While teachers of all grades shape their students’ lives, kindergarten teachers play a unique role in that they build a formative early bridge from home to school. They introduce fundamental academic skills, build foundations for social and emotional development and help young learners develop confidence, curiosity and a lifelong love of learning. 

“As an educator, my mission has always been clear: to ensure every student, regardless of background, zip code, or circumstance, has access to a high-quality education,” Gray wrote in a published by the NEA Foundation. “I see my work as an act of justice.”

Gray has started a number of programs at her school to support students in need, including working with classes to raise funds to donate to peers and creating opportunities for families to volunteer as tutors. She has also participated in various teacher advocacy efforts. Gray has testified before her state’s legislature about issues such as mentorship and compensation, and has participated in the , which aims to improve the teaching profession and student outcomes.

In the conversation below, she reflects on her career, the importance of mentorship in education and what drives her to make change — whether launching a new initiative at her school or using her voice to advocate for change across her profession. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I’m curious about your career and how you got to this point.

I have been an educator for 13 years in the public school system in Texas. I have [spent] the majority of my years teaching kindergarten in Temple ISD [Independent School District] in Temple, Texas … but I have taught at multiple campuses with different demographics.

One campus I was at was all about teaching students social-emotional skills … I got a chance to build relationships, and I learned a lot [about] emotional growth.

I had an opportunity to teach my first year at a campus that had … a lot of attendance issues. On my first meet-the-teacher night, I had maybe three parents show up. By the end of the year celebration, every single parent and grandparent showed up. That was probably the turning point to let me know I was in the right space. 

What has mentorship meant to you in your career?

Before I started as a teacher, I was working at a day care, and I was in a pre-K 3 class, and that was really my first official class, but it wasn’t at a public school. When I had the opportunity to get my certification, I got a chance to teach in the school district with my mentor, Leah Suchomel, who taught kindergarten. She taught me so many things that I didn’t get in the books or in the classroom. Yes, I learned a lot about … the different theories and Harry [and Rosemary] Wong’s but until you’re actually in a setting with a teacher that is willing to trust you enough to teach her class — and just that compassion that she showed, not only to me but to her students — I still take [that] to this day.

How have you paid that forward as a mentor?

My mentee came from Texas A&M. Her mom was an assistant principal. Her grandma was a teacher. Her aunt was a principal. So she came from a long line of educators, but when she told them she wanted to be a teacher, they asked her, “Are you sure?” Because it is different from when they were teachers. 

I thought about what my mentor taught me, and I tried to see what my mentee needed to be successful for when she would become a mentor. It’s like a torch being passed.

How did the pandemic change your experience as a teacher?

During the pandemic, you could see a difference in the social-emotional status of our students. Before the pandemic, we were trying to get kids to learn how to use technology, but after the pandemic, I noticed my students wanted to have me read them big books. They didn’t want to just always be on a tablet to learn. I mean, that’s a tool as well, but they really craved that attention. 

Right now, I feel like we have so many students that are having to learn how to regulate their emotions. When they are playing … or working with classmates, they have to learn, How does this person feel before I react? If they’re on an iPad, nobody is there to tell them, “Hey, you’re being rude on this game.” They have to learn … the body language of someone who needs space. They missed a lot of that during their first years of growing up.

You’ve started a few programs and clubs at your school. Why did you start the Stars Helping Stars program?

I started that program when I began here at this school. I saw one of my students that was kind of struggling. I overheard him tell one of his classmates that he had slept in his car last night. And then his mom had called me and let me know that they had lost their housing. So, what I did with our kids — since it’s a STEM campus — we repurposed items from recyclables such as snowglobes, jewelry boxes, guitars, water guns and containers and sold them in order to get gift cards for homeless families at our school. 

The next year, that effort evolved into a tutoring group. Parents would come in and tutor kids on Tuesdays before school or after school. … And we saw a significant increase in our students’ accountability. 

What about the Breakfast Club program?

Once a month I’ll have mentors that will come through and just do different activities with about a group of 25 kids that range from kindergarten all the way to fifth grade. The high school volleyball team volunteered to come in, and they played volleyball. A group of soldiers came, including my spouse, and they did different stations where they had to talk like a soldier, act like a soldier, sound like a soldier…. Maybe one day they want to grow up to be in the military. We don’t know, but just planting those seeds so they can see things outside of their home and outside of the classroom, that’s the whole point.

Do you think being someone who gets things off the ground is part of why you won this award? 

I do believe that it plays a big role. … That and also just being a person of action. That picture behind me — that is me signing with the governor of Texas. (House Bill 2 authorized $8.5 billion in new . A portion of that funding went toward teacher and staff pay raises.) And that day, I sat at the table speaking for 384,000 teachers that are in Texas that needed that extra pay. There were other teachers in different parts of Texas … who had to work pick-up jobs during Christmas just to make ends meet. And I wanted to do something about it. And so just being able to tell our stories together, bring our stories together — to sit and pass a bill of one of the largest allotments that has been passed in Texas. 

As the only elementary school teacher to win this NEA Foundation award, what do you have to say about the early years?

I think that early childhood sets such a big seed … for our students to have character, to have work ethic, to understand the importance of [this] journey. … I always have kids that end up being best friends, and I have at least one or two that end up being best friends all the way up to high school.

I’ve been teaching long enough to have those memories. Thanks to Facebook, I can see where they tag [me in photos from when] they were in kindergarten and now they are getting ready to graduate. It’s like, “This all because of you, Ms. Gray.” 

How do you cultivate friendships and relationships that last a lifetime? 

Part of it is the atmosphere in a classroom. It’s just everyone uplifting each other. And if someone doesn’t, if you don’t like what someone else said, it’s okay to disagree, but it’s not okay to just totally not listen to that person.

That’s what some of it is. Also, just being able to have … relationships with families. 

Whenever we have parent conferences — I don’t just do the beginning of the year, I do the middle of the year as well because I want [parents] to know that we are partners. The majority of the time they’re here with us, with the teachers, not at home. And so just building their relationship … you can understand like, “Oh, I understand the reason why he may need the extra hug today.”

It begins with clapping syllables — to-ma-to, ba-na-na — with the children clapping along. The lesson then shifts to letters. A capital H appears on the whiteboard, followed by a lowercase h. The teacher models the sound. Children skywrite it in the air, then return to their desks to copy the letter across a line. Some do so carefully. Others hesitate, gripping their pencils too tightly, unsure where to begin.

Back to the rug. Now vowels. Him, stretched slowly. Back to desks again — this time to write nap. A few children stare at the page. One reverses the n. Another pauses at the p, pencil hovering.

No questions are asked.

No time is wasted.

Children return to the rug to compare ham and nap. Back to their desks once more to write a phrase: a pan. Back to the rug for flashcards: letter names, letter sounds, key words, then a phrase or two. Some letters have two sounds. Some children guess. Others stay silent. The lesson ends where it began: clapping syllables.

This entire 30-minute sequence is delivered with perfect fidelity. In the neighboring classroom, we observe the same words spoken. The pacing is precise. The script is followed. And yet, across the room, children’s faces tell a different story — not frustration exactly, but puzzlement. They are doing what they have been asked to do. They just don’t seem to know why.

Moments like these are easy to misread. It would be tempting to attribute what we observed to classroom management, to the quality of a particular lesson or to children’s readiness for kindergarten. Indeed, debates about early literacy often return to familiar explanations: uneven preparation in pre-K, insufficient “dosage” or children who simply are not ready.

But decades of research point to a different problem. What matters most for learning is not the strength of any single component, but how instructional expectations, opportunities and support are organized over time. When learning experiences come in a coherent sequence, understanding accumulates. When they do not, instruction can feel busy without being productive.

To be clear, this is not a call to slow down kindergarten or lower expectations. Kindergarten rightly reflects ambitious goals for children’s learning by the end of the year. The issue is not rigor, but sequencing. A coherent instructional system distinguishes between what children are expected to learn eventually and when they are given sustained opportunities to consolidate what they’re learning. When instructional demands accelerate too quickly, rigor can give way to fragmentation.

The problem, then, is not kindergarten itself, but a breakdown in alignment from pre-K to kindergarten. At kindergarten entry, this often arises when standards written as cumulative, end-of-year goals are treated as early instructional demands.

This framing challenges a dominant narrative in early childhood education. Much of the research on the pre-K–to–elementary transition has focused on the “fade-out” of the benefits of early education, implicitly locating the problem in children’s preparation or in instructional quality after pre-K. Far less attention has been paid to whether the transition itself is coherently designed — whether expectations, materials, pacing and assessments work together.

Why does this matter? Because the transition to kindergarten appears to affect children across the skill distribution: not only those who enter with lower scores, but also those who begin school performing relatively well. In a of over 800 children across 64 classrooms, researchers found that the transition itself was associated with changes in children’s academic and behavioral functioning, regardless of where children started. How children experience kindergarten is therefore not a short-term adjustment issue; it can shape educational trajectories for years to come.

