Is the Common Core killing kindergarten?
LAST SPRING, Susan Sluyter quit teaching kindergarten in the Cambridge Public Schools. She’d spent nearly two decades in the classroom, and her departure wasn’t a happy one. In a resignation letter, Sluyter railed against a “disturbing era of testing and data” that had trickled down from the upper grades and was now assaulting kindergartners with a barrage of new academic demands that “smack of 1st or 2nd grade.” The school district did not respond to a request for comment.
But Sluyter’s complaints touched a national nerve. Her letter went viral, prompting scores of sympathetic comments by other frustrated teachers and parents. Sluyter’s letter was fresh evidence for groups of early-childhood educators who oppose the kindergarten expectations for math and English Language Arts, or ELA, set by the new Common Core, the academic benchmarks for K-12 that most states have adopted to replace the historic patchwork of standards.
The thrust of the opposition is that many of the standards are too high and not developmentally appropriate for kindergartners. Opponents say teaching some academic skills too early can be counterproductive. They cite research suggesting that reading and math advantages in kindergarten are fleeting. Furthermore, they say, the pressure to meet academic standards will lead to lecture and work sheet style teaching, foster rote memorization, and snuff out the inquiry and play-based instruction that can instill a love of learning.
The impetus for developing the Common Core standards for kindergarten through 12th grade was the worry that American education was losing its edge in a globalized economy fueled by innovation.
“The United States is falling behind other countries in the resource that matters most in the new global economy: human capital,” declared a 2008 report from the National Governors Association. Creating a common set of “internationally benchmarked” standards was seen as the best way to close the persistent achievement gaps between students of different races and between rich and poor school districts.
The Common Core’s defenders say critics are misreading the kindergarten standards, which are meant to be goals, not dictates. What’s more, standards alone don’t tell teachers how to teach. What standards actually do, backers contend, is level the playing field and help keep students from falling behind early, which they say is the real and lasting danger for our youngest learners.
THE COMMON CORE K-12 standards debuted in June 2010, following a year-long initiative spearheaded by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Since then, 43 states have adopted the standards, with the stated aim of getting students college and career ready when they graduate from high school.
In two reports published earlier this year, the Boston-based nonprofit Defending the Early Years took aim at the kindergarten standards in ELA (focused on literacy at this age) and math. The first report singled out the expectation that kindergartners should be able to “read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.”
Emergent-reader texts include repetitive lines like, “Brown bear. Brown bear. What do you see?” or, “The fat cat Is the Common Core killing kindergarten? - Ideas - The Boston Globe:
