Why child care is so ridiculously expensive

Three broad reasons obtaining care for kids now costs as much as buying a brand new Hyundai Elantra each year

One side effect of “the end of babies”—or, less dramatically, the steady decline in fertility rates around the world—is that today’s parents spend more time and money on the few kids they do have.

In the United States, per-child spending doubled from the 1970s to the 2000s, according to a 2013 paper by Sabino Kornich of the University of Sydney and Frank Furstenberg of the University of Pennsylvania. Parents spent more on education, toys, and games. But nothing grew faster than per-child spending on child care, which increased by a factor of 21—or approximately 2,000 percent—in those 40 years.

Although wrapping your head around 2,000 percent growth might be difficult, the underlying cause isn’t so mysterious. As more women entered the labor force in the late 20th century, the work of caring for infants moved from the unpaid world of stay-at-home parents to the world of salaried labor. The 1970s and ’80s—the two decades when the female labor participation rate grew the fastest—also saw the greatest acceleration in child-care spending, according to Kornich and Furstenberg. Raising young children is work—and it always has been work—but the rise of dual-earner households has forced more families to recognize this work with their wallets.

But child-care spending is unlike other spending. By some measures, it’s getting more expensive faster than almost every other consumer good or service that the government tracks. The Census Bureau has found that child-care expenditures rose more than 40 percent from 1990 to 2011, during a period when middle-class wages stagnated. Since the 1990s, child-care costs have grown twice as fast as overall inflation. In California, the cost of a typical day-care center is now equal to almost half of the median income of a single mother.

Paul Spella / The Atlantic

Pick whatever source and statistic you like, because they all point to the same conclusion: Child care in America has become ludicrously expensive. The average cost of a full-time child-care program in the U.S. is now $16,000 a year—and more, in some states, than tuition at a flagship university.

What the hell is going on? And what should we do about it?

There are three broad reasons American child care now costs the same as buying a brand new Hyundai Elantra every year.

First, although child-care workers aren’t expensive on an hourly basis—their median hourly wage is less than that of non-farm-animal caretakers and janitors—labor is the biggest line item for child-care facilities. Unlike, say, car companies, they can’t cut spending by moving labor to poorer countries or by replacing human workers with machines. Like health care and education, child care requires lots of domestic salaries, which means that its costs will continuously rise faster than overall inflation.

The industry is highly regulated, perhaps reasonably so, given the vulnerability of the clientele—which is the second key driver of child-care costs. As Jordan Weissmann has reported in The Atlantic, states with strict labor laws tend to have the most expensive facilities. In Massachusetts, which requires one caregiver for every three infants, the average annual cost is more than $16,000. In Mississippi, which allows a one-to-five ratio, the cost is less than $5,000. Thanks to high turnover rates—a result of those low wages—companies have to constantly train new workers to meet regulatory standards. Other costs include insurance to cover damage to the property and worker injuries, as well as legal fees to deal with inevitable parent lawsuits.

Finally, there’s the real estate. The most expensive child-care facilities tend to be situated near high-income neighborhoods or in commercial districts, where the rents are high. And they can’t downsize in a pinch, because most states require them to have ample square footage for each kid.

The state of American child care might be defensible if it were expensive and high-quality—or if it were crummy but cheap.

Instead, the U.S. has the worst of both worlds: Cadillac prices for an Edsel product. The typical family paying for any child care spends about 10 percent of their income on it, far more than in most similarly rich countries. But American day care is a shambles. “The overall quality is wildly uneven and barely monitored, and at the lower end, it’s Dickensian,” the health-care writer Jonathan Cohn wrote in 2013. A 2007 review by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development found that only one in 10 facilities offered “high-quality” care.

As the need for day-care options becomes more severe, some private employers, such as Patagonia, Apple, and Google, are stepping in to offer day-care centers for employees or to pay for “backup child care” if an employee’s first option falls through. New early-childhood startups such as Vivvi offer employer-sponsored child care. And Wonderschool, an “Airbnb for daycare,” helps neighborhoods launch child-care centers in peoples’ homes.

While it’s admirable for companies to fill the day-care vacuum, the absence of a national solution is an indictment of American policy. Neuroscientists and psychologists have established that the first five years of a child’s life are crucial for the development of logic and language skills. Early education has profound effects on both these cognitive skills and “noncognitive” skills, such as grit, teamwork, and emotional health. But these academic findings haven’t translated to policy, at least not in the U.S. Several European nations, such as France and Denmark, spend three to five times more than America on their young children’s care and education.

There is a deep disconnect in the way the U.S. conceives of its obligation to children. Most Americans accept—even demand—the public subsidy of education from the moment kids turn 5 and enter kindergarten to the day they graduate from a state university or community college. But from birth to the fifth birthday, children are on their own—or, more precisely, their parents are. This arrangement is plainly weird: Parents must bear the highest burdens of child-rearing when they are younger, typically poorer, and less established in their career.

In the politics-and-policy world, some are starting to argue that the U.S. desperately needs a comprehensive, research-based approach to caring for young Americans before they turn 5—a First Five Years policy. For example, the People’s Policy Project, a left-wing think tank, has proposed a bundle of early-childhood policies that includes free health care, a child allowance of $300 a month, and a free spot in a public child-care center. (Parents could also receive a direct home-child-care benefit, if they preferred.) Several Democratic presidential candidates have also embraced elements of a First Five Years policy. Elizabeth Warren, for instance, has proposed to spend nearly $2 trillion on a national child-care system.

One simple reason Washington should play a bigger role in child care is that the benefits of early-childhood care and education are so large—and accrue over such a long period of time—that the only institution big enough to capture the upside is the federal government. In 2015, the Council of Economic Advisers wrote that every $1 spent on early-childhood education results in roughly $8.60 of societal benefits, “about half of which comes from increased earnings for children when they grow up.” Similarly, a 2019 Harvard study of dozens of U.S. policies concluded that “direct investments in low-income children’s health and education” have historically had the biggest bang per buck.

There are two broad criticisms of federally sponsored child care. The cultural critique is that by stepping in to play the role of mom and dad, the state would weaken bonds between parents and their children. The rejoinder here is easy: America’s infants are already suffering the effects of insufficient care. Most of the achievement gap between black and white American students is in place by kindergarten. Meanwhile, dozens of studies of preschool programs since the 1960s have shown that early-childhood education can slash the black-white kindergarten achievement gap in half.

The more policy-focused critique is that establishing a national system to carefully watch nearly 10 million tots under the age of 5 would be a logistical hellscape. How would federal, state, and local governments hire millions of caretakers in an economy with 3.5 percent unemployment? Where would they live? “Increased immigration,” you might answer, “and in new affordable housing.” But building a high-quality national caretaking workforce will take years, and shoddy national day care might be worse than the alternative.

An analysis of Quebec’s effort to expand access to cheap child care, for example, found mixed results. Its programs succeeded in raising the labor-force participation rate of mothers without breaking the bank for taxpayers. But young Canadians who were eligible for the program experienced, as teenagers, “a significant worsening in self-reported health and in life satisfaction” relative to Canadians from other provinces. So, did the Quebec child-care experiment “work”? Yes, for parents and public financing. Perhaps not for the kids.

Despite these challenges, the case for an expanded role in federal child care is strong. Spending on young children is more like infrastructure than Social Security. It’s not just a check or a transfer motivated by mere decency, but rather a savvy investment that returns its cost in the form of taxes and social benefits. The deep irony of the high cost of U.S. child care is that the very thing that is bankrupting parents today should represent, to the federal government, a grand-slam investment in the country’s future. Can U.S. families afford to adequately care for their own children? is a great question. But there’s an even better one: Can the U.S. afford not to? 

