For College and Career Success, Start with Preschool

Young children present a unique opportunity for educators. Although each individual develops at his or her own pace, young children in general undergo explosive brain growth, forming more neural pathways and connections during early childhood than at any later stage. It is a time of rapid progress in physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development, offering educators an unparalleled chance to prepare students not only for school achievement, but also lifelong learning, success, and wellness.

While early childhood is a time of great potential, it is also replete with disparity. In comparing school readiness among 5-year-olds, researchers at the Brookings Institute found fewer than half of poor children (48 percent) possessed the math and reading skills, behavior, and overall health that are prerequisites for learning success, compared to 75 percent of children from families with moderate and high income (Isaacs, 2012).

Research suggests failing to correct these deficiencies in the early grades has lasting repercussions. Only about 1 in 10 4th grade students who were "far off-track" in reading and math were able to meet on-track college readiness benchmarks by the 8th grade, according to a 2012 study by national testing group ACT (Dougherty & Fleming, 2012). Furthermore, students who have lived in poverty and are not proficient readers by the end of 3rd grade are about three times more likely to drop out before earning a high school diploma (Hernandez, 2012).

These studies bear out the common belief that it is difficult for students who fall behind to catch up, even when those students are as young as 8 years old. The early years, including preschool and grades K–3, are vital. Each child has one chance to start life on the best footing, in a safe, nurturing, and stimulating environment that fosters academic growth and leads to lifelong success. But what can and should early childhood education do to create the foundation upon which college and career readiness is ultimately built?

The Importance of Preschool

State and national leaders who want children to enter school ready to learn have turned their attention to improving and expanding preschool programs. Fourteen states are working to raise the number of low-income children in high-quality early learning programs under the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC), with a new round of grant recipients expected in December 2013 (U.S. Department of Education, 2013). In addition, President Barack Obama has proposed expanding early childhood funding to ensure all impoverished 4-year-olds are enrolled in preschool. (Read more online at www.ascd.org/ppwinter13obama.)

Strong evidence supports preschool's importance. Children who attend a preschool program at age 4 are nine percentage points more likely to be school-ready than other children, according to a recent regression analysis by child and family policy expert Julia Isaacs (2012). Isaacs concluded that expanding preschool enrollment offers the most promise for increasing poor children's school readiness. Recent meta-analyses, including a comprehensive examination of 123 studies conducted in the United States since 1960, have linked preschool to gains on cognitive tests; improvements in social and emotional development; and improvements in school success, including less grade repetition, less special education placement, and increased high school graduation (Camilli, Vargas, Ryan, & Barnett, 2010; Nores & Barnett, 2010; Barnett, 2013).

The performance of model preschool programs indicates that high-quality early learning improves not only school readiness, but life outcomes as well. Studies of well-known programs such as the Perry Preschool Project, the Abecedarian project, and the Chicago Child-Parent Centers (CPC) found that preschool leads to the type of life outcomes educators, parents, and policymakers want for all children. As adults, these students are more likely to have a high school diploma, be employed, and have higher earnings; they also tend to commit fewer crimes and are less likely to rely on food stamps (Schweinhart et al, 2005; University of Minnesota, 2011).

Society clearly benefits when greater numbers of children attend preschool, and more students are poised to benefit from preschool than ever before thanks to a decade of consistent enrollment growth. In spite of these enrollment gains, or perhaps because of them, one recent analysis of per-student funding found that states have decreased spending on preschool in recent years, reaching its lowest point in a decade, when adjusted for inflation, according to an annual State of Preschool report by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) (Barnett, Carolan, Fitzgerald, & Squires, 2012). State funding per child dropped from the previous year, a decrease NIEER attributes in part to the lingering effects of the economic downturn on state governments, and state funding per child has fallen by more than $1,000 since 2001–02, adjusting for inflation (Barnett et al. 2012). (See the infographic for more.)

The spending decreases in 27 out of 40 states with preschool programs highlights the "general tendency to favor expanding enrollment over increasing quality," a situation that has been exacerbated by two recessions (Barnett et al., 2012, p. 13). Boosting enrollment without also investing in quality is unsustainable. This year marks the first time since NIEER began tracking preK in 2002 that per-child funding has fallen below $4,000. Such a drop raises significant concerns about the quality of state-funded preschool programs. According to the report, "the vast majority of children served are in programs where funding per child may be inadequate to provide quality education" (Barnett et al., 2012, p. 6).

Connecting the Early Years

The ultimate goal of preschool is to better prepare young students for their future, including academic success once they reach kindergarten; however, aligning preschool and K–12 education is complicated by the current hodgepodge of preschool programs and early childhood services available. Young students attend preschool in a variety of settings, including publicly subsidized center-based prekindergarten, private child-care centers, and home-based care, and these various providers answer to an array of licensing and quality standards (Zellman & Karoly, 2012).