Perhaps, then, instead of asking whether children are ready for kindergarten, educators should be asking whether early instructional systems are ready for children.

In early literacy, this question is especially urgent. Foundational skills are not acquired through brief exposure or rapid movement across tasks. They are built through repeated, connected practice. When expectations, materials and assessments move faster than children can reasonably integrate new learning, compliance can mask fragility.

On paper, the transition from pre-K to kindergarten often looks well aligned. In New York state, for example, early literacy standards reflect a sensible developmental progression. Pre-K standards emphasize broad print awareness, phonological sensitivity and early letter knowledge. Kindergarten standards build on these foundations, specifying more advanced expectations, such as consistent letter-sound knowledge and simple decoding, by the end of the year.

Viewed side by side, the standards themselves are not the problem.

The trouble begins when these end-of-year expectations are translated into curriculum materials, pacing guidance and early assessments. In many classrooms, children are asked within the first weeks of kindergarten to produce written words, coordinate vowel and consonant sounds, and move rapidly across multiple phonological and print-based tasks — before they have had sustained opportunities to consolidate underlying skills.

The result is a subtle but consequential shift: cumulative goals become entry-level demands.

For a child who is still learning the basics, this acceleration can make learning feel fragmented rather than cumulative. Tasks change quickly. Success depends on coordinating several emerging skills at once. Children may appear engaged and compliant, but their uncertainty is visible: in reversed letters, hesitant pencil strokes, guessing, or silence during group responses.

This is what structural incoherence looks like — not a dramatic mismatch, but a quiet misalignment between what children are expected to do and the opportunities they are given to get there.

When this pattern becomes routine, the risk is not that children are challenged — but that challenge outpaces learning. Compliance can mask confusion. Activity can replace accumulation. Kindergarten can begin to feel like a race before children have learned how to run.

The solution is not to retreat from rigor, but to design more coherent pathways to it. Kindergarten standards are cumulative by design; instructional systems should treat them that way. This means clarifying which skills are meant to be introduced early, which require sustained practice and which are intended to integrate later in the year.

It means reducing overload by limiting how many new demands children are asked to coordinate at once. And it means aligning early assessments to instructional timing. None of these shifts lowers expectations. They make rigor stick.

Kindergarten should be the place where reading begins to make sense — where sounds connect, words hold meaning and effort leads to understanding. When instructional systems move too fast, even well-intentioned reforms can work at cross-purposes, asking children to perform before they have had time to learn. The challenge before us is not whether to be ambitious, but whether we are willing to design systems that honor how learning actually unfolds.

If early literacy reforms are to deliver on their promise, coherence cannot be an afterthought. It must be the bridge that turns high standards into real understanding for every child.

When Lexia more than 200 kindergarten teachers  working with early learners last fall, we wanted to understand what they were seeing in their classrooms. The responses offer both a clear-eyed look at the challenges and a sense of optimism about the path ahead.

Nearly three-quarters of the educators we surveyed said today’s kindergarteners are behind in early literacy skills compared with students five years ago. Among those who described their students as behind, most pointed to phonemic awareness, the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words, as the biggest gap. Others mentioned that children struggle to recognize letters or even to write their own names.

Equally striking were findings around attention and confidence. Almost 90% of teacher participants reported that children’s attention spans during reading-related activities are shorter than before, and more than half said their students are less confident when asked to participate in those activities, to sound out a word, for example, or share during storytime.

But what stood out most wasn’t just the academic data. Eight in 10 educators said their students are less socially and emotionally ready for kindergarten than past cohorts. They arrive less practiced in sharing, self-regulation and cooperation. For many, this is their first experience in a group learning environment.

We often talk about “learning loss” as if it can be measured solely in test scores. But what educators are describing in these classrooms is a quieter, more complex legacy of the pandemic, one shaped by isolation, uneven access to early learning, and disruptions in routine.

When young children miss out on opportunities to play with peers or listen to stories in groups, they lose more than vocabulary. They lose practice in waiting their turn, following a sequence and engaging with other minds. These are the invisible threads that tie social-emotional development to literacy.

And yet, as sobering as these findings are, they also represent a moment of opportunity. Teachers are watching these 5- and 6-year-old children adapt, often quickly. Many describe their students as curious, empathetic and eager to learn, just in need of scaffolds that reflect their unique experiences.

When asked what would most help this generation of learners, educators were nearly unanimous: more family and home engagement in reading.

It’s a reminder that literacy doesn’t start at school; it starts in homes, in the daily rhythm of conversation and storytelling. During the pandemic, many parents of young children were juggling work, stress and uncertainty. Reading aloud may have taken a back seat. Now, as these families reconnect with schools, there’s a chance to rebuild those habits, not as homework, but as bonding.

Districts can help by making family literacy simple and inviting: Send home books. Offer short video tips for parents on how to ask open-ended questions after reading a story. Use communication platforms that make it easy to celebrate small moments, a child recognizing their first letter, a family sharing a favorite bedtime story.

The message should be that literacy is not just a school task; it’s a shared joy.

The survey also asked educators which school-based interventions can most help support today’s kindergarteners. Their top choice: personalized instruction that meets diverse needs.

No two pandemic experiences were the same. Some children spent their early years surrounded by adults who read to them daily; others spent long days in front of screens or in households where stress limited conversation. Adaptive digital tools and skilled teacher guidance allow instruction to begin at the right place for each child.

Schools can build on this by:

• Using data-driven tools to pinpoint skill gaps in phonemic awareness, vocabulary and comprehension
• Structuring small-group interventions that target those gaps with playful, multisensory practice
• Embedding social-emotional learning into literacy instruction, helping students persist through frustration and take pride in progress
• Offering teachers professional development focused on understanding and responding to the unique needs of post-pandemic learners

These are not radical shifts; they are refinements. But collectively, they represent a new literacy ecosystem — one that treats emotional readiness, family partnership and differentiated instruction as equally essential.

Every generation of educators faces a defining challenge. For this one, it is helping the COVID cohort reclaim what was lost and discover what they can become. The educators in our survey didn’t express despair; they expressed determination. They see that this group of kindergarteners has resilience, empathy and curiosity born of their circumstances. What they need now is consistent support, connection and time.

If we meet this moment with patience and creativity, these children could grow into some of the most adaptable learners our schools have ever seen. It’s not about what was missed, it’s about what’s possible next.

This story was originally published by . for their newsletters.

The past few years, California has been all about the ABCs, 1-2-3s and the wheels on the bus, investing more than $5 billion in early childhood education.

But kindergarten, a staple of elementary schools for more than a century, remains optional. Despite nearly a half dozen legislative attempts to require it, California is one of 32 states that doesn’t mandate that all 5-year-olds attend school.

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That might change next year. Legislators plan to introduce a new bill to require kindergarten and they’re confident that it will meet a better fate than its predecessors, which either died in committee or were vetoed, largely due to the cost.

“Kids need to be around other kids, they need to be learning. It matters,” said Patricia Lozano, executive director of Early Edge California, which advocates for early childhood education. “I don’t see why California can’t make this happen.”

The data, advocates say, Children who attend kindergarten have higher test scores in math and reading in third grade and beyond and higher high school graduation rates. They’re also less likely to be suspended or drop out later in their school careers.

Why some parents opt out

While California requires all school districts to offer kindergarten, it doesn’t require families to enroll their children. Most do, but about 5% a year opt out. The reasons vary: some families believe their children aren’t ready for the rigors of school, and others are happy with their children’s current arrangement, whether it’s a preschool, day care or staying home with family.

Latino families are the to send their children to kindergarten, data shows. Lozano said there’s a variety of reasons for this: they either don’t know about it due to a language barrier; they’re afraid to register their children in school due to immigration concerns; parents are working so hard they’ve missed notices from the school district; or some combination of all three. Regardless, schools need to improve their outreach to that community, she said.

Cecelia Kiss, a bilingual kindergarten teacher in the Sacramento City Unified School District, said she recently had a student whose mother was deported, and the child was unable to attend school because there was no one available to drive her. Even though the child loved school and the family placed a high value on education, it was logistically impossible to get the child to school. It took several weeks for the school and family to make transportation arrangements.

“For Latinos, education is so important. We want to give our kids the best we can,” said Kiss, who is also the parent of a kindergartner. “But sometimes we can’t do everything. We rely on kind teachers to care for our children, to help them learn, to help them be prepared for first grade.”

said that the fact that kindergarten isn’t mandatory discourages already disadvantaged families from enrolling their children. In her experience, Latino families have tremendous respect for the public school system and if the system tells them kindergarten is optional, and therefore not a priority, “they listen to that.”

That’s why she’s proposed two previous bills to make kindergarten mandatory. The state should be unequivocal in its message to families that early childhood education is essential for students’ success in school and life, she said. The state’s already to all 4-year-olds, expanded state-funded preschool and added more slots to its subsidized child care program. Bolstering kindergarten should be next, she said.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction agrees. He said this month that making kindergarten mandatory for 2026, and he pledged to support any bill that addresses it. Several legislators said they’d consider sponsoring one.