(Source: The Atlantic)

Kindergarten the new first grade? It’s actually worse than that.

There is a newly published study out of the University of Virginia titled, “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?” (based on a 2014 working paper), which finds, not surprisingly, that it is. This work should not be confused with the the 2009 study “Crisis in the Kindergarten” from the nonprofit Alliance for Childhood, which said:

Kindergartners are now under great pressure to meet inappropriate expectations, including academic standards that until recently were reserved for first grade.

Nor should this be confused with a 2004 story that I wrote for The Washington Post that said:

Kindergarten, which is German for “children’s garden,” is serious stuff these days. With half-day programs giving way to full days in state after state, the curriculum once saved for first grade has been pushed down to 5- and 6-year-olds. Nearly 98 percent of youngsters in the United States attend

Yes, we’ve been asking if kindergarten is the new first grade — and declaring that it is — for well over a decade.  It has been years now that academics came to dominate kindergarten as the importance of standardized tests grew in the No Child Left Behind era, and play-based learning receded.

The new study — by Daphna Bassok, Scott Latham and Anna Rorem of the University of Virginia, and published Jan. 7 by AERA Open, the peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association — says there  has been until now “surprisingly little empirical evidence about the extent to which kindergarten classrooms have changed over time.” The researchers compared kindergarten and first-grade classrooms between 1998 and 2010 and found that kindergarten classes had become increasingly like first grade.

But anybody following education and visiting classrooms has seen the evidence up close and personal. Five- and 6-year-old kids now spend hours in their seats doing academic work, often with little or  no recess or physical education, or  arts, music and science.  These kids are tested ad nauseam and expected to be able to do things by the time they leave kindergarten that some, perhaps even many, are not developmentally prepared to do.

This is not to suggest that kindergartners shouldn’t be learning a lot, and that they can’t do some academic work. As the National Association for the Education of Young Children said in 2014 in comments about the working paper by Bassok et. al:

Time spent on academic content, and even time spent on increasingly challenging academic content should not automatically be seen as a threat to kindergarten. Children learn from birth, so kindergarten should provide children with opportunities and supports appropriate for where they are. Early childhood education has always embraced the (academic and social and emotional) content that young children need to learn. Kindergartners (and all young children!) can learn academic content that is appropriate to where they are developmentally.

FILE: Kindergarteners Noah Bellamy, L, and Morgan Creek read together during their kindergarten class library visit at Peabody Elementary School on Wednesday, February 25, 2015, in Washington, DC.  (Photo by Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

A 2015  report, “Lively Minds: Distinctions Between Academic Versus Intellectual Goals for Young Children,” offered a new way to look at what is appropriate in early childhood education. The report, by Lilian G. Katz, professor emeritus of early childhood education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and past president of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, said in part:

The main argument presented here is that the traditional debates inthe field about whether to emphasize so-called free play or formal beginning academic instruction are not the only two options for the early childhood curriculum. Certainly some proportions of time can be given to both of those kinds of curriculum components. But in the early years, another major component of education – (indeed for all age groups) must be to provide a wide range of experiences, opportunities, resources and contexts that will provoke, stimulate, and support children’s innate intellectual dispositions.

 The problem is that such experiences, opportunities, resources and contexts are not provided to many if not most kindergartners, as well as to young children in the early grades of elementary school.

Furthermore, academic pressures now familiar to kindergartners have been increasingly pushed down onto preschoolers, putting 4-year-olds in the position of going to school in the same atmosphere as older children.

As for kindergarten, it could be argued that in some ways, it is the new third grade. How? It used to be that kids were given time to academically grow at their own speed without being declared failures by first and certainly second grade if they couldn’t read. Kids intellectually develop at different rates, and one of the most damaging aspects of the “earlier is not only better but necessary” philosophy is that this natural process is no longer respected.

A report released in 2015 titled “Reading in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose” showed that there is no evidence to support a widespread belief in the United States that children must read in prekindergarten or kindergarten to become strong readers and achieve academic success. And Katz wrote in her “Lively Minds” report that “earlier is better” is not supported in neurological research.

What the research does suggest, she wrote, is that “preschool programs are best when they focus on social, emotional and intellectual goals rather than narrow academic goals” and provide “early experiences that provoke self-regulation, initiative and …sustained synchronous interaction in which the child is interactive with others in some continuous process, rather than a mere passive recipient of isolated bits of information for stimulation.”

It was long said that kids learn to read through third grade, at which point they start to read to learn; research has shown that to be a myth, as many kids do both — learn to read and read to learn read to learn and learn to read —  when they are very young. But kids no longer have time to develop in their own time or in the ways that they learn best. Thus, calling kindergarten — or even preschool — the new first grade is minimizing the real problem.

Here’s the “snapshow” of the study titled Is Kindergarten the New First Grade”:

Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?
Study: “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?”
Authors: Daphna Bassok (University of Virginia), Scott Latham (University of Virginia), Anna Rorem (University of Virginia)
Published online January 7, 2016, in the AERA peer-reviewed journal AERA Open

In recent years, parents and teachers have become increasingly concerned about changes in kindergarten classes across the country, leading many to wonder if kindergarten has become the new first grade. Recent accounts suggest that accountability pressures have trickled down into the early elementary grades and that kindergarten today is characterized by a heightened focus on academic skills and a reduction in opportunities for play.

Researchers from the University of Virginia tackled this question by comparing kindergarten and first-grade classrooms between 1998 and 2010. They found that over a 12-year period, kindergarten classes have become increasingly like first grade.

Researchers used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study in 1998 and 2011 to compare kindergarten classrooms between 1998 and 2010. The sample included 2,500 public school kindergarten teachers in 1998 and 2,700 in 2010. Whenever possible, responses from kindergarten teachers in 2010 were also compared to those of first-grade teachers in 1999.

The authors hypothesized that kindergarten classrooms in 2010 would be more focused on literacy and math than those in 1997, because these subjects were specifically assessed by No Child Left Behind.

Based on the data they examined, the authors found that kindergarten teachers in 2010 had much higher expectations of their students than teachers in 1998 and their classrooms had become more similar to first-grade classes from the ’90s.

Specifically, teachers in 2010 were much more likely to believe academic instruction should begin before kindergarten; this included a 33-percent increase in the number of teachers who believed students should know the alphabet and how to use a pencil before beginning kindergarten.
Teachers in 2010 were also significantly more likely to think students should leave kindergarten knowing how to read. In 1998, 31 percent of teachers believed their students should learn to read in kindergarten, while that figure jumped to 80 percent in 2010.

As anticipated, the amount of time spent on reading and math instruction increased, particularly on skills that in 1998 were considered too advanced for kindergarten.

In addition, researchers found that while academic instruction increased, time spent teaching the arts substantially decreased. Between 1998 and 2010, the number of teachers reporting daily music instruction decreased by 18 percentage points, and daily art instruction decreased by 16 percentage points. In a similar vein, the number of teachers who spent at least one hour per day on child-selected activities dropped by 14 percentage points and the likelihood that classrooms had discovery or play areas such as a sand table, science area, or art area, fell by over 20 percentage points.