Preschool is part of a wide-reaching arena of early childhood services, and it also influences and is influenced by the broader education community. Young children are served by a range of programs, such as nutrition, family support, and healthcare initiatives, but while these programs serve to meet the diverse needs of preschool-age students, they have traditionally operated independently from one another and are overseen by multiple state, federal, and private sector groups and agencies (Johnson, Chung, Schroeder, & Meyers, 2012). These silos can prevent groups with similar aims from communicating and working together to create more comprehensive early childhood support.

The current state of preK through 3rd grade education is a "complicated web" of federal, state, and local policies and practices, according to a task force comprising early childhood researchers, policymakers, and practitioners (NAESP, 2011). The Task Force, which was convened by the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP), called for aligning policy, funding, and practice to enable states and communities to build a coherent system of early learning from preK through 3rd grade.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Initiative may provide the impetus for bolstering this alignment. In recent years, the CCSS has galvanized support for creating consistent learning benchmarks for all K–12 students across the United States. Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have adopted the CCSS and are working toward the ultimate goal of graduating students prepared for college and career. Strengthening the role of preschool to lay the foundation for success will aid in reaching this goal.

Early childhood education experts including the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) have applauded the Common Core's inclusion of standards for kindergarten through 3rd grade, and asserted it may provide "avenues for early education and K–12 education systems to become more closely aligned in purpose" (Snow, 2012). However, they also caution that implementing this alignment may be challenging, given disparities in K–12 and early childhood learning standards.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia have adopted early learning standards, which were rare as recently as 2001–02 (Regenstein, 2013; Barnett et al., 2012). Yet while the CCSS and other state K–12 standards tend to focus exclusively on core academic subjects, early learning standards have an intentionally broader focus, going beyond academic subjects to reflect the comprehensive development of young children in the cognitive, social, emotional, physical, and linguistic domains (Regenstein, 2013).

Given these fundamental differences in learning standards, early childhood experts are concerned that K–12 standards may exert downward pressure to increase the academic focus of preschools, leading to unintentionally narrow instructional approaches (NAESP, 2011; Snow, 2012). This risk may be exacerbated by the current state of preschool, which operates largely without a coherent infrastructure, as opposed to K–3 education, which is embedded in the highly structured public school system (NAESP, 2011).

To counter this potential pushdown, NAEYC calls for early childhood education to exert "upward pressure," ensuring that successful early childhood practices are adopted in K–12 education (Snow, 2012). Likewise, the NAESP Task Force encourages states to make sure that preschool math and literacy standards are linked to those of the early grades, while also expanding their K–3 standards to include social, emotional, cognitive, physical, and creative learning (NAESP, 2011).

All children will benefit from a more integrated system that better prepares students for future learning and bolsters college and career readiness, but aligning preschool with early elementary school should not compromise what preschool already does well. Nor should it be allowed to turn preschools into smaller versions of 4th grade classrooms. What works for older students will not work for 3- and 4-year-olds.

Building a Comprehensive Foundation

The promise of deepening student learning and better preparing students for what lies ahead in today's global environment has also placed renewed attention on increasing academic rigor. However, better preparing our youngest students is not simply a matter of introducing challenging elementary-level work earlier. Whatever the student's age, all learning must be developmentally appropriate and focused on the whole child. Just as older students' success depends on access to a comprehensive curriculum that engages them in a wide variety of disciplines, the nation's youngest learners should be engaged in early literacy and numeracy, as well as music, art, physical, and health education, with time to play and grow socially and emotionally. Students' future learning is built on this comprehensive foundation.

Some educators and early childhood experts worry that academic work is already crowding out other essential elements of early childhood education. Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, and Diane E. Levin, who lead the nonprofit Defending the Early Years, contend that classrooms for young children look increasingly like classrooms for older children and that "these days, there is less and less emphasis on promoting child development, active, play-based learning, and hands-on exploration" (Strauss, 2013, para. 2).

Play-based and active hands-on learning have long been the hallmarks of early childhood education, yet recent evidence suggests that play has declined sharply in kindergarten in recent years. In some classrooms, teachers spend two to three hours each day instructing and testing kindergarteners in literacy and math, with only 30 minutes or less for play, according to three studies supported by the Alliance for Childhood (Miller & Almon, 2009). Classic play materials such as blocks, sand and water tables, and props for dramatic play have largely disappeared from the 268 full-day kindergarten classrooms studied (see sidebar on p. 6 for more on the rise of full-day kindergarten programs). Teachers told the researchers that the curriculum does not incorporate play, there is no time for it, and many school administrators do not value it (Miller & Almon, 2009).

Play, however, is a critical part of children's development. When it is combined with experiential learning, child-initiated play helps children develop greater language and social skills and demonstrate less aggression, more self-control, and higher levels of thinking than their nonplaying peers (Miller & Almon, 2009). Many countries with top-performing high school students, including China, Japan, and Finland, provide a rich play-based and experiential focus until about age 7. The Alliance for Childhood asserts that play-based kindergarten provides children a dual advantage over those who are denied play: "They end up equally good or better at reading and other intellectual skills, and they are more likely to become well-adjusted healthy people" (Miller & Almon, 2009, p. 8).