‘Not an urgent need’

Both of Rubio’s previous kindergarten bills died – in the Senate Appropriations Committee and when Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it. In his veto note, he said he supports early education generally but the state hadn’t budgeted the cost, estimated to be $268 million annually.

“While the author’s intent is laudable … it is important to remain disciplined when it comes to spending, particularly spending that is ongoing,” Newsom wrote.

Plenty of groups supported the bills, including the California Teachers Association — the state’s largest teachers union — and a slew of school districts. But it had a few opponents, namely the Homeschool Association of California. The group’s opposition was not based on the merits of kindergarten itself, but on the state’s ability to strip rights from parents.

“Most kids are already going to kindergarten. But some parents have good reasons for keeping their kids at home,” said Jamie Heston, a member of the group’s board. “Parents want the choice to decide what’s best for their individual child.”

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association hasn’t taken a position on the issue, but generally opposes new initiatives that cost money — including mandatory kindergarten. That stance isn’t likely to change if a kindergarten bill resurfaces, the group’s vice president Susan Shelley said this week.

“From a budgetary point of view, there’s a lot of pressure this year to keep spending under control,” Shelley said. “This would not be a one-time cost. It would be ongoing. And there’s not an urgent need to expand kindergarten, compared to other more pressing needs facing the state right now.”

Bruce Fuller, an education professor at UC Berkeley who studies early childhood education, said the Legislature should focus on more pressing needs facing the under-6 crowd. Those include how the rollout of transitional kindergarten has led to the closure of many preschools, leaving many 3-year-olds without a place to go. Also, Head Start is struggling with funding and other obstacles imposed by the Trump administration, including attempts to bar families who are not citizens. And even though California has expanded access to state-funded preschool, not enough families know they’re eligible.

“Not that many families opt out of kindergarten, so it’s not a huge need,” Fuller said. “There are more immediate concerns.”

Learning gaps among students

Still, Rubio is confident that a kindergarten bill has a good chance of passing this year, largely because the Legislature has seen since it last voted on a  kindergarten bill in 2024. Twenty-seven new senators and Assembly members were elected last fall.

For Rubio, whose parents immigrated from Mexico, the issue is personal. Although she did well in school, her twin brother did not. At an early age, he was wrongly placed in special education, fell behind and struggled throughout his time in school, eventually dropping out. Rubio believes he would have fared better if he had a high-quality early childhood education.

She’s also an elementary school teacher who’s seen the gap between students who’ve been to preschool, TK and kindergarten, versus those who had never enrolled in school at all until first grade. Children who’ve been to kindergarten know how to hold a pencil, write their names, count to 20, take turns and maybe even read or do basic math, she said. Those who haven’t lag far behind their peers and some never catch up, she said.

“I have very vivid memories of my students just breaking down crying at the end of the year because they couldn’t do a test. They didn’t know the answers, and that’s so heartbreaking to see,” said Rubio, who’s on leave from her job teaching at Monrovia Unified in Los Angeles County. “It’s hard on them, and it’s hard on the teachers because those children need a lot of extra help.”

Lozano said she thinks the bill will pass eventually. The initiative would cost money, but the state would save money in the long run if more students succeeded in school and graduated.

“It took us 20 years to get TK. It takes time to change minds, change policies,” Lozano said. “There are so many benefits to kindergarten, especially for the kids who need it the most. We believe the benefits outweigh the costs.”

This article was and was republished under the license.

For the first five years of children’s lives, many families are experiencing child care challenges — which have been at the center of discussions among since Gov. Josh Stein established the group in March.

But gaps in child care do not disappear once children start kindergarten. Finding affordable, high-quality child care solutions for school-age children should be part of the state’s continuum of care, advocates and providers told the task force Monday.

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“The parents I work with don’t experience child care as a 0 to 5 situation,” said Beth Messersmith, task force member and campaign director of MomsRising’s North Carolina chapter. “They experience it as a 0 to 12 situation, or older.”

Many families need care before and after the school day and during the summer months in order to work and keep students safe and engaged. However, four in five students in North Carolina do not have access to the out-of-school care they need, according to from the national Afterschool Alliance.

Students, including young children, are instead spending time unsupervised. About 3% of K-5 students, 11% of middle school students, and 34% of high school students spend an average of 5.7 hours without adult supervision per week, according to the same report.

Providers shared their struggles to serve children despite high demand and the benefits children, families, and businesses see when out-of-school care is accessible. After-school programs face many of the same challenges as child care programs. And some child care programs serving children before kindergarten also serve school-age children when school is out of session.

Families need care that works with their schedules and engages students in activities that support them academically and socially, said Elizabeth Anderson, executive director of the , a nonprofit under the Public School Forum of North Carolina. That requires funding, workforce supports, transportation, and creative partnerships, Anderson and a panel of providers said.

“The more we can create a spectrum of opportunities for birth through grade 12, the more that children and families in our state are going to recognize the positive economic impacts of those investments,” Anderson said.

Report due in December on child care solutions ahead of short session

The governor’s task force will release a report by the end of December with recommendations on how the state should expand access to high-quality, affordable child care. Stein formed the group earlier this year as pandemic-era child care funding ran out and advocates across the state and country called for consistent public investment to meet families’ needs.

The state legislature did not allocate new funding for child care this year and did not pass a new comprehensive budget. Some new funding, though lower than advocates’ and state officials’ requests, was included in budget proposals from Stein’s office and the House and Senate, but those proposals were not ultimately passed.

The main child care legislation that was passed made regulatory changes to loosen staffing requirements and allow providers to serve more children in classrooms with appropriate space and teacher-to-child ratios.

The task force will meet again in February, though a date is not yet set. Ahead of next year’s short session, members on Monday discussed what role the group should play in moving policy solutions forward, including six recommendations in the :

• Set a statewide child care subsidy reimbursement rate floor.
• Develop approaches to offer non-salary benefits to child care professionals.
• Explore partnerships with the University of North Carolina System, N.C. Community Colleges System, and K-12 public school systems to increase access to child care for public employees and students.
• Explore subsidized or free child care for child care teachers.
• Link existing workforce compensation and support programs for early childhood professionals into a cohesive set of supports.
• Explore the creation of a child care endowment to fund child care needs.

As the state faces many funding requests, federal funding uncertainty, and slim tax revenue, members said more legislators need to be aware of the state’s child care crisis and why it’s relevant to the state’s economy and future.

“Maybe we have some more work to do around actually educating and engaging members of the General Assembly to get this on their radar and build more champions,” said Susan Gale Perry, CEO of and task force member.

Funding to address issues of access, quality, and affordability is needed, members said, and considering existing funding streams rather than new ones might be more politically feasible in the short term.

“Certain proposals about, ‘Let’s just go raise taxes,’ are probably not going to be something that is going to get across the aisle agreement, but it does create the opportunity to looking at areas where tax rates are already set, or certain revenue streams are already existing,” said Mary Elizabeth Wilson, task force member and the Department of Commerce’s chief of staff and general counsel.

, who chairs the task force along with Lt. Gov. Rachel Hunt, said he and other legislators will be introducing legislation that would double the tax rates on sports gambling.

“If it’s for the children, everybody needs to support it,” Burgin said. “And I don’t believe in gambling … I’m doing it because we need the money.”

Child care fixes would also increase tax revenue, said Erica Palmer-Smith, executive director of nonprofit NC Child and task force member.

“(The generated revenue) would more than cover the overall cost that we would need to put in in the long run to fix the child care system,” Smith said.

‘The gap between 3 and 6 and between May and August’

Many families either do not have an after-school program nearby, do not have transportation to programs, or cannot afford programs, Anderson said in a presentation to the group Monday.

In 2025, 188,295 children participated in after-school programs, but 664,362 additional children would have if they had access, according to the presentation.

Programs are funded through a mix of private grant funding, public funding, and parent tuition. The two biggest funding sources are from the federal government: the , which funds child care subsidies for young children and school-age children up through 12 years old, and through the Department of Public Instruction.

After-school programs exist in all different types of facilities — community-based organizations, schools, faith-based organizations, and child care centers and home-based programs. Anderson described these programs as “folks stepping in to fill the gap between 3 and 6 and between May and August.”

Students benefit when they access out-of-school programs, she said. In the case of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers, 72% improved their attendance in the 2023-24 school year, 75% of students had decreased suspensions, and 90% improved their overall engagement in school.

Anderson said the skills employers are seeking align with those that children are gaining from after-school programs, like problem-solving, teamwork and collaboration, communication, and leadership.

“We know that our after-school programs are an important place where children get to interact with one another and interact with mentors and positive adult figures that help them build these skills, which ultimately help them to become more successful, independent earners in the future,” she said.

Like child care programs in the early years, after-school programs not only help children, but allow parents to work. In a survey from the national report, 91% of parents said these programs help them be able to keep their job.