Teaching strategies also underwent significant shifts between 1998 and 2010, with children twice as likely to be taught reading and math using textbooks in the later period. Kindergarten teachers were also about 15 percentage points more likely to report daily use of math and reading workbooks.
Teachers in 2010 were 22 percentage points more likely to indicate that evaluating students in relation to local and state standards was very important or essential. Notably, in 1998, teachers were not asked how frequently they used standardized tests to assess student progress, while teachers in 2010 were. Twenty-nine percent of kindergarten teachers in 2010 indicated they assessed their students with standardized tests at least once a month.

Data also revealed that these findings were similar across the country but were more pronounced at schools that serve predominantly low-income and minority students, particularly with respect to teacher expectations and didactic instruction.

“Young children’s first experiences in school are quite different today than they were in the late nineties,” said study co-author Daphna Bassok. “These changes likely have important implications for children’s learning trajectories.”

“We were surprised to see just how drastic the changes have been over a short period of time,” added Bassok. “We expected to see changes on some of these dimensions but not nearly so systematically and not nearly of this magnitude.“

Periodically, AERA will send out a brief overview, or snapshot, of a recent study that has been published in one of its peer-reviewed journals. AERA’s “Study Snapshots” provide a high-level glimpse into new education research.

(Source: WP)

Girls, aged five, slip out of nursery unnoticed into bitter Siberian winter

Two five-year-old girls who left their nursery in Siberia in bitterly cold temperatures unnoticed by their teachers have been found.

The two, who wanted to surprise their parents, suffered frostbite and hypothermia.

They walked home on one of the coldest days of the year in temperatures of -45C (-49F).

They were caught on camera as they slipped out - one clutching a cuddly toy and with no mittens on.

One girl is now in hospital in the regional capital, Yakutsk, with three fingers frostbitten, the Siberian Times reports.

Her mother, Evdokia Kutukova, said: "Three of her fingers froze hard. She is crying.

"The children are still in shock."

She noticed her daughter Lena had gone missing in the village of Namtsy when she went to the nursery to collect her and saw her coat was missing.

She raised the alarm with staff, and then it was noticed her daughter's best friend, who has not been named, was also missing. Her parents did not know where she was either.

But Ms Kutukova said the family's grandfather then called to say Lena had just arrived home, alone, in tears and frozen.

Her husband said a passing stranger had given their daughter a scarf, which had helped her.

"How cold it was without gloves, it's hard to imagine, and with a toy in her hand!"

The other girl got lost on the way home in the village in darkness and was found an hour later. She had taken shelter in a nearby house.

"Thank God, she [thought of entering] someone else's house," Ms Kutukova told the Siberian Times.

"It is good that she was not frostbitten, just extremely cold."

The girl suffered from hypothermia, but went home after being checked over by doctors.

The girls had never left the nursery by themselves before.

An investigation has been opened to find out how the incident happened.

(Source: BBC)

4 things worse than not learning to read in kindergarten

The year Sam started kindergarten, he turned 6 in October. He was one of the oldest children in his class, and he didn’t know how to read. When he started first grade he was almost 7, and he still didn’t know how to read. Fortunately for Sam, he entered first grade in 1999. And his teachers, Mrs. Gantt and Mrs. Floyd, didn’t panic if a child didn’t learn to read in kindergarten. In fact, they expected that most children would learn to read in first grade. (They also supported and encouraged children who learned to read easily in kindergarten, like Sam’s brother Ben.)

If Sam had started first grade this year, however, he probably would have been labelled as “slow” or “behind.” Because the new standard is that children should learn to read in kindergarten. Even though most educators know that many children aren’t ready to learn to read until first grade. Even though countries like Finland educate kindergarteners by allowing them to play, not teaching them to academic skills. And even though the new standard causes teachers, parents and even children themselves to worry that something is “wrong” if children aren’t reading when they arrive in the first grade classroom.

But guess what? Sam wasn’t “slow” or “behind,” and neither are most of the other children who don’t read in kindergarten. Sam became a fair reader by the end of first grade, and a good reader by third grade. By the time he reached high school he was an honors student. And last weekend, he graduated from college - with a 3.93 grade point average.

So what happens when education standards require that children like Sam learn to read in kindergarten and that teachers like Mrs. Gantt and Mrs. Floyd had better make it happen? Many educators say the result is ineffective and counterproductive classroom practices. Which means that many children actually learn and retain less than they would in a developmentally-appropriate kindergarten classroom.

So here’s my advice. (You can take it with a grain of salt if you like, because I’m not a teacher. But I am Sam’s mom.) If your son or daughter doesn’t learn to read in kindergarten, relax. Because many, many things are worse than not learning to read in kindergarten. Here are four of them:

Limited time for creative play. Young children learn by playing. They learn by digging and dancing and building and knocking things down, not by filling out piles of worksheets. And they learn by interacting with other children, solving problems, sharing and cooperating, not by drilling phonics. Mrs. Gantt and Mrs. Floyd created fabulous centers and units that allowed children to learn about everything from houses to trucks to pets to oceans. And they snuck in some reading and math skills that the children didn’t even notice, because they were so busy playing and creating! Teachers today, however, often have to limit (or even eliminate) time for centers and units, because the academic requirements they are forced to meet don’t allow time for creative learning.

Limited physical activity. Few things are more counterproductive than limiting recess and other types of physical play time for children. Children learn better when they move. Parents and teachers know this intuitively, but research also confirms it. Children who have more opportunities to run around and play have better thinking skills and increased brain activity. And don’t assume that young children are naturally active and are getting all of the exercise they need; researchers have found that children as young as three and four are surprisingly inactive. Yet many schools are limiting or even eliminating recess, even for very young children.

Teaching that focuses on standards and testing. Teachers are increasingly under pressure to prepare their students to perform on standardized tests. This means that their focus is shifting from teaching children in ways that match their development and learning styles to “teaching to the test.” As one teacher reported, “I have watched as my job requirements swung away from a focus on children, their individual learning styles, emotional needs, and their individual families, interests and strengths to a focus on testing, assessing and scoring young children...” This shift in focus means that teachers have less time to nurture and develop children as lifelong learners, because they’re required to focus their efforts on standards that are unrealistic for many children.

Frustration and a sense of failure. Children know when they aren’t meeting the expectations of teachers and other adults. What they don’t know, however, is that those expectations often make no sense. And because they don’t know that, they experience frustration and a sense of failure when they don’t measure up. So the boy who thrived in his experiential preschool, but struggles in his academic -focused kindergarten may become frustrated to the point that he “hates school.” And the girl who can’t sit still for 30 minutes and fill out worksheets knows that she’s disappointing her teacher, but doesn’t know that the task isn’t appropriate for her. Which means that many normal children are becoming frustrated - and are being labelled - by an entirely unrealistic system. As one report has bluntly stated, “Most children are eager to meet high expectations, but their tools and skills as learners as well as their enthusiasm for learning suffer when the demands are inappropriate.”

If your child is in kindergarten or first grade and hasn’t yet learned to read, don’t panic. Talk with his or her doctor about any concerns you have, but recognize that he or she is probably developing normally. If your child’s school is pushing academics in kindergarten in place of play-based learning, talk with the teacher. Chances are, she’s frustrated and under enormous pressure to get her students ready to “perform.” If you’re stuck with a kindergarten curriculum that seems unrealistic to you and doesn’t fit your child (and assuming that changing schools is not an option), let your child know that you’re not worried about reading in kindergarten (or even early in first grade). Talk about people who learned to read later (like Sam!) and are doing just fine. Then do things that promote real learning, like reading books he or she enjoys, playing games, teaching useful skills and getting outside as often as possible to have fun, be active and learn together.