NAEYC has called on educators to resist pitting direct instruction and play against one another. Kyle Snow, the director of the NAEYC Center for Applied Research, contends that the debate reinforces a false dichotomy (2011b). Ensuring children are both creative problem-solvers and knowledgeable about facts requires a combination of play and direct instruction, according to Snow, who says it is time to focus on the complex challenge of balancing the two.

As the Common Core encourages new attention to consistent benchmarks and a cohesive education across the early grades, content standards at both the early elementary and preschool levels will provide the "what" of education, but not the "how." It will be critically important to ensure these goals are met using a range of developmentally appropriate best practices, which the NAEYC maintains must include play as well as small- and large-group instruction, while also safeguarding time for activities that address children's needs not included in the current standards (Snow, 2012).

The Challenge of Assessing Young Children

Determining the best curriculum and pedagogy for our youngest students is demanding, but directly measuring school readiness is even more so. Assessing 3- and 4-year-olds presents unique difficulties not applicable to older students. For example, paper and pencil assessments are widely considered inappropriate for young children, who lack the motivation, attention span, and reading and fine motor skills to complete such an assessment (Snow, 2011a; Zellman & Karoly, 2012). Despite these challenges, however, pressure is mounting to ensure early childhood education programs are accomplishing their goal of better preparing young children for kindergarten. Just as accountability now permeates K–12 education, it is a growing component of early childhood education. However, policymakers, researchers, and practitioners have not yet reached consensus on the best methods and metrics to evaluate preschool-age children and the programs that serve them.

Often, the most valid early childhood assessment is observation-based. Teachers and caregivers have long observed students engaged in daily activities to assess their learning and determine how best to refine preschool instruction to meet children's social, emotional, cognitive, and physical developmental needs. However, experts contend that special considerations must be taken into account any time such an assessment is used to evaluate preschool programs (Snow, 2012).

Florida is requiring a new standardized assessment to measure the early literacy, numeracy, and language development skills of the 184,000 4-year-olds in its voluntary prekindergarten program. However, teachers and early-childhood advocates have expressed concerns to Education Week that the assessment does not measure social and emotional development and might lead preK providers to focus solely on math and literacy skills (Maxwell, 2012). Others are concerned that the assessment is offered only in English. They caution that it may make providers reluctant to serve the state's large population of English-language learners (Maxwell, 2012).

As states continue to look for new ways to assess school readiness and evaluate early childhood education programs, they must pay special attention to the diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds of the children these programs serve. For all children—but especially English-language learners, students with disabilities, and low-income students—states and educators must ensure that any change in early childhood education, whether to standards or assessment, will work to close gaps and lessen disparities, rather than increase them.

A number of states are working to make preschool quality more transparent by implementing Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). Now in place or in progress in nearly every state, QRISs have rated more than 13,000 early education programs in 20 states so far, with the ultimate goal of helping parents choose high-quality programs and encouraging all preschools to improve (Blair, 2013). As a testament to their importance, these ratings systems were included as a prerequisite in Race to the Top; only states that had at least begun to develop a QRIS could compete for an Early Learning Challenge grant.

A QRIS is typically input-focused, largely due to the inherent challenges associated with assessing young children. These inputs typically include a range of indicators such as teacher qualifications, class size, family partnerships, child health and safety, administrative structures, and availability and use of teaching materials (Blair, 2013; Zellman & Karoly, 2012). Some researchers contend the ratings would be more effective if they focused on fewer indicators with a stronger connection to student outcomes (University of Virginia, 2013). Aggregate ratings based on many measures may fail to predict school readiness because some indicators, such as teacher qualifications, class size, and family partnerships, have a weaker and sometimes inconsistent connection to student learning, according to a 2013 study by researchers at the University of Virginia, Northwestern University, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (University of Virginia, 2013).

The study isolated one factor that did make a difference in school readiness: the quality of teacher-student interactions. Study co-author Robert Pianta, the dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, recommends state evaluation systems focus on observations of teacher-child interactions because of their direct tie to advancing children's learning and preparing them for kindergarten (Blair, 2013). Indeed, Pianta's research reinforces what has long been known: What matters most is how teachers interact one on one with each child (Pianta et al., 2005). Among the main goals of all efforts to expand and improve early childhood education must be developing and supporting effective, well-compensated teachers who have a deep understanding of child development.

High-quality preschool makes a difference for students and society, and more students are poised to benefit than ever before. To truly lay the foundation for college and career readiness, the education our youngest students receive must be consistent with and connected to early elementary school, address the full range of all students' developmental needs, and work to prepare the whole child for future success as healthy, productive, engaged citizens.

For a complete list of references for this issue of Policy Priorities, please go to www.ascd.org/ppwinter13references.