Families face particular challenges in the summer months. from LendingTree of more than 600 parents found this year that 66% of parents who seek summer care struggle to afford it, and 62% had taken on debt to pay for summer care.

Anderson said more conversations on child care should extend beyond the early childhood period. She pointed to that found educational and occupational attainment improvements were higher when children had access to both early care and education and out-of-school care once they entered school.

“It is something that parents need and want,” she said. “I think that we talk a lot about what happens for children birth to 5, but a child does not turn 5 years old and suddenly not need opportunity.”

Subsidy funding and reform would help, experts say

North Carolina is one of 23 states that does not have state level funding for after-school care, Anderson said. Anderson and panelists said funding is needed to retain teachers, increase access, provide transportation, and help families afford care.

Jon Williams, manager of the statewide at the Southwestern Child Development Commission, is focused on increasing the quality of out-of-school care across the state. He said the transient nature of school-age professionals disrupts consistency for children, families, and programs. A burdensome orientation process creates challenges for owners and directors constantly onboarding new people.

Williams said business training for after-school program directors would be helpful. Many have educational backgrounds and lack the business expertise to be successful in a challenging environment.

“They don’t have that financial background that is needed to run a business, and that creates a lot of financial instability,” Williams said. “If they don’t know how to orient or get new staffing in, that creates a huge problem.”

A policy change that several panelists and task force members raised as a need is to align the for child care subsidies across age groups. Right now, families who earn less than 200% of the federal poverty line are eligible for child care subsidies when their children are 5 years old or younger. But for school-age children, the threshold lowers: families must make less than 133% of the poverty line.

That disrupts care for families whose children need after-school care going to kindergarten or for families with multiple children of different ages who would prefer to send all of their children to one program.

A statewide subsidy floor, which is one of the policy priorities of the task force, would also help school-age care providers, said Erica Simmons, vice president of youth development at YMCA of Catawba Valley.

The floor would raise the per-child rate that child care programs receive to the state’s average rate. In cases where programs receive more than the average rate, they would continue receiving the same amount.

“(The floor) would make it a little more equitable,” Simmons said.

She said it costs similar amounts to provide care at her licensed programs in rural and urban communities. But the subsidy rates are much lower in rural areas.

“We have the same requirements for staff, we have the same programming requirements,” she said. “There’s no difference in the amount that we spend per program as an organization. However, there is a very big difference in what we are able to capture for subsidy. So there’s a big funding gap.”

Williams said there was a gap of $8,000 for one program just last month between the cost of services and the subsidy reimbursement. Annually, some programs in her network accrue around $100,000 in funding gaps for caring for children through subsidy.

Programs also receive subsidy payments retroactively. Changing the timing of funding could relieve some of the financial burden from programs, Williams said.

“I get paid via subsidy after I provide the services, and that’s a huge problem if I’m already in the red,” he said.

“… When we think about the mental health of our administration and our directors, that just adds fuel to the flame,” Williams said. “And it creates another gap, a 30-day gap, where I can say, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ and then that care drops off. So we have to rethink how we get that money out in the state. We have to rethink the rates at which they are given.”

Panelists also shared that liability insurance rates have risen drastically. Williams said her program’s rates have increased by 44% over the last year, a trend among child care providers overall.  from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) found 80% of respondents saw their liability insurance costs increase in the last year and 62% reported difficulty finding or affording it.

Updates on care for public employees, workforce supports, and funding models

The task force has been split up into three subgroups which have been studying how to move toward the group’s six recommendations.

Samantha Cole, child care business liaison at the Department of Commerce, said a subgroup focusing on expanding child care access for public employees has looked at models across K-12, community college, and UNC-system schools to create child care solutions.

They studied on-campus early learning models at Buncombe County Schools’ , North Carolina A&T University’s , and at Haywood Community College.

“We really see that there have been a lot of successes that have come about in these three examples and others, but they’re hyperlocalized,” Cole said. More external communication is needed for other campuses to understand how and why peer institutions are offering child care.

Madhu Vulimiri, senior advisor for health and families policy for Stein’s office, said the subgroup focused on workforce compensation and supports has been studying strategies to ensure early childhood teachers have access to non-salary benefits like health insurance.

They have studied the possibility of adding early childhood teachers as an eligible population for , subsidizing ACA marketplace premiums through state dollars, and educating early childhood providers about the recently launched Carolina Health Works, which offers options for groups of small businesses.

The group is also studying how existing workforce supports like TEACH scholarships, child care academies, and apprenticeships could be more seamlessly tied together to strengthen the early childhood profession. They have requested that the Hunt Institute create a map to demonstrate what supports are available in what counties.

“That will help us see more holistically, where do we have resources and where are there gaps, and help us hopefully target future resources that we might have to expand those statewide,” Vulimiri said.

The third group, which is focused on financing, has been studying several states’ approaches to endowments and other funding mechanisms for child care, including Nebraska, Connecticut, Arizona, Montana, and Washington, D.C. They aim to develop a paper that weighs the options for North Carolina and analyses costs and benefits of each.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

In New York City, America’s largest school district, the birthday cut-off is even later: Dec. 31. One-third of children are . This is a cause of concern for many families.

The city Department of Education doesn’t see it as a problem. In an email, a spokesperson told me its official stance is, “We work to provide all families access to a world-class education, and we work closely with families to ensure students’ placements are academically and developmentally appropriate, in alignment with state guidelines. Our policies allow for flexibility, our kindergarten curriculum is responsive to the needs of our younger learners, and our dedicated educators are prepared to support every student.”

Not all are appeased.

“I have a 4-year-old who will start kindergarten this fall but doesn’t turn 5 until after Thanksgiving,” worried mom CK told me. “I think it’s a big disservice to these kids. The amount of sitting isn’t developmentally appropriate, and the lack of free play is concerning.”

Parents are justified in their concerns. As the summarized in June:

Several studies have concluded that kids who are youngest in their class are disproportionately diagnosed with ADHD. A Michigan study found that kindergartners who are the youngest in their grade are 60% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than the oldest in their grade. And it doesn’t affect just kindergarteners: A North Carolina study found that in fifth and eighth grade, the youngest children were almost twice as likely as the oldest to be prescribed medication for ADHD.

The research didn’t sit well with some teachers. One blasted my social media inquiry seeking views on redshirting by writing, “ADHD is a very serious IEP (Individualized Education Plan) and we don’t hand them out like candy.”

Others, however, agreed.

“My daughter was one of the youngest in her class,” wrote an anonymous mother. “The teacher and school counselor mislabeled her with psychological disorders that both NY special education testing and private neurological tests did not support.”

“More of my students with an IEP have a birthday in the second half of the calendar year,” confirmed Mary C., who has been a special ed teacher for 12 years. “I understand where an incoming K parent would be concerned that their December baby is much younger than a June baby.”

That was the case with Upper West Side parent KE’s son. “He is the youngest and smallest boy in the grade,” she wrote. “He started kindergarten at 4 years old, still sucking his thumb. The physical, emotional, social, psychological and other developmental differences between a 5-year-old born in January and a 4-year-old born in December impacts everything from holding a pencil to kicking a ball, to the length of time one can sit and concentrate. It was too early, too soon and too young, but we literally had no choice in the matter in order to enroll him.”

The problems that pop up with younger students can reverberate .

Pree Kaur lamented that her daughter “is always the younger one and is not as mentally developed as her peers, so she always feels as if something is wrong with her.”

The Riverdale dad of a son born in November wrote, “He had some difficulty following his teacher’s instructions in first grade, and his teacher repeatedly pointed out that he has difficulty sitting still, staying focused, etc. We had him evaluated by a pediatric developmental specialist and he was diagnosed with ADHD. I really struggle with the whole situation, as I believe if we were able to get him to go to school a year later, matters may have been different.”

“My daughter attended a citywide gifted program. She was doing great, but it came with a price,” confessed Annie Tate. “She was high-functioning until high school, where she was overwhelmed and was diagnosed with ADHD, a diagnosis I believe she wouldn’t have received if I didn’t send her to school at 4 years, 8 months. She would have matured emotionally and physically to be a healthier, happier child.”

Pediatric occupational therapist KJL sees this situation frequently: “Children with ADHD have a 30% delay in executive function compared to their peers. Combine that with young ages, and these children are set up to fail.”

When I posed the question of allowing parents to hold back their children on my , the most frequent response I received was, “SOMEONE has to be the youngest.”

That’s true. But the situation can still be ameliorated.

Grades with multiple classes can be broken up into three- or four-month bands, so students are learning with a narrower-aged peer group.

Repeating a year should be a more acceptable option, unlike the situation faced by mom Heather Hooks: “My son was very behind academically in first grade. The school refused to hold him back and cited studies on ‘retention’ being not good for kids in the long run. I found these didn’t take into consideration that this was not straight retention, but redshirting an ADHD kid. Other studies were significantly different, and suggested these kids have better outcomes and are less likely to be medicated.”

Another mom was told her daughter “wasn’t behind enough,” despite the child’s pleas that “it’s too much for my head.”