(Source: HuffPo)

I don’t want my son to read in kindergarten

I remember few details from kindergarten: a giant slide in the middle of our classroom, a mid-year visit by Smokey the Bear, the gentle voice and red hair of my teacher.

Kindergarten was its own little world within the school — a nurturing cocoon — with its own special playground, its own tiny buses, its own half-day schedule.

This spring when my son’s wonderful teacher recommended an additional year of preschool for him, instead of advancing with the rest of his class to kindergarten, I didn’t panic. After all, the school he was attending was small and academically challenging, and I understood he might not be ready for its particular standards. The teacher’s concerns — that he had trouble writing his letters, didn’t focus all the time in class, didn’t answer questions about literature with enough detail — didn’t worry me much. He was four. Just a little boy who liked garbage trucks and Sesame Street. We were moving to the suburbs anyway, and I figured my son would do just fine at our local public school, where he would spend his days listening to stories, playing in sandboxes, making friends, and learning the basic routines of classroom life.

My son would probably do just fine in public school kindergarten, but only if he could go back in time and attend kindergarten in 1980, not 2016.
Months after this conversation with his teacher, I realized that my son would probably do just fine in public school kindergarten, but only if he could go back in time and attend kindergarten in 1980, not 2016.

My son is not ready for kindergarten in 2016.

Kindergarten — which means “garden for children” in German — is not kindergarten anymore. It’s yesterday’s first grade, or even second. Kindergarten’s academic standards are dramatically more rigorous than even a decade ago (“find textual evidence”; “read texts with purpose and understanding”; “distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ”).

DJEDZURA VIA GETTY IMAGES

A 2014 study from the University of Virginia compared kindergarten teachers’ expectations for their students in 1998 to today. The differences were striking. In 1998, 31 percent of teachers thought that kindergarten students should be able to read by the end of the year. By 2014, that figure is now about 80 percent. More than a third more kindergarten teachers now think that kids should enter school already knowing the alphabet and how to hold a pencil.

In 2014, about three-quarters of kids in kindergarten took at least one standardized test. In 1998, the researchers didn’t even bother asking that question on the survey. Overall, the researchers found huge decreases in the amount of self-directed, creative play time — dress up, art, sand and water play — and increases in the amount of time students were involved in teacher-directed, whole-class instruction.

I have a doctorate in educational development and policy, and in graduate school, as the Common Core standards were being developed, I was a passionate champion of higher, common standards for our nation’s students. Yet I took it for granted that the standards would be determined by experts in each age range to be developmentally appropriate.

Unfortunately, the Common Core academic standards for the younger grades were not written by early childhood professionals or scholars. Of the 135 people on the committees that wrote and reviewed the Common Core Standards, not one of them was an early childhood teacher or early child development expert.

Of the 135 people on the committees that wrote and reviewed the Common Core Standards, not one of them was an early childhood teacher or early child development expert.
Kindergarten today ignores a basic fact of young children’s development that is well-known by early childhood educators: normal development in young children occurs at very different rates and in very different ways. For example, the average age that a baby starts to walk is 12 months, but some kids start walking at eight or nine months and others (like my toddler daughter) at 15, or even 16, months. Some may crawl before they walk; some—like my daughter—skip crawling altogether. My daughter is now 19 months old and walks just as proficiently as the other toddlers in her class who learned to walk several months before she did.

Similarly, the average age that a child learns to be an independent reader is about six and a half. Some learn to read at four, and others at seven, and both extremes are developmentally normal. In fourth grade, kids who learned to read at four are typically not any better at reading than those who started at seven. Countries like Finland and Sweden, which outpace the United States in international testing, do not even start formal academic schooling until age seven.

We need to respect children’s individual developmental timelines. The idea that “earlier is better” for reading instruction is simply not supported by research evidence. Children’s long-term achievement and self-identities as readers and students can be damaged when they are introduced to reading and literacy too early.

Where does that leave my family? I’m sad that my son won’t experience kindergarten as a gentle transition into the rhythms of school, as a space primarily for exploration and play, and as a place where building strong relationships with adults and other children is the primary annual goal. I’m sad that our culture of testing and assessment has moved down to even the youngest grades.

And I’m angry. I’m angry that in kindergarten he may be expected to meet standards that are not developmentally appropriate for him. I’m angry that our educational system ignores what research and evidence from other countries tells us is best for our children’s emotional, social and academic lives.

I want to protect my son’s childhood, and I want him to grow and learn at his own pace. Increasingly, the early grades of our country’s public schools are not the place for kids like him — kids who are not ready at five to become “proficient” readers and writers — to thrive.

(Source: HuffPo)

Japanese preschools having their kids put down crayons and pick up iPads

It’s drawing time at this suburban nursery school in Saitama Prefecture, but instead of crayons, tiny fingers are tapping on colors on iPad screens and taking selfies. Digital schooling has arrived in a nation long known for its zealous commitment to the “three R’s of education,” or reading, writing and arithmetic.

Coby Preschool in the town of Yoshikawa is among nearly 400 kindergartens and nursery schools in Japan that are using smartphone software applications designed especially for preschoolers called KitS.

That’s only about 1 percent of the nation’s kindergartens and nursery schools. But it’s a start. Coby is helping lead a national initiative in “digital play.”

Parents across the globe worry their children might fall behind, and Japan is no exception.

The government has recently made strengthening technology education national policy even as it struggles to meet its goal of supplying one digital device — a computer or tablet — for every three children.

Children work on a digital program at Coby Preschool in Yoshikawa, Saitama Prefecture, on July 12. | AP

Digital play
With KitS, developed by Tokyo-based startup SmartEducation, children color birds and flowers that appear to come alive as 3D computer graphics. Children also draw various creatures that, when captured as computer images, swim or float around in virtual landscapes.

In a recent session, children got a triangle image on their iPads and were asked to draw on it with digital colors, store that image, and draw another one to create a two-screen story.

The usually shy children burst into an uproar, brainstorming happily about what the triangle might represent: a sandwich, a rice ball, a dolphin, a roof, a mountain.

The children were then encouraged to come to the front of the class and explain what they had drawn as the images were shown on a large screen.

“There is no right or wrong answer,” said Akihito Minabe, the preschool principal leading the session.

The point is to nurture creativity, focus and leadership skills.

“They think on their own, they learn it’s OK to think freely, and it’s fun to come up with ideas,” Minabe said.

In the U.S., 98 percent of children age 8 and under have a mobile device in their homes, while 43 percent have their own tablet, according to The Genius of Play, an American program that researches education and play.

That’s similar to Japan, where each adult has an average of more than one smartphone and about half of preschoolers have access to a mobile device, according to central government data.

In many U.S., Asian and European preschools and elementary schools, teachers use technology to present stories, music and other information. Educators are also studying children’s social development through how they learn to share digital devices.

Getting smarter?
Much of what’s driving the adoption of tablets in U.S. preschools is a belief, founded or not, that an early start will make kids smarter at technology, said Patricia Cantor, a professor of early childhood education at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire.

However, early research into how tablets and apps affect learning for kids ages 2 to 5 is inconclusive.

“Touchscreen stuff is pretty intuitive. They don’t need training,” Cantor said.

Some studies show positive outcomes among young children using mobile devices to improve their literacy, science or math skills, but there’s little research comparing tablet-assisted learning to more conventional teaching approaches, according to a review of 19 studies by Christothea Herodotou, a lecturer at The Open University in the United Kingdom.

