned off to school completely."
Dudley said she has never reconciled herself to failing kindergartners, and that a return to developmental kindergarten "would be heaven."
Other teachers say they believe firmly in kindergarten retention.
"Some children just need longer," said Reba Tillery, a kindergarten teacher at Roanoke County's Mountain View Elementary.
Tillery - who staged the the wedding of Q and U - said she already uses a number of developmental techniques, but is looking forward to new developmental curriculum.
"I think it's more fun for the child, " she said. "We've been using a phonics approach and the kids learn, but not everyone grasps it."
Tillery and her principal, Tom Hall, acknowledge that Mountain View's kindergarten is faster-paced than many.
`'It's more academic, more structured," Tillery said. "We teach our children to read in kindergarten. In fact, about half the children are usually ready to read by Christmas."
Others are not. Some have trouble focusing. They fidget instead of sitting still. They can't master beginning sounds and word sequences. They can't deal with pencil-and-paper activities.
In short, they are likely candidates for kindergarten failure.
Tillery and Hall both say they are careful never to mention the word failure.
"We explain it like they're just not ready," Hall said. "We tell them that everyone doesn't learn to ride a bicycle at the same time, or tie their shoes at the same time. They understand that and accept it."
If handled properly, he said, "there is no shame attached to it."
Some experts in early childhood education, however, say that children are not so easily fooled.
"Children know what's going on," said Barbara Willar, with the Washington, D.C.-based National Association for the Education of Young Children. "When you go out in the playground you're still the dummy who didn't get to go along with your classmates."
Willar said one of the most important tasks of kindergarten is to teach children they can be successful learners.
"Kindergarten retention teaches exactly the opposite message," she said. "It teaches that they are failures in a school setting. That is a very powerful message with devastating implications."
State education official Harris agrees, saying that "we give adult rationalizations to young children, but what they hear is, `you're staying behind.' "
Worse still, she said, research in child development shows that children of that age think of themselves as "wholly good or wholly bad - no matter how you explain it, it is very difficult for children to accept that they are not complete failures. They think `I'm not good enough.'
"It's one thing if you lose a race because you weren't the fastest," she said. "You can always try again. Here, you've separated them from their peers for a lifetime. They will never catch up to them."
Harris said that typically, even years later, "when you ask these children what grade they're in, they will say `I'm in fifth, but I'm supposed to be in sixth."
Hardest hit by kindergarten retention are poor and minority children and those with "early birthdays," who won't turn 5 until after they start kindergarten.
At one county school the only child being held back is one who could have stayed home another year. His teacher said the child's parents couldn't afford day care, and didn't want the child just sitting at home.
"Those children should not be penalized for starting school early, or for starting school without the advantages other children had," Harris said.
Experts say the problem with kindergarten retention is that by third grade, most children even out academically - those left behind, and those promoted on schedule.
While those who are retained may gain a marginal advantage at the beginning of first grade, experts say, that edge evaporates by the end of first grade.
Controlled studies show that when children who were retained are tested at the end of first grade, they do no better than those who could have been retained but were promoted and given remedial aid.
They one last effect is that they are a year older than their classmates.
"They whole notion of retaining a child in kindergarten is ludicrous," Harris said.
In a recent state study, Harris said, children said the only thing more stressful than retention would be going blind or losing a parent.
"When you have that kind of information, you have to act on it," she said.
But not everyone will.
Salem school superintendent Wayne Tripp said he firmly believes that with the right circumstances, retention can work.
He should know. In an interview for this story, Tripp said his own son was held back in second grade several years ago.
"We think he was better for the experience," Tripp said. "We tried to be very up-front with him, but we never used the word failure."
Tripp said the decision to retain was a delicate one, because his son's grades were good.
"It was the socialization skills he needed more time on," he said. "Academically he could have gone on."
Tripp said he doesn't think his son was teased, but added, "there was one time - just one - when he made a rather poignant statement about how we didn't let him `go on' with his classmates. That tore at the heartstrings a little."
Tripp said Salem's traditional academic kindergarten will become more developmental next year, using much of what the state has suggested.
"But recommend a no-retention policy?" he said. "Certainly not."
Roanoke County education officials say they, too, will keep retention as a tool.
"We just can't go along with a no-retention policy," said Deanna Gordon, Roanoke County Schools director of elementary education.
After a lifetime of educating, Gordon said she remains convinced that some children need more time in kindergarten before going on to first grade.
"There is nothing more frustrating than watching a youngster who doesn't have the emotional stability to sit still, the motor control to hold a pencil, struggling with first grade," she said. "And there are plenty of children who simply need another year to play the game seriously."
Gordon dismisses much of the research cited by state officials and others, saying, "I think none of them [experts] are people whose primary role is involvement in school on a daily basis. Going to first grade when your body and psyche are not yet ready to sit still; write in lines, stand in lines can be damaging to your image, too."
Moreover, she said, the school district cannot change its curriculum every time a new trend or study comes along.
"Five years ago the state was encouraging everyone to use junior kindergartens, transitional first grades," she said. "All we heard about was the `hurried child.' We were told not to push children into first grade too fast."
Harris acknowledges that part of the problem with kindergarten retention may, in fact, be first grade itself.
"I've had some transitional first grade teachers say to me that this is the way first grade should be," she said. "And they're probably not far from wrong."
Mary Hackley, director of elementary instruction for Roanoke schools, says she believes schools eventually will move to a more developmental model for primary grades 1 through 3.
"We need to be looking at children as primary students, not as first-, second- or third-graders," she said. "That way you can take care of children on every level - the accelerated child, the average child and those who are behind on entry."
Pamela Green, a kindergarten teacher at Forest Park, said she has no quarrel with a developmental approach at any level.
It's the parents she worries about.
"We had a purely developmental program when I taught back in Florida," she said. "It was wonderful."
Children didn't fail, she said, because there were no grades. Instead, there was a checklist that showed whether they had mastered certain skills.
"The parents went wild," she said. "They wanted grades. They wanted workbooks. They didn't care if their child was making progress on some checklist. they wanted to know if he's at the top of the class.
"It can be very difficult to convince them that their child is not just playing, they're learning through play."
by CNB