Any steps taken to help New York City’s youngest learners would provide the largest experimental sample size in the country, making those results potentially beneficial for students across America.

Based on what happens in NYC, the educational system can stop treating children as developmentally identical and schools as one-size-fits-all, giving families more options.

As Maureen Yusuf-Morales, who has worked at public, charter and independent schools, suggests, “Parents with children born after September should be allowed choice with guidance based on developmental milestones, as opposed to birthdays being the only hard-and-fast rule.”

“They teach you ABCs,” Pobrega said as he picked up her third grader after school. “They teach you how to write. They teach you small little words and it prepares them for first grade.”

But not all parents value kindergarten as much as Pobrega. So many parents treat kindergarten as less important than other grades that it adds up into a major problem — nationally, across Ohio and particularly at Lincoln Park and other high-poverty schools.

Kindergarten has the highest absenteeism problem of any elementary grade in several states, studies have shown. In Ohio, attendance can be so bad that state data show some kindergartens approaching 90% chronic absenteeism.

Though chronic absenteeism — students missing 10 percent or more of school days — is drawing national attention for high school students, there has long been a second, less publicized, peak in absenteeism in kindergarten and sometimes preschool that is also damaging. 

Hedy Chang, one of the leading researchers of absenteeism and its effects, said kindergarten absenteeism needs educator’s attention, not just high school absences.

“You really want to worry about both,” said Chang, founder of the nonprofit Attendance Works. “You want to care about your youngest incoming learners, because that’s going to be critical for the long term. What you don’t invest in and address early, you might pay for later.”

Consider: In Ohio, more than a quarter of Ohio kindergarteners missed at least 18 days of school in the 2023-24 school year, state data shows, making kindergarten the highest chronic absenteeism rate of any elementary school grade in the state.

That matches findings by nonprofit FutureEd in March that kindergarteners had the highest chronic absenteeism of any grade in Hawaii and Utah last school year. In all 20 other states FutureEd looked at, Kindergarten had the highest chronic absenteeism rates before 7th grade.

“We see this U-shaped curve,” when charting absenteeism by grade, said Amber Humm Patnode, acting director of Proving Ground, a Harvard based research and absenteeism intervention effort. There is high absenteeism in kindergarten, it improves for several years, and typically rises again in late middle school.

She said there are really two separate absenteeism problems — one for the youngest and one for the oldest students — that need different strategies to fix.

Ohio State University professor Arya Ansari, who specializes in early childhood education, called kindergarten absenteeism “problematic” because missed classes add up over the years.

“Kids who missed school in kindergarten do less well academically in terms of things like counting, letters, word identification, language skills.., they do less well in terms of their executive function skills, and they do less well socially and behaviorally,” Ansari said. 

“Days missed in preschool or kindergarten kind of set the stage, or are precursors for future absences,” he added. “So when you’re frequently absent, it kind of begins to have a snowball effect and sets habits that are harder to break later on.”

There’s also another dynamic at play with kindergarten absences: It varies by school, in very dramatic ways.

Though Ohio’s kindergarten chronic absenteeism rate was just above 26% last year, 27 kindergartens had chronic absenteeism triple that rate, coming close to or exceeding 80%. Lincoln Park had the worst rate in the state last year at nearly 90%, with close to 9 out of 10 kindergarteners qualifying as chronically absent.

Adding to the damage, the worst kindergarten absenteeism is happening in places where the students need it most. Ohio’s list of highest absenteeism rates is dominated by schools in, or next to, the state’s biggest or most poor cities — Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo and Youngstown — where students have performed well below suburban students for years.

In contrast, affluent and higher-performing schools easily have less than 5% kindergarten chronic absenteeism, with several at zero.

Students in the high-poverty schools are not only missing days that could start them on a path to catching up, the absences are holding everyone back even more, Chang said.

“I consider high (absenteeism) at 20%, 30% in a school,” Chang said. “80%? That’s an extremely high level of chronic absence. When schools have really high levels of chronic absence, the churn just makes everything harder. It makes it harder for teachers to teach, set classroom norms and kids to learn.”

Some of why kindergarten absenteeism is so high is easy to understand. For many kids, it’s the first year of school, so kindergartens become superspreader sites for colds, flu and other illnesses kids haven’t been exposed to before. Since chronic absenteeism includes any days missed, even for illness, rates could legitimately spike.

The pandemic added a twist to that, said Robert Balfanz, a Johns Hopkins University professor and another leader in absenteeism research.

“It used to be that parents got guidance (that) If your kid just had sniffles, you could send them to school,” Balfanz said. “Then, coming out of the pandemic, parents got the message… perhaps overload, perhaps not…that should you have any sign of illness, you could have COVID. That’s another factor.”

Just as important: Only 17 states required students to attend kindergarten as of 2023, according to the Education Commission of the States. That easily leads parents to consider it optional and for school to really start in first grade.

Then there’s kindergartners’ need for parents or siblings to take them to school or to their bus stop. If school and work schedules don’t align, or if a sibling’s school is different, kindergarten falls lower on the priority list.

“A kindergartener not coming to school is not necessarily the kindergartner saying, ‘I’m not going to school today,’ ” said Jessica Horowitz-Moore, chief of student and academic supports for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. “That has to do a lot with the parents.”

Parents oftentimes don’t appreciate how fast absences add up. Another parent picking up children at Lincoln Park was a perfect example. That father said his child only missed school “a couple times a month” when in kindergarten. But twice a month is 10% of the 20 school days in a month (Four weeks of five days each) which is right on pace for chronic absenteeism.

Some of the kindergartens in Ohio with the worst absenteeism in 2023-24 were failing in many other ways too: Two charter elementary schools with kindergarten chronic absenteeism over 87% closed before school began this academic year. Some, including the Stepstone Academy charter school in Cleveland, did not respond to multiple messages from The 74.

Lincoln Park, with the worst kindergarten absenteeism problem in the state, is part of the ACCEL charter schools, a fast-growing multi-state charter network, that had five of Ohio’s 10-worst kindergartens for chronic absenteeism.

Representatives of the network said the schools are often in high poverty neighborhoods with families that move frequently, which disrupts attendance. Students often don’t have reliable transportation, they said, and Ohio’s charter schools have less money to put toward attendance issues than districts.

Lincoln Park school leaders say they’re trying to improve attendance and academic performance. Both the school’s principal and kindergarten teacher are new this year and interim Principal Erika Vogtsberger said she expects the preschool attendance rate to go up from 74% last year to about 80% this school year. 

She said fewer families are moving during this school year than last, and more than 90% of Lincoln Park’s students have signed up to return, bringing stability she thinks will help attendance.

The school has also been trying for a few years to encourage attendance. It has early morning and afterschool sessions so working parents can drop children off at 6:30 am and pick them up as late as 5:30 pm. It holds special events like pancake breakfasts for families to encourage attendance and gives classrooms with 90 percent attendance for five days a chance to spin a wheel for rewards like pizza parties or a chance to wear pajamas to school for a day.

But even at 90% goal to earn prizes still leaves 10% of students absent racking up days toward chronic absenteeism.

“We have to make it attainable,” Vogtsberger said. “If I had it at 95%, the kids who are here without missing a day are going to get discouraged because… we do have a small cluster of people who are out pretty regularly.”

“Nobody would get it,” added Sherree Dillions, a regional superintendent for ACCEL. “At least, with the 90%, peer to peer pressure is a big piece. You say ‘You better come … You better come tomorrow, because we want that pizza party’, or we want whatever … Because the kid wants the prize.”

Voghtsberger said she also does not want to punish students, either, because their parents aren’t doing what they need to do.

“No matter how bad some students want to be at school, if their parents are not getting up in the morning and bringing them, they cannot get to school, and… that’s not their fault.” she said. 

School officials also said parents are a problem beyond not bringing children to school. Parents, they said, are often abusive when called or visited to check on students and have sometimes threatened school officials with guns or dogs. Ohio has also moved away from taking action against students or parents for truancy, so parents face no penalty for keeping students home, as they do in other states, including Indiana, West Virginia and Iowa.

“If I had my way, parents would be held accountable across the board,” Dillions said.

The Toledo school district, whose Sherman elementary school has the worst absenteeism of any school district kindergarten in Ohio, also saw parents push back when the school called or visited about students skipping school. The district decided in 2017 to pay for well-known people in neighborhoods, like football coaches or local volunteers, to serve as “attendance champions” to talk to parents instead of school officials.

“(They) go out to the homes,” Baker said. “They complete home visits. They work with the families to remove barriers to attendance. They’re in the buildings every day, building relationships with students, removing barriers on that end as well.”

“They are not truancy officers,” Baker stressed. “They are not to issue any punishment. That’s not their thing. This is about, ‘How can I help get Johnny back into school?”

The champions have reduced some of the tension between schools and parents, she said.

Baker has seen better attendance this year, so she expects kindergarten chronic absenteeism there to fall from about 87% to 77% — still about triple the statewide rate.