Herodotou said it’s unclear which features might help or hinder learning. Devices and apps can also be misused — for instance, to keep children occupied so teachers can do other things.

“Even if it’s designed to encourage learning or exploration or curiosity, it may not be used in that way,” said Cantor. “There’s so much junk out there.”

Still, the target age for “digital play” is getting ever younger.

Experts have known for years that playing is how children learn, said Ken Seiter, executive vice president at The Toy Association, a nonprofit that represents businesses that design, produce, license and deliver youth-entertainment products.

Toys can teach toddlers simple programming or use augmented reality to bring story characters digitally alive, said Seiter, whose organization spearheads The Genius of Play, a U.S.-based program that researches education and play.

Japan’s take
Japan’s classrooms tend to be more structured than in the West, with students often acting in unison as they line up, bow and chant together. Children tend to be passive, and the emphasis is on the group rather than the individual. Youngsters, even some preschoolers, attend extracurricular cram schools.

KitS’ designers have sought to make activities fun. One aim appears to be nurturing outspokenness.

Yuhei Yamauchi, a professor of information studies at the University of Tokyo and a KitS adviser, sees practical benefits.

By the time today’s 5-year-olds start work, a large majority of jobs will require computer skills. Given Japan’s shrinking population, people may work into their 80s, shifting jobs several times. Digital skills are more critical than ever, he said.

Digital tools deliver the equivalents of libraries and museums at a child’s fingertips, said Ron Shumsky, a child psychologist who works in Japan. That can be addictive, he cautions, and students must be taught safe and responsible “Digital citizenship,” he said.

It’s so compelling it pulls you in,” he said. “It keeps you wanting more.”

Experts warn that staring for too long at screens can damage eyesight and deter creative thinking. It’s a complex problem, since children may see their parents immersed in devices themselves.

KitS limits each session on the iPad to 15 minutes. Classes are held just 30 times a year.

Family dialogue
At the preschool in Yoshikawa, a sleepy Tokyo bedroom community ringed by lush rice paddies, the children have mastered time-lapse photography using their iPads.

Preschools like Coby are subsidized by local governments. Fees, including meals, are on a sliding scale based on income with the poorest families paying nothing.

Each preschool pays SmartEducation an initial ¥500,000, not including the cost of the iPads, and ¥30,000 ($265) more a month for maintenance. The cost for training teachers is included.

Students use the iPad message function to send their parents photos of themselves in action and share trailers of their upcoming performances.

The kids are keen to talk about it, and parents say the endeavor encourages communication beyond the usual daily stream of commands: Eat dinner, take a bath, go to bed.

“I realized I tend not to wait for what the children have to say,” said hospital worker Masami Uno, whose son, 5-year-old Ayumu, and 2-year-old daughter attend Coby. “It made me stop and think about that.”

The kids that were interviewed favored the usual sorts of career goals, saying they wanted to be ballerinas and soccer players. None said they wanted to be a computer programmer when they grow up.

But they like the KitS.

“It’s fun,” said Yume Miyasaka, 6.

She noted with a little pride that her father uses an iPad for work. But, referring to her iPad creation, she said, “He usually doesn’t draw shaved ice.”

(Source: JT)

The new preschool is crushing kids

Today’s young children are working more, but they’re learning less.

tep into an American preschool classroom today and you are likely to be bombarded with what we educators call a print-rich environment, every surface festooned with alphabet charts, bar graphs, word walls, instructional posters, classroom rules, calendars, schedules, and motivational platitudes—few of which a 4-year-old can “decode,” the contemporary word for what used to be known as reading.

Because so few adults can remember the pertinent details of their own preschool or kindergarten years, it can be hard to appreciate just how much the early-education landscape has been transformed over the past two decades. The changes are not restricted to the confusing pastiche on classroom walls. Pedagogy and curricula have changed too, most recently in response to the Common Core State Standards Initiative’s kindergarten guidelines. Much greater portions of the day are now spent on what’s called “seat work” (a term that probably doesn’t need any exposition) and a form of tightly scripted teaching known as direct instruction, formerly used mainly in the older grades, in which a teacher carefully controls the content and pacing of what a child is supposed to learn.

One study, titled “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?,” compared kindergarten teachers’ attitudes nationwide in 1998 and 2010 and found that the percentage of teachers expecting children to know how to read by the end of the year had risen from 30 to 80 percent. The researchers also reported more time spent with workbooks and worksheets, and less time devoted to music and art. Kindergarten is indeed the new first grade, the authors concluded glumly. In turn, children who would once have used the kindergarten year as a gentle transition into school are in some cases being held back before they’ve had a chance to start. A study out of Mississippi found that in some counties, more than 10 percent of kindergartners weren’t allowed to advance to first grade.

Until recently, school-readiness skills weren’t high on anyone’s agenda, nor was the idea that the youngest learners might be disqualified from moving on to a subsequent stage. But now that kindergarten serves as a gatekeeper, not a welcome mat, to elementary school, concerns about school preparedness kick in earlier and earlier. A child who’s supposed to read by the end of kindergarten had better be getting ready in preschool. As a result, expectations that may arguably have been reasonable for 5- and 6-year-olds, such as being able to sit at a desk and complete a task using pencil and paper, are now directed at even younger children, who lack the motor skills and attention span to be successful.

Preschool classrooms have become increasingly fraught spaces, with teachers cajoling their charges to finish their “work” before they can go play. And yet, even as preschoolers are learning more pre-academic skills at earlier ages, I’ve heard many teachers say that they seem somehow—is it possible?—less inquisitive and less engaged than the kids of earlier generations. More children today seem to lack the language skills needed to retell a simple story or to use basic connecting words and prepositions. They can’t make a conceptual analogy between, say, the veins on a leaf and the veins in their own hands.

New research sounds a particularly disquieting note. A major evaluation of Tennessee’s publicly funded preschool system, published in September, found that although children who had attended preschool initially exhibited more “school readiness” skills when they entered kindergarten than did their non-preschool-attending peers, by the time they were in first grade their attitudes toward school were deteriorating. And by second grade they performed worse on tests measuring literacy, language, and math skills. The researchers told New York magazine that overreliance on direct instruction and repetitive, poorly structured pedagogy were likely culprits; children who’d been subjected to the same insipid tasks year after year after year were understandably losing their enthusiasm for learning.

That’s right. The same educational policies that are pushing academic goals down to ever earlier levels seem to be contributing to—while at the same time obscuring—the fact that young children are gaining fewer skills, not more.

Pendulum shifts in education are as old as our republic. Steven Mintz, a historian who has written about the evolution of American childhood, describes an oscillation in the national zeitgeist between the notion of a “protected” childhood and that of a “prepared” one. Starting in the early 2000s, though, a confluence of forces began pushing preferences ever further in the direction of preparation: the increasing numbers of dual-career families scrambling to arrange child care; a new scientific focus on the cognitive potential of the early years; and concerns about growing ability gaps between well-off and disadvantaged children, which in turn fueled the trend of standards-based testing in public schools.

Preschool is a relatively recent addition to the American educational system. With a few notable exceptions, the government had a limited role in early education until the 1960s, when the federal Head Start program was founded. Before mothers entered the full-time workforce in large numbers, private preschools were likewise uncommon, and mainly served as a safe social space for children to learn to get along with others.

