The New Kindergarten Experience By Deborah Williams

Researchers from EDPolicyWorks, the center for education policy and workforce competitiveness at the University of Virginia have compared the changes in expectations for kindergarten students in the 1990s and for kindergarten students today.  The Science Daily article, “Kindergarten Is the New First Grade, Researchers Find,” summarizes their work and reports that the increase in accountability has created a more rigorous curriculum for kindergarten.
The most prominent change is in literacy.  “In 1998, 31 percent of kindergarten teachers indicated that most children should learn to read while in kindergarten.   By 2006, 65 percent of teachers agreed with this statement.”  It is not surprising, then, that the amount of classroom time spent on literacy increased about 5.5 to seven hours a week of instruction time.
The increased academic focus has caused some problems, too.  Less time is available for “play, exploration and social interaction.”  Additionally, there is more “homework, worksheets, and pressure to learn to read as early s possible, and heightened levels of stress.”  With the increase in time spent on literacy, other subjects receive less time.  Time spent in physical activity, very important for kindergarten students, is also greatly reduced or eliminated in some cases.
It is possible to address the increase in literacy instruction while incorporating the hallmarks of kindergarten curriculum, but it requires a new, creative restructuring to achieve a workable balance.

School Attendance Has to be Compulsory

The Case for Regular School Attendance

By Deborah Williams

It is universally understood that children can’t learn if they are not at school. Regular school attendance is required for all students, but a study of the results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress reinforces this idea.  Sarah Sparks, writer for Education Week’s Inside School Research blog, reports, “Missing even a few days of school seems to make a difference in whether eighth graders perform at the top of their game.”
The findings of the study are compelling.  Because more time is being spent on instruction in reading, math, music, and the visual arts, missing time from school has a greater impact than ever before.  The data showed the following:

• 58% of 8^th graders who performed at the advanced level in NAEP reading in 2011 had perfect attendance in the month before the test, compared with only 39% of students who performed below the basic level.
• Nearly 20% of 8^th graders at the basic level and more than 25% in reading had missed three or more days in the past month.

Alan L. Ginsburg, a research consultant for the NAEP governing board and co-author of the report explains that if a student misses an average of three days each month, he or she is missing five weeks of school for the year.   “You’ve got more than a quarter of the below-basic kids who are going to miss five weeks of school a year or more,” he said, noting that only 8 percent of students at the advanced level had missed that much school. “That, to me, would be something that if you are a chief state school officer or a superintendent, you might worry about.”
This study supports the idea that chronic absenteeism “puts those students at greater risk for poor academic achievement and eventually dropping out of high school.”
Poor school attendance is a concern in other countries as well:  Every Day Counts from Mark Waddington on Vimeo.

Reading with Your Child is very Important

Reading With Your Young Child

By Deborah Williams
Most parents realize the importance of reading to their young children regularly.  Bradford Wiles, early childhood development professor at Kansas State University, has led research focused on emergent literacy, part of the developmental process that begins at birth and continues until preschool and kindergarten.  An article on the Science Daily website reports that Wiles found that parents should read with their young children and not just to them.
Children aged 3 to 5 years old were the focus for this study.  Even before they can say words or form sentences, this is a prime time to help them become better readers later and increase reading comprehension.  The parents of children in this age group should do the following for their young children:

• Read with them as a family at anytime during the day, not just before going to bed.
• Read the same book over and over again because the child can learn new things every time.
• Pay attention to their reading style by using engaging voice, tone, and the way they read to their children.
• Engage their children—figure out what the child is thinking and get them to think beyond the words on the page.
  • Ask open-ended questions.
  • Offer instructions.
  • Give examples.
  • Give feedback about what the children are thinking.

Reading with young children helps to increase their vocabularies substantially—one of the keys to future success in school.
Listen to Dr. Wiles discuss emergent literacy:

Is Your Child Afraid of Math?

Challenge to Traditional Mathematics Curriculum

By Deborah Williams

Researchers have uncovered one reason why American high school students may not perform as well as their global peers around the world.  The researchers, professor in the College of Education at the University of Missouri-Columbia, James Tarr, and professor emeritus, Doug Grouws, found “high school students in the United States achieve higher scores on a standardized mathematics test if they study from a curriculum known as integrated mathematics.”  An article on the Science Daily website reports that this finding was the result of their study of more than 3,000 high school students across the country.
Integrated mathematics is a combination of mathematics topics—algebra, geometry, and statistics, for example—into one course.  American high school mathematics courses typically include one yearlong course for each topic (e.g., Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, pre-Calculus, etc.).  Like students in many of the high-achieving countries who study math from a more integrated curriculum, Tarr and Grouws found that American high school “students who studied from an integrated mathematics program scored significantly higher on standardized tests administered to all participating students, after controlling for many teacher and student attributes.”
Tarr acknowledges that these findings challenge the traditional high school mathematics curriculum.  He asserts that those views simply are not supported when student performance is measured as it was in this three-year study of educational outcomes for students studying from different types of mathematics curricula.

Benefits of Associate Degree Before Transferring to a Four Year College

By Deborah Williams

Recently, many college students are earning an associate degree before transferring to a four-year college.  Caralee Adams, writer for Edweek’s College Bound blog, writes that there are a number of reasons that actually earning the associate degree before transferring to a four-year college.  It can…

• …increase the likelihood of completing a bachelor’s degree
• …save students money
• …improve their earnings compared with that of earlier transfers

Researcher Clive Belfield reports these findings from a study of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College at Teachers College, Columbia University.  He notes that getting an associate degree before transferring to a four-year college can increase earnings by $50,000 over 20 years.  He also reports that many community college students have difficulty deciding the best time to transfer to a four-year college.  He suggests that state community college systems “create stronger incentives for making the completion of an associate degree before transfer a priority for students.
Of course, starting out with an associate degree can save you mone

Let the Little Ones Play by Deborah Williams

Dr. Jo Van Herwegen, a psychology researcher at London’s Kingston University, has released new

research findings that show that structured play should be the primary learning technique for pre-school children.  An article, “Structured Play Trumps Age for Future School Success,” on the Science Daily website reports that Dr. Van Herwegen opposes starting school early unless it involves “a formalized setting with trained people…but if it means sitting down and doing formal, proper learning at the age of four or five, then that’s wrong.”  She further asserts that pre-schoolers don’t have the learning foundation—including working memory and language–,so a formalized education setting is inappropriate.
Van Herwegen suggests a program that is similar to what is done in Belgian pre-schools.   Those programs include the following types of activities:

• Carpet time discussions
• School-related activities
  • Painting
  • Learning to hold a pen while sitting at tables and chairs
  • Standing in lines
  • Where to put things
  • How to listen

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