There are some reasons for optimism across Ohio and nationally. Absenteeism at all grades, including kindergarten, is improving yearly since the end of the pandemic everywhere.

Baker said, though, that kindergarten may need to be more of a priority.

“We’re going to have to really hit preschool and kindergarten a little bit harder with our interventions that we are setting up,” she said. “We have been very much focused on high school. But I think for us as a district … we really have to continue to hit this hard across the board.”

Rachel Hodge worked as a housekeeper at a hospital and was earning an online degree in social work when schools shut their doors due to COVID. Spending hours in front of a laptop with a 5-year-old just didn’t fit into the picture.

But in the fall of 2020, her daughter Vanessa was set to start kindergarten at KIPP Upper Roseville Academy in Newark, New Jersey. With Hodge working and school still remote, Vanessa spent her days with a babysitter, who cared for multiple kids and struggled to manage the technology for virtual learning.

By November, Vanessa was one of 24 kindergartners in Newark’s KIPP charter network listed as missing from remote school.

That’s when KIPP staff created the , a condensed school day that accommodated parents’ upended schedules. The program, which ran weeknights from 5:30 to 8 p.m, remained in place until the end of the school year.

“It was really a sad and scary time,” Hodge said. “But I was like, ‘The kid’s got to learn.’ ”

As Hodge worked on her own assignments from Rutgers University, kindergarten teacher Meredith Eger led Vanessa and classmates in songs and games, and through the reading and math they’d missed since August. 

“It was fun and it was kind of weird,” Vanessa, now 9, recalls. “When class was over, I didn’t have to pack up, because all my stuff was at home.”

The program is a rare example of a school that moved quickly to keep children from missing out on their first year of school — a critical transition period in which they typically start developing academic and social skills. At a time when hundreds of thousands of parents struggled to balance work and Zoom, or held their children out of school until first grade, KIPP’s after-hours program offered families some consistency in the midst of turmoil. 

But nationally, many students who missed out on a normal kindergarten are still feeling the lingering effects of that lost year. released this month documented how the pandemic’s youngest learners experienced significant declines in general knowledge, cognitive development, and language and social skills compared with their peers before COVID. Academically, these students are still performing below pre-pandemic math and reading levels. 

Five years later, Vanessa is one of 11 night-school kindergartners who still attends KIPP Newark schools. She “writes up a storm,” Eger said, and often draws during lunch. Others prefer math. Parents notice their kids sometimes keep to themselves at home — a preference they blame on a shortage of playtime with peers during lockdowns. The educators who ran the program, which served students up to third grade, enjoy a special bond with the kids they nurtured through that trying period, grabbing hugs in the hallway or cafeteria when they can. 

“They were falling drastically behind,” said Rebecca Fletcher, the charter network’s director of school operations. “It was a bright spot in such a dark time.”

‘They weren’t coming to school’

Thomas Dee, an education professor at Stanford University who tracked in kindergarten enrollment during school closures, called KIPP’s night school “a creative way to meet the needs of parents during the crisis and one that wasn’t common in traditional public schools.” Such flexibility may have also kept families from pursuing options, like pods or private schools that were in-person, he said. 

KIPP leaders didn’t compare the performance of the evening kindergartners to students who logged in during the day, making it difficult to measure student outcomes. But the program was born of necessity, Fletcher said: The abbreviated school day was better than no kindergarten at all. 

“They weren’t coming to school,” she said. “It was about meeting families where they were.” 

Parents turned to night kindergarten for a variety of reasons.

Nateesha St. Claire had just had her third child and couldn’t juggle an infant daughter and online school for Omari, her kindergartner.

“At night, there were really no distractions,” she said. The baby was asleep. But it was still a struggle to keep Omari focused on his teacher. If St. Claire didn’t sit close, he’d walk away from the screen. He frequently asked why he couldn’t go to school.

Now in fourth grade, Omari is “thriving” in math, growing in reading and getting help in speech class to pronounce words more clearly, his mother said.

‘A labor of love’ 

One advantage of the evening sessions were smaller classes, which allowed staff to identify students who had learning delays or qualified for special education services. Such needs might have gone undetected in a larger online group, said Kaneshia Clifford, who was principal of the program. 

Two children were on the autism spectrum and others, she said, were nonverbal or “mildly verbal.” She recruited special education teachers to the team who broke lessons down into smaller segments and organized separate Zoom groups for more targeted support. But keeping the kids’ attention while trying to assess their skills proved daunting. Teacher Adrienne Rodriguez Liriano rewarded students who focused on lessons by putting her dog Harlem on her lap in front of the camera. 

“Teachers had to keep a lot of things on their brain,” said Clifford, who had her own kindergartner at home at the time. “They’re looking at screens, asking kids to hold up white boards. They’re trying to monitor engagement in a virtual space, while also collecting data.”

And that was after a full school day of teaching online and sometimes delivering laptops and hotspots to students’ homes. Fletcher described the schedule as “grueling,” but also “a labor of love and devotion.” 

Because of the late hour, some students showed up on Zoom with wet hair and wearing pajamas. Others ate dinner during class. Some nodded off.

Beatriz Warren, who worked during the day as a home health aide in New York City, welcomed the evening option, which allowed her to attend to her son Josiah.

“It’s a mom thing, I guess,” she said. 

Ear infections and surgeries caused Josiah’s learning to be delayed. He received therapy at home before the pandemic, but as kindergarten approached, Warren worried about whether to put him in a general or special education class. Night kindergarten offered a welcome mix of individualized support and as-close-to-normal a classroom experience as possible. 

“He bonded with the kids and the teachers,” she said. And when schools reopened, Warren enrolled him in KIPP Upper Roseville Academy, where Liriano, his teacher, worked — even though it was a half hour away. Liriano now teaches outside of the KIPP network, but still Facetimes with Josiah and his mom.

“He asks about my daughter,” Liriano said. “We became invested in each other’s lives because of the environment we set for them.”

‘He lost a year’

With their children nearing the end of elementary school, parents continue to see the ripple effects of a year without in-person learning. 

Josiah has overcome most learning delays and “does not stop talking,” his mother said. But he often spends time alone rather than playing with friends or toys. And Hodge described Vanessa as a “hermit” who often retreats to her room.

“The kids were so young, they were conditioned to be inside because of COVID,” Hodge said. “I feel like a lot of the kids still are behind socially … because they couldn’t have normal interactions.” 

Aminah Cooley’s grandson Ayden, also part of the evening kindergarten program, didn’t hold a pencil correctly until nearly second grade, she said.

“They were looking at the screen. A lot of times, they weren’t using a pencil,” she said. Now a fourth grader, Ayden loves math and enjoys the popular Dog Man series of graphic novels by Dav Pilkey. But academically, he’s not where he should be.

“He’s behind,” Cooley said. “He lost a year.”

In the fall of 2020, Ayden often missed out on daytime virtual school. His mother was looking for work, internet access was spotty and the “dynamics of the household,” Cooley said, weren’t conducive to keeping a 5-year-old in front of the computer.

Cooley shopped on Facebook Marketplace for a table and chair set so he could do his work and called his house every evening to make sure he logged into class. 

“I knew I had to step in,” she said. “He’s in the fourth grade, and I’m still stepping in.”

When KIPP opened an optional hybrid program in March 2021, Ayden was there.

“He recognized me, and he was like ‘You came to my house!’ ” Fletcher said. “To this day, I’ll see him in the hallway, and he’ll just give me a hug.”

The findings stand in stark contrast to older elementary-school students, who appeared to show accelerated growth and were making up for lost learning over time, and have prompted concerns over the enduring impact of disrupted foundational years.

“We were shocked when we first saw the data. The toll that the pandemic took on these young learners is striking, and we need to pay more attention and prioritize them,” says Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates.

“The data show that these students – these second-graders who were in preschool or were just toddlers during the pandemic – their learning was disrupted and now they are having a harder time recovering and, in some cases, are falling even further behind.” 

The Curriculum Associates report focused on how students who entered kindergarten through fourth grade in the fall of 2021 performed in math and reading over three years, and compared those scores against students who started prior to the pandemic. In doing so, researchers analyzed results from roughly 4 million students. The dataset is unique in that it includes younger children who don’t yet participate in federally-mandated state testing or the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which accounts for why most academic achievement data focuses on older grades. 

While the researchers found that younger students were either falling behind or consistently hovering below pre-pandemic levels in both subjects, they were most challenged by math. Students who were in second and third grade during the 2021-22 school year had bottomed out in their recovery, hovering below pre-pandemic achievement levels. Meanwhile, students who were in kindergarten or first grade at that time had been dropping further below historical trends. 

Even the younger students who were on grade level prior to the pandemic – a subgroup that generally showed less learning loss and quicker recovery times, including for the younger students in reading – were lagging significantly behind. And notably, they made less progress compared to their pre-pandemic peers regardless of whether they attended urban, suburban or rural schools. 