By second grade, the children who had attended preschool performed worse than their peers.
In the past few decades, however, we have seen a major transfer of child care and early learning from home to institution: Nearly three-quarters of American 4-year-olds are now in some kind of nonfamily care. That category spans a dizzying mix of privately and publicly funded preschool environments, including family-run day cares, private preschools in church basements, and Head Start programs in public elementary schools, to name a few. Across all of them, the distinction between early education and “official” school seems to be eroding.

When I survey parents of preschoolers, they tend to be on board with many of these changes, either because they fear that the old-fashioned pleasures of unhurried learning have no place in today’s hypercompetitive world or because they simply can’t find, or afford, a better option. The stress is palpable: Pick the “wrong” preschool or ease up on the phonics drills at home, and your child might not go to college. She might not be employable. She might not even be allowed to start first grade!

Media attention to the cognitive potential of early childhood has a way of exacerbating such worries, but the actual academic consensus on the components of high-quality early education tells another story. According to experts such as the Yale professor Edward Zigler, a leader in child-development and early-education policy for half a century, the best preschool programs share several features: They provide ample opportunities for young children to use and hear complex, interactive language; their curriculum supports a wide range of school-readiness goals that include social and emotional skills and active learning; they encourage meaningful family involvement; and they have knowledgeable and well-qualified teachers.

As an early-childhood educator, I’ve clocked many hours in many preschool classrooms, and I have found that I can pretty quickly take the temperature from the looks on kids’ faces, the ratio of table space to open areas, and the amount of conversation going on in either. In a high-quality program, adults are building relationships with the children and paying close attention to their thought processes and, by extension, their communication. They’re finding ways to make the children think out loud.

The real focus in the preschool years should be not just on vocabulary and reading, but on talking and listening. We forget how vital spontaneous, unstructured conversation is to young children’s understanding. By talking with adults, and one another, they pick up information. They learn how things work. They solve puzzles that trouble them. Sometimes, to be fair, what children take away from a conversation is wrong. They might conclude, as my young son did, that pigs produce ham, just as chickens produce eggs and cows produce milk. But these understandings are worked over, refined, and adapted—as when a brutal older sibling explains a ham sandwich’s grisly origins.

Teachers play a crucial role in supporting this type of learning. A 2011 study in the journal Child Development found that preschool teachers’ use of sophisticated vocabulary in informal classroom settings predicted their students’ reading comprehension and word knowledge in fourth grade. Unfortunately, much of the conversation in today’s preschool classrooms is one-directional and simplistic, as teachers steer students through a highly structured schedule, herding them from one activity to another and signaling approval with a quick “good job!”

Consider the difference between a teacher’s use of a closed statement versus an open-ended question. Imagine that a teacher approaches a child drawing a picture and exclaims, “Oh, what a pretty house!” If the child is not actually drawing a house, she might feel exposed, and even if she is drawing a house, the teacher’s remark shuts down further discussion: She has labeled the thing and said she likes it. What more is there to add? A much more helpful approach would be to say, “Tell me about your drawing,” inviting the child to be reflective. It’s never possible to anticipate everything a small person needs to learn, so open-ended inquiry can reveal what is known and unknown. Such a small pedagogic difference can be an important catalyst for a basic, but unbounded, cognitive habit—the act of thinking out loud.

Conversation is gold. It’s the most efficient early-learning system we have. And it’s far more valuable than most of the reading-skills curricula we have been implementing: One meta-analysis of 13 early-childhood literacy programs “failed to find any evidence of effects on language or print-based outcomes.” Take a moment to digest that devastating conclusion.

Iwas recently asked to review a popular preschool curriculum that comes with a big box of thematic units, including lists of words and “key concepts” that children are supposed to master. One objective of the curriculum’s ocean unit, for example, is to help preschoolers understand “the importance of the ocean to the environment.” Children are given a list of specific terms to learn, including exoskeleton, scallop shell, blubber, and tube feet. At first glance, this stuff seems fun and educational, but doesn’t this extremely narrow articulation of “key concepts” feel a little off? What’s so special about blubber, anyway? Might a young child not want to ponder bigger questions: What is water? Where do the blue and green come from? Could anything be more beautiful and more terrifying than an ocean?

The shift from an active and exploratory early-childhood pedagogy to a more scripted and instruction-based model does not involve a simple trade-off between play and work, or between joy and achievement. On the contrary, the preoccupation with accountability has led to a set of measures that favor shallow mimicry and recall behaviors, such as learning vocabulary lists and recognizing shapes and colors (something that a dog can do, by the way, but that is in fact an extraordinarily low bar for most curious 4-year-olds), while devaluing complex, integrative, and syncretic learning.

Last year, I observed some preschoolers conversing about whether snakes have bones. They argued at length among themselves, comparing the flexible serpentine body with dinosaur fossils and fish, both of which they had previously explored. There was no clear consensus on how these various creatures could contain the same hard skeletons, but I watched, transfixed, as each child added to the groundwork another had laid. The teacher gently guided the group as a captain might steer a large ship, with the tiniest nudge of the wheel. Finally, a little boy who had seen a snake skeleton in a museum became animated as he pantomimed the structure of a snake’s spine in a series of karate chops: “One bone, one bone, one bone,” he informed his friends. “I think we’re all going to have to do a lot more research,” the teacher replied, impressed. This loosely Socratic method is a perfect fit for young minds; the problem is that it doesn’t conform easily to a school-readiness checklist.

The focus should be not just on vocabulary and reading, but on talking and listening.
The academic takeover of American early learning can be understood as a shift from what I would call an “ideas-based curriculum” to a “naming-and-labeling-based curriculum.” Not coincidentally, the latter can be delivered without substantially improving our teaching force. Inexperienced or poorly supported teachers are directed to rely heavily on scripted lesson plans for a reason: We can point to a defined objective, and tell ourselves that at least kids are getting something this way.


But that something—while relatively cheap to provide—is awfully thin gruel. One major study of 700 preschool classrooms in 11 states found that only 15 percent showed evidence of effective interactions between teacher and child. Fifteen percent.

We neglect vital teacher-child interactions at our peril. Although the infusion of academics into preschool has been justified as a way to close the achievement gap between poor and well-off children, Robert Pianta, one of the country’s leading child-policy experts, cautions that there is “no evidence whatsoever” that our early-learning system is suited to that task. He estimates that the average preschool program “narrows the achievement gap by perhaps only 5 percent,” compared with the 30 to 50 percent that studies suggest would be possible with higher-quality programs. Contrasting the dismal results of Tennessee’s preschool system with the more promising results in places such as Boston, which promotes active, child-centered learning (and, spends more than twice the national average on preschool), lends further credence to the idea that preschool quality really does matter.

It’s become almost a cliché to look to Finland’s educational system for inspiration. As has been widely reported, the country began to radically professionalize its workforce in the 1970s and abandoned most of the performance standards endemic to American schooling. Today, Finland’s schools are consistently ranked among the world’s very best. This “Finnish miracle” sounds almost too good to be true. Surely the country must have a few dud teachers and slacker kids!

And yet, when I’ve visited Finland, I’ve found it impossible to remain unmoved by the example of preschools where the learning environment is assessed, rather than the children in it. Having rejected many of the pseudo-academic benchmarks that can, and do, fit on a scorecard, preschool teachers in Finland are free to focus on what’s really essential: their relationship with the growing child.

Here’s what the Finns, who don’t begin formal reading instruction until around age 7, have to say about preparing preschoolers to read: “The basis for the beginnings of literacy is that children have heard and listened … They have spoken and been spoken to, people have discussed [things] with them … They have asked questions and received answers.”

