‘The story Tracy Jan published in the Boston Globe about a month ago on the frank and disturbing study of preschools and kindergartens in the city got a lot of attention, as it should have. I’ve been waiting to find a copy of the full report to link to but so far haven’t. I’ll keep looking.
According to Jan’s story, which was followed up by a hardhitting editorial, the study by the Wellesley Centers for Women found “mediocre instruction, unsanitary classrooms, and dangerous schoolyards.” The study also found that the quality of about 70% of the classrooms were not good enough to achieve the goal of closing gaps in kindergarten readiness between white and Asian children and Latino and African-American children.
A couple points from the Globe story to emphasize: The teachers in the classrooms studied all had bachelor’s degrees but a fifth of them didn’t necessarily have degrees in early childhood education. One school of thought in early childhood education insists on college degrees as a measure of quality. An alternative view is that teachers in preschools need to be highly skilled. It sounds like the same point but it’s not. If preschool teachers can gain critical skills and knowledge of how young children learn and how best to help them learn in community college or in a special training program, then what’s the purpose of insisting on a bachelor’s degree? It’s heartbreaking but the researchers found that many of these kids were sitting in their seats in kindergarten and preschool, being lectured to and responding to flash cards. No wonder these preschools aren’t helping much.
Another point to emphasize comes from Elizabeth Reilinger, a member of the Boston Schools Committee. She commented that Boston Mayor Thomas Menino had pushed to expand preschool too quickly. Is this a problem around the country? Is the pressure so great to expand pre-k spending as quickly as possible causing the creation of poorly funded, poor quality programs that are accomplishing little?
One other observation. Yes, these were the conclusions of researchers. But couldn’t journalists have made some of these same observations by visiting a lot of classrooms? A journalist who knew a little bit about how young chldren learn would have noticed that kids were sitting still too long and doing worksheets instead of engaging in purposeful, creative activities that involved a lot of conversation, right? I hope so.
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