The same is not true of older elementary-school students in reading or math. Students who were in fourth grade during the 2021-22 school year, for example, were hitting pre-pandemic levels in reading and approaching them in math three years later in the spring of 2024.

Why younger students may be struggling 

“Our data don’t speak to the why,” Huff said. “But they do suggest that somewhere along the way these [younger] students did not pick up the foundational skills, the building blocks for reading and math – and especially math – that are crucial for their learning trajectory.”

Though the study was designed to show correlation and not causation, Huff and her team have a handful of working theories.

The pandemic in increasing enrollment in public preschools and kick-started a chronic absenteeism problem that continues today. Given that so many students missed out on pre-K or kindergarten – or received instruction virtually during those years – they may have missed a critical window of learning and development. And, research has long shown, less developed foundational skills can lead to the types of learning gaps the researchers found. 

Research also shows that certain moments in a child’s development are more sensitive to change than others. Children undergo between birth and age five, for example, but it can be . The pandemic was a once-in-a-lifetime disruption. 

“For student learning, periods during which students build foundational skills – the skills most needed to advance learning – may be especially sensitive,” the researchers noted in their published findings. “Thus, disruptions during foundational skill development could create a compounding effect, making recovery a slow endeavor.”

Alongside that hypothesis is another: that the academic recovery efforts used by districts targeted students who were either further along in elementary school, or in middle and high school, or in grades participating in state exams. If that was the case, younger learners may have received less intervention support.

Of course, that’s virtually impossible to track given that districts allocated their state and federal pandemic recovery spending based on needs – staffing, tutoring, summer learning, social-emotional development, etc. – and not by grade-level. 

‘Math is a whole different story’

Angie Rosen, the director of curriculum and instruction at Little Silver Boro School District in New Jersey, says she knew right away that the small, high-performing school district had a problem when they brought back kindergarten and first grade students in November 2021. 

“Reading is one thing. Parents can read with kids. But math is a whole different story,” she says. “It’s more about understanding number sense, manipulating numbers and understanding why you’re doing what you’re doing.”

To blunt the pandemic’s impact, Rosen organized intense professional development for math instruction for first and second grade teachers. 

“We knew that parents wouldn’t teach math like we were teaching math, so that’s where we started,” she says. “We worked hard at it.”

Rosen says the key to getting their students back on track has been to obsess over their benchmark data to figure out where students have stopped making recovery and plug those holes.

“You have to look at where the gaps are, look at where it’s not measuring up, and then target it and address it,” she says. “You can’t do every grade level and every year in every subject. But I think that’s our success – we pay attention to the data and use it.”

To be sure, the Curriculum Associate data is the first of its kind to suggest that the county’s youngest learners are uniquely stalled out and, in some cases, falling further behind. Some researchers caution that the doomsday finding hasn’t been replicated by other robust analyses of post-pandemic academic loss and recovery – though that’s due to the fact that standardized testing data does not exist for such young students. 

Researchers from Curriculum Associates acknowledge at least some limitations to their methodology and findings, including that despite the large sample size, the data is not nationally representative, they did not use matched samples and did not track the same students pre- and post-pandemic. 

Huff says the data should be a shot across the bow for school districts to invest more recovery resources on their youngest learners.

“We now know their growth trajectory is very much dependent upon how prepared they were when they come into school,” she says. “We want these data to inform helpful, targeted policies and practice. These are data based on millions of students and we know that there are educators, districts and students out there who are bucking the trend.”

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Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom  of California’ transitional kindergarten expansion, saying enrollment in the $2.7 billion program had doubled over the past two years. His comments echoed those of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, who .”

They both pointed to new data showing that enrollment in the free program for 4-year-olds had gone from 75,000 two years ago to 151,000 last year — a significant recovery after steep declines during the pandemic. 

But while the overall numbers are up, the percentage of eligible 4-year-olds enrolled in TK actually fell. As the TK age cut-off widens, the number of eligible children has more than doubled — but the percentage of students who are enrolled dropped between 4 to 7 percentage points between the 2021-22 and 2023-24 school years, depending on how the number of eligible children is calculated.

CalMatters used two approaches to estimate the percent of eligible TK students enrolled: using kindergarten enrollment the same year as a proxy and using general population projections from the Department of Finance. Both approaches show the same trend.

Department of Education spokesperson Elizabeth Sanders said the department uses a method from the Finance Department to calculate the percentage of eligible students in TK but did not provide specifics.

“The trends we see in the percentages of eligible students whose families are enrolling in TK mirror the trends described by (CalMatters’) data set,” she said. “As we expand the number of students and families eligible, we expect the percentage of families who choose to participate to hover around 70% and to increase following full implementation.”

Sanders pointed to the growing number of children attending TK as a hopeful sign for the program, which is intended to boost academic achievement and social skills and prepare students for the rigors of elementary school.

“The fact that we have doubled the number of individual students participating in the program during these implementation years makes us very proud,” Sanders said. 

TK advocates said the increased numbers alone are worth celebrating, and they expect the percentage to inch upward over time.

“This is great, this is what we want to see. It shows that schools are building back trust,” said Patricia Lozano, executive director of Early Edge California, which advocates for early childhood education. “TK is a great option for families, but it’s good for kids, too. Kids need to be around other kids.”

Transitional kindergarten was never meant to be an exclusive early childhood service for families; it’s intended to be one option among several the state offers, Lozano said. So any increase in participation is reason for hope.

Transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds

The state  in 2010, but it was limited mostly to larger districts and was open only to children whose birthdays fell between September and December. In 2021, Newsom expanded it so all 4-year-olds could eventually participate. Rolling out gradually, the eligibility window widens by a few months every year. In 2025-26, all 4-year-olds will be eligible and all districts except charters will be required to offer it.

 that TK and preschool have many benefits for children, including higher rates of graduation and employment, less criminal activity later in life and overall better health, while parents benefit economically from an extra year of free care for their children.

Transitional kindergarten is , a low-key environment where children spend most of their day playing and learning social skills. Typically, children learn to take turns and make friends, express themselves and regulate their emotions, count to 10 and recognize simple words, and learn fine motor skills such as holding a pencil. Unlike preschool, TK teachers are required to have credentials and, by 2025-26, extra units in early childhood education.

Michelle Galindo, a parent in Chula Vista Unified south of San Diego, said she was hesitant at first to send her son Roberto to TK. She’d heard reports of crying children and inexperienced teachers, and 4-year-olds seemed too young for school. 

But she happened to know the teacher and trusted her. Her son thrived in the program, gaining independence, making friends and learning.

“He’s so much more confident. He asks a lot of questions, is more responsible,” Galindo said. “When he got to kindergarten last year, he actually thought it was too easy. The teacher said he was a full year ahead. I’m really glad we sent him to TK.”

Wealthier districts slow to open transitional kindergarten

There are a few theories explaining the stagnant percentage of TK enrollment. One is that not all districts are offering it yet. Districts known as “basic aid” districts have been slow to open TK programs, and some aren’t offering it at all. Basic aid districts are typically wealthy districts that opt out of state funding because they collect more money through local property taxes. Because of that, they can’t get state funding to operate TK classes.

Marin County is home to several basic aid districts that have lagged in opening TK programs. Larkspur-Corte Madera School District , saying it can’t afford to without state help. Ross Elementary doesn’t offer TK, either. The result is that Marin has one of the lowest TK enrollment rates in California, even though the county has pockets of low-income families who would benefit from the free service.

“Everyone thinks TK is a good idea, but for basic aid districts, it’s an unfunded mandate,” said Marin County Superintendent of Schools John A. Carroll. “It’s taken a while, but we’re getting there. Most have now gotten on board.” 

San Francisco Unified also has one of the state’s lowest TK enrollments, with more than four times as many kindergartners as TK students. Statewide, there were 2.4 kindergartners for every TK student last year. San Francisco’s low numbers are partly due to the extensive preschool program the district already offers. They’re also due in part to a steady decline in the number of children living in San Francisco, as parents leave for less expensive locales, said district spokeswoman Laura Dudnick. 

Facilities have also been an obstacle for school districts. Districts must find space for new TK classrooms, which in fast-growing parts of the state has been difficult. Proposition 2, a on the November ballot, would provide funding for schools to build and expand TK classrooms.

Preschool vs. transitional kindergarten

Another hurdle to TK enrollment is preschool. In addition to private preschools and federally funded Head Start programs, California offers free preschool to low-income families. Some parents said they prefer to keep their children in preschool because it’s convenient or they like the program.   

Roslyn Broadnax, a parent in South Los Angeles, said she distrusts the state’s push for TK, fearing that TK will siphon resources from state-funded preschools, which in many cases are long-established, trusted parts of communities.