For our littlest learners, what could be more important than that?

(Source: The Atlantic)

Evidence suggests preschool is a waste of time and money

Every parent wants their child to have the best life possible. Often, that means giving them the best education they can get, beginning with sending them to a good preschool.

It's a reasonable approach, except for the fact it might be dead wrong.

A growing body of evidence suggests that preschool doesn't offer kids anything they can't get more easily — or more cheaply — through other means.

The sooner parents and policy makers take these findings seriously, experts argue, the quicker kids can start reaching their full potential.

For kids in need, money goes further than school
The most convincing evidence that kids don't need preschool to succeed comes from a recent report by Russ Whitehurst, a senior fellow in economics studies at the Brookings Institution. Whitehurst's report analyzed four major studies of the Earned Income Tax Credit, a refund issued to low-income families based on their income levels and how many kids they have.

His research found that per dollar spent, kids tended to do better in their later years if their families received money directly, rather than if they went to preschool. Studies have shown that more money early on translates to better test scores, higher college entry rates, and even higher incomes as adults.

Security is the biggest mechanism at play, Whitehurst tells Business Insider. "If you're bringing home $21,000 and the government gives you another $3,000, that can be a big deal," he says. Additional funds free parents up to take more vacations, buy better cars, go to more museums, and generally do things that enrich kids' lives but might otherwise cost too much.

In the US, the leveling effect of extra cash for low-income families is critical. Psychologists have known for years that gaps in childhood development widen over time. Small advantages turn into massive ones, even as early as preschool. If a wealthier kid goes to a school with more resources, a poorer child already has to play catch-up.

Instead of focusing on cash handouts, governments and politicians have instead tried to rectify this imbalance by supporting universal preschool as a way to give all kids the opportunity to start their education at the same time. "Just as kindergarten became the new first grade in a previous era, we now see pre-K becoming the new kindergarten," Whitehurst says.

It may be a positive step, but one Northern European country has taken the opposite approach, rejecting formal early education altogether. And it's working.

In Finland, books take a back seat to playtime
American parents might look upon the Finnish school system with horror: Kids in Finland don't start their formal education until they're 7 years old, many of them still illiterate. Compare that to the US, where kids typically begin kindergarten at age 4 or 5, preschool even younger, books already in hand.

The biggest difference between the two systems is what each expects from students. Preschool in the US is designed to build "student readiness" — the skill of being a student who can study and learn capably. Finland has preschool, too, but it's effectively playtime.

Finnish preschool children learn how to play nice together, how to be fair, how to say "I'm sorry." In both spontaneous and structured settings — think games of tag or teacher-guided activities to build teamwork — they fulfill their primary duty of being kids, moving fast and loose and making plenty of mistakes that turn into learning opportunities.

And unlike American preschool, Finland's system is wholly paid for by the government, leveling the playing field in a way American preschools have yet to match.

The result: By age 15, Finnish students dominate in global tests of math and science. The fact they waited a few years before learning what everyone else was studying only helped them.

There's hope for American preschoolers yet
Just because America isn't Finland doesn't mean kids can't reap the benefits of the Finnish model. Parents just have to know where to look. And that place might be "Sesame Street."

In the 47-year run of "Sesame Street," there have been more than 1,000 studies about the cognitive and social benefits of watching the show. Researchers have found that kids who watch "Sesame Street" enjoy up to 67% higher literacy scores by age 4, 40% better social skills, and 127% greater interest in eating vegetables than kids who don't watch.

Ostensibly, these upsides are the entire point of "Sesame Street." PBS crafted the show in 1969 as a more educational alternative to Saturday morning cartoons and junk food. Kids learn about culture, race, disability, and poverty. They learn acceptance and openness before bias or pickiness can creep their way in — all perks that preschool also tries to teach kids, except for the fact that "Sesame Street" can do it equally well, and in an environment where kids spend more time.

As economists Phillip Levine and Melissa Kearney note in a 2015 report on the benefits of "Sesame Street," the show essentially functions like Khan Academy or MIT OpenCourseware, two of the biggest massive open online courses (MOOCs) that let people learn for free.

"In essence," Levine and Kearney wrote, "Sesame Street was the first MOOC."

The conversation at the top needs to change
Politicians may love talking about investing in education, but as Whitehurst and others have shown in their research, the better investment is in families.

Low-income kids reap immediate rewards when their parents have more resources and more time to spend with them. And for families that aren't struggling, the Finnish model highlights how governments should empower parents to take a more relaxed approach to raising kids, rather than one that prioritizes starting their academic career as early as possible.

Finns find success because they've embraced an old idea, not a new one. They let kids be kids. As long as a society can do that on equitable terms, the rest pretty much falls into place.

(Source: BI)

Stanford researchers show we’re sending many children to school way too early

Parents wondering whether to wait a year to send their kids to kindergarten, take note: A new study from Stanford University shows that Danish kids who postponed kindergarten for up to one year showed dramatically higher levels of self-control.

“We found that delaying kindergarten for one year reduced inattention and hyperactivity by 73% for an average child at age 11,” Thomas Dee, one of the co-authors and a Stanford Graduate School of Education professor, said in a release.

Dee did his research with Hans Henrik Sievertsen of the Danish National Centre for Social Research, who told Quartz that the impact was strong and lasted a long time: “We were a bit surprised at how persistent the effect was.” The effect of delaying school on hyperactivity and inattention didn’t diminish over time, as they expected, but increased: in fact, waiting one year virtually eliminated the chance that an average kid at age 11 would have higher-than-normal scores on those measures.

Inattention and hyperactivity—the traits of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)—weaken a child’s self-control, and prior research shows that self-control levels in childhood are linked to achievement (recall the marshmallow test). In the Stanford study, kids with lower inattention and hyperactivity ratings had higher school assessment scores.

Countries like Finland and Germany already start school relatively late. Kids do not seem to fare worse later in life for the lost time, otherwise known as childhood: Finland scores well in international tests of 15-year-olds.

American kids used to start kindergarten at five years old. Today, about 20% of US kindergarteners are six, according to the study. While some of the change is due to moving forward birthday cut-off dates, much of it can be attributed to “red-shirting,” or parents holding kids back to give them a leg up. (Older kids are more able, and being more able makes them more confident, which then reinforces itself—or so the theory goes.) Wealthier parents and those of boys are most likely to do this, the study says.

The study was published by the National Bureau of Research last month. Starting kindergarten later has not been directly proven to improve test scores, so the researchers focused their research on mental health instead.

They used the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC), a recent and large-scale survey of Danish children which includes data for children at age 7 and 11 from a widely used and validated mental-health screening tool (54,241 parents responded to the parent-reported mental health survey for 7 year olds; 35,902 responded when the children were about 11 years old).

In Denmark, children are supposed to enter school in the calendar year in which they turn six. The researchers used census and education ministry data to look at children who were born just before and after the cut-off date to study the effects of age (when you are six, a difference of six-to-eight months is huge).

The study has limitations. Kids who delay kindergarten in Denmark have universal access to reasonably good pre-kindergarten, something woefully lacking in the US. If families don’t have access to that, they may benefit from having their children start kindergarten earlier.

One interesting hypothesis is posed: did attending school later allow kids more time to develop through unstructured play? Developmental psychology research emphasizes the importance of imaginative play in aiding children’s emotional and intellectual self-regulation. “Children who delay their school starting age may have an extended (and appropriately timed) exposure to such playful environments,” the study noted. Party time, kids.

(Source: Quartz)

Visist to an amazing nursery in Doha

In the search of a right nursery for our little one, yesterday we went to a nursery located in the West Bay Lagoon. As soon as we entered, the security asked us to enter the details and gave a balloon to my little son. Holding the balloon in one hand my son was excited to run towards the safe and weather-friendly play area, where other kids were playing.

The coordinator welcomed us and took us inside the building. We were asked to fill the pre-registration form and then taken for a tour of the nursery.

The whole nursery campus has two wings and we were first taken to the wing which houses under two-year-olds. We saw a well maintained room where babies from four weeks to maybe one-year-old are kept. They had six baby cots.

Each room is so beautifully designed catering to the needs of kids that my son kept exploring by touching and feeling toys and study materials kept around. When he saw finger puppets, he ran and took a panda and kept saying “bow”, “bow” (his code language for dog), and when the coordinator corrected him that it’s not a dog, but a panda, he was happy to say after her, “pa”, “pa”.

All the rooms were large enough and most of them had floor to ceiling windows, making the rooms bright with the natural light. All the rooms had a tiny wash basin, where kids are assisted to use them independently.

We were just taken aback when we saw how kids can use wash basins and toilets specially meant for their size and age. It was literally like walking into the land of lilliputs, where little ones can easily access washroom or kitchen.

As the coordinator showed us the clean washroom – wish I had taken some pics -- my son was over excited that he could easily access the wash basin. He loves to play in the water and god knows how many times he washes his hands in a day just to play in the water. He went near them, checked two-three wash basins and was excited that taps were at his hand’s reach. Once he saw that the hand wash which he uses at home were kept there, he started saying that he wants to wash his hands! Luckily, the coordinator took us to show the other rooms.

It’s all about making the kids self-independent and the kids not only learn to use toilets, washing their hands, but also learn to use sunscreens before going outside to the play area. Imagine, all these things done by themselves!

The very idea of making children self-dependent was something which impressed us. Moreover, the way kids can learn by playing, imagining and creating is something great. Getting the little ones engaged and keeping them busy in activities that they love to do is what most of the nurseries fail to do.

The plus point here is the ratio of students and teacher, which is one teacher for three kids. It’s an amazing thing as each kid gets the required attention. In fact, we felt like it’s an extended family and we loved the place so much that we are still unable to imagine our little one in any other nursery.
No wonder, each kid can become independent and develop not only communication, collaboration, besides developing creative and critical thinking with so much of attention, love and care from the staff. Just imagine how we were enrolled when we were kids in nurseries where one teacher looked after anywhere between 20-25 kids in a classroom!

The classrooms were named after Crayola and kids can easily recognize their classrooms remembering the colour of Crayola. They had a separate room for story-telling, a room for nap, a kitchen with little dining table. Even a separate room to handle those kids who throw occasional tantrums. We were informed that teachers get that particular child to this particular room and soothe him/her emotions and then take back to the classroom. They had an open air classrooms which reminded me of Rabindranath Tagore’s concept of Shanti Niketan classrooms.

We were told that children not only learn Cryola Art and Craft, but also music and dance other than learning to read and write, gardening, etc. They have children from different cultures and nationalities and each month they conduct special special classes on a particular country. For instance, if they choose Canada, all the activities for that month revolve around that country. Kids can learn and explore the culture of that particular country. They even skype and interact with the teachers and kids from those countries, which is simply amazing.

The most important aspect was they even had a transition room for mothers to wait. Moms can wait in this room till they feel comfortable to leave their little ones in the nursery. A right way to deal with separation anxiety for both mom and the child!

Last but not the least, home and nursery are connected online and parents can view their children online. It was indeed a wonderful experience and we as parents felt that it was a great place for our little one. Though the fee structure was beyond and above our budget, it’s worth the money. My son loved it, I loved it and my hubby loved it. All was great, but, but...

But we gave a practical thought on sending our kid there. The nursery has the British curriculum and as Indians with Indian passports, one day or the other we will move back to India. So it’s better for him to study the Indian curriculum. He has less than one year for himself to be ready to face an interview for the kindergarten.

Had we visited this nursery 4-5 months earlier, maybe we could have enrolled our son for at least one term, so that he could have had a feel of it and become independent and learn whatever he could. 

Two-year-olds in Mumbai are taking coaching to clear nursery admissions

In a bid to take admission in top schools of the Mumbai, two-year-old kids are going for interview coaching classes. Parents are spending 'lakhs' of rupees for these coaching classes.

And it's not that they have just started sending their kids for coaching classes, many kiddos are attending classes from couple of years.

However, fact remains that it is illegal to interview kids for school admission.

How do these classes take place?
As reported by The Huffington Post, these classes are usually held under the radar-- teachers don't usually advertise them openly, but everybody knows about them. And there is always a huge demand
Some teachers politely call these classes "GK classes" or "conversation classes."

Meanwhile, call it whatever; these classes would somewhere create a mental pressure on kids. But parents seems ignorant to the psychological needs and learning capabilities of kids at this age.

Moreover, it looks like getting admission in these coaching classes is more difficult than getting admission in schools.

Tough to take admission in coaching:

According to reports, the teachers of these coaching classes mostly pick and choose students they are willing to "train".

In each class, there are about 12 kids getting interview training

Centres claiming 100 per cent guaranteed admission in school:

In addition to this, some centres claim to be specialists in getting admission into particular schools such as Cathedral and John Connon School or JB Petit High School For Girls.

Illegal to interview kids
According to government guidelines, it is illegal for schools to interview children as part of the admissions process.

Planning a smarter move, the schools have stated these sessions as "child interaction sessions" or "child observation sessions"

Meanwhile, according to IANS, the nursery admission which began in the national capital after great hue and cry will receive Delhi High Court verdict on February 27 regarding an appeal filed by the AAP government, challenging a single-judge order that stayed its nursery admissions notification compelling 298 private schools, built on public land, to adopt only neighbourhood criteria.

(Source: India Today)

38 Qatar schools will be raising tuition in the coming year

More than three dozen private schools and kindergartens in Qatar are being permitted to raise their tuition fees during the 2017/2018 school year, the country’s education ministry has announced.

The 38 schools include the Filipino International School, SEK International, MES Indian School, the Finnish school and Doha College (West Bay), according to a list published by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.

They will be allowed to raise fees between 1 and 15 percent.

Officials said yesterday that nearly half of all schools and kindergartens in Qatar requested fee increases.

But most of the 127 institutions were denied hikes, they added.

Long process
According to the education ministry, schools had to go through a multi-step process to win tuition hike approval.

This included filing their applications between Dec. 1 and 31 of last year and submitting up to four years of financial reports in Arabic.

Several schools were rejected for missing the deadline or because their reports were found to be lacking credibility and accuracy.

Additionally, the applications needed to be approved by several different ministry committees, as well as the minister himself.

Cost of education
Last year, the ministry approved fees increases for 55 schools, but only from 2 to 7 percent.

At the time, educators said they understood higher tuition fees can be a financial burden on parents.

But they argued that they need to at least keep teachers’ salaries in line with inflation to attract the best staff, as well as meet any other rising costs such as accommodation and facility rentals.

However, housing rental costs are dropping in Qatar and inflation has also slowed considerably. So it remains unclear why so many schools have applied for fee hikes this year.

(Source: Doha News)