“The existing preschool system has served low-income kids, kids of color very well,” said Broadnax, who works for Cadre-LA, a nonprofit that advocates for parents in South Los Angeles. “If there’s little difference between preschool and TK, why should a parent move their child to TK? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

 from UC Berkeley found that the TK expansion has had a damaging effect on state preschools and Head Start, as parents move their children out of those programs. Although the overall number of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in early childhood education programs has increased slightly, Head Start centers in California have lost 43,000 preschoolers, while state preschools have lost 9,000 4-year-olds since the TK expansion. The result has been shuttered classrooms, a scarcity of teachers and uncertain futures in what researchers called “pre-K deserts.”

“The real question is, are more families accessing pre-kindergarten overall? We can’t find evidence that they are,” said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at UC Berkeley and an author of the study. “To say that the TK enrollment has doubled relative to a year in which many preschool classrooms were closed (due to COVID) is disingenuous.”

Another hitch is that during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when most preschools closed, California guaranteed funding for them through 2025. Now, the state is paying for half-empty preschools across California and preschools have no incentive to recruit more families, according to the report.

The whole early education system in California is overly complex and confusing for parents, Fuller and his team said. They recommend a streamlined, consolidated system that delivers high-quality, play-based programs that are distributed equitably throughout the state. 

Not enough qualified teachers

 since the beginning of TK. While most school districts have been able to hire enough credentialed teachers, they’ve struggled to hire classroom assistants and teachers who have the extra credits in early childhood education that will be required by 2025-26. Schools reported a 12% vacancy rate for TK teaching assistants at the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, according to a by the Learning Policy Institute.

Ericka Hill, a parent in Los Angeles, said her son was in a mixed kindergarten-TK classroom, with a substitute teacher for half the year. The substitute had little experience in early childhood education and gave the children worksheets to take home every night.

“I don’t think a 4-year-old should be sitting down at a desk. It needs to be age appropriate,” Hill said. “He was resistant to doing the work. It was difficult for all of us.”

San Diego, Los Angeles, Sonoma, Orange and Ventura counties have some of the highest rates of TK enrollment, thanks in part to extensive outreach to parents. Bus advertisements, billboards, online ads, and flyers at day care centers and preschools all helped bring in new families.

Garden Grove Unified, a mostly low-income district in northern Orange County, expanded its TK program so quickly, in fact, that it incurred hefty fines from the state for allegedly enrolling students who didn’t yet qualify and not meeting student-teacher ratios that the state set later. The district is fighting the penalties, but meanwhile nearly every child who’s eligible for TK is enrolled.

“We knew that our families would want to enroll as soon as possible,” said district spokesperson Abby Broyles. “We launched a marketing campaign to get the word out. … Our families have been thrilled with the high-quality TK they’ve received.”

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ASTON, Pa.— In Jodie Murphy’s kindergarten class, math lessons go beyond the basics of counting and recognizing numbers.

On a recent morning, the children used plastic red and yellow dots for a counting exercise: One student tossed the coin-sized dots onto a cookie sheet while another hid her eyes. The second student then opened her eyes, counted up the dots and picked the corresponding number from a stack of cards.

The dots showed up again a few minutes later in a more complex task. Murphy set a two-minute timer, and students counted as many dot arrays as they could, adding or taking away dots to match a corresponding written number. Four dots next to a printed number 6, for example, meant that students had to draw in two extra dots — an important precursor to learning addition.

Kindergarten may be math’s most important year — it lays the groundwork for understanding the relationship between number and quantity and helps develop “number sense,” or how numbers relate to each other, experts and researchers say.

But too often teachers spend that crucial year reinforcing basic information students may already know.  that many kindergarteners learn early on how to count and recognize basic shapes — two areas that make up the majority of kindergarten math content. Though basic math content is crucial for students who begin school with little math knowledge, a growing body of research argues more comprehensive kindergarten math instruction that moves beyond counting could help more students become successful in math later on.

Because so many students nationally are  — a longstanding challenge made worse by remote schooling during the pandemic — experts and educators say more emphasis needs to be put on foundational, early childhood math. But for a variety of reasons, kindergarten often misses the mark: Math takes a backseat to literacy, teachers are often unprepared to teach it, and appropriate curriculum, if it exists at all, can be scattershot, overly repetitive — or both.

Manipulating numbers in different ways, part of a supplemental math curriculum for Murphy’s whole class at Hilltop Elementary in this suburb of Philadelphia, is an attempt to address those problems. In an effort to improve math achievement district-wide, all elementary students in the Chichester School District get an extra 30-minute daily dose of math. In kindergarten, the extra time is spent on foundational skills like understanding numbers and quantity, but also the basics of addition and subtraction, said Diana Hanobeck, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction.

Chichester district leaders say implementing the intervention, called , along with other steps that include hiring a math specialist for each school, has brought urgent attention to students’ math achievement by bringing more students to mastery — and a lot of that has to do with how much students are learning in kindergarten. Student math achievement, which dropped to a low of 13.5 percent of students proficient or advanced during the pandemic,  across grades since the intervention began, although still below the state average. Last spring, 47 percent of the district’s fourth graders were proficient or advanced in math on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment test.

“The intervention is very targeted by skill and gives teachers data for each student,” said Hanobeck. “We are seeing it close gaps for students, and they are more able to access elementary school math.”

Murphy, the kindergarten teacher, said that while some students arrive at school able to do “rote counting,” others arrive with no prior knowledge or a very limited understanding of numbers and counting. The interventions have improved all students’ accuracy and fluency in more complex tasks, such as being able to count up or down from a number like 16 or 20, and adding and subtracting numbers up to 5.

“It used to take all year for some students to count on from different starting points, that’s actually really hard for kids to do,” Murphy said. “Students are meeting their goals far faster now. We are moving on, but also moving deeper.”

That deep thought is important, even in the earliest grades. Kindergarten math proficiency is especially predictive of future academic success in all subjects including reading, research has shown. In one study, students’  in kindergarten — which includes the ability to understand number quantities, their relationships to each other, and the ability to join and separate sets of numbers, like 4 and 2 making 6 — presaged mathematical achievement in third grade, with greater number competence leading to higher math achievement.

It’s also the time when learning gaps between students are at their smallest, and it’s easier to put all students on equal footing. “Kindergarten is crucial,” said University of Oregon math education researcher Ben Clarke. “It’s well-documented in the research literature that gaps start early, grow over time and essentially become codified and very hard to remediate.”

But the math content commonly found in kindergarten — such as counting the days on a calendar — is often embedded within a curriculum “in which the teaching of mathematics is secondary to other learning goals,”  from the National Academies of Science. “Learning experiences in which mathematics is a supplementary activity rather than the primary focus are less effective” in building student math skills than if math is the main goal, researchers wrote.

The math students are taught in kindergarten often progresses no further than basic counting and shapes. In a , researcher and University of Colorado Boulder associate professor Mimi Engel found that students who spent more time on the advanced concepts in kindergarten learned more math. Engel hypothesizes that exposure to more advanced content in kindergarten may help students in later grades when content grows more complex.

“We want some amount of repetition across grades in content,” Engel said. “There’s variation in kids’ skill sets when they start kindergarten, and, as a teacher, there are a number of reasons why you want to start with the basics, and scaffold instruction. But what I’m interested in is: when does repetition become redundancy?”

According to researcher Amanda VanDerHeyden, founder of SpringMath, breaking numbers apart and putting them back together and understanding how numbers relate to each other does more to help develop kindergarteners’ mathematical thinking than counting alone. Students should move from using concrete objects to model problems, to using representations of those objects and then to numbers in the abstract — like understanding that the number 3 is a symbol for three objects.

To improve students’ math skills, some schools and districts have recently upgraded the math curriculum and materials teachers use, so they are able to build increasingly complex skills in an organized, orderly way.

Kindergarteners in Hailey Lang’s classroom at Dr. William Burrus Elementary School in Hendersonville, Tennessee, were recently counting penguins — a digital whiteboard showed a photo of a mother penguin with seven fuzzy babies in tow.

“Can we make a math drawing about this picture? No details, you can just use little circles,” Lang said. Students drew one big circle and seven smaller circles on their papers to represent the penguins. Then they translated the circles into a number sentence: 1 (big circle) + 7 (small circles) = 8.

The lesson is new to students this year since they adopted the Eureka Math curriculum. It’s what Sumner County Superintendent Scott Langford calls “high-quality” instructional material, with lessons that move students beyond simply counting objects like penguins. Students look at penguins in a picture, translate them into representational circle drawings, then finally move on to their abstract number quantities.

Sumner County elementary coordinator Karen Medana said she appreciates the fact that the curriculum offers explicit guidance for teachers and builds on a sequence of skills.

One reason for redundancy in kindergarten math may be that classrooms lack cohesive materials that progress students through skills in an orderly way. A 2023 report from the Center for Education Market Dynamics showed that only  use high-quality instructional materials, as defined by EdReports, a nonprofit organization that evaluates curricula for rigor, coherence and usability. Eureka Math is one of several math programs that meet EdReports’ standards.

Often teachers are left to gather their own math materials outside the school’s curriculum. The  that large numbers of teachers use a district-approved curriculum as “one resource among many.” Nearly all teachers say they gather resources from the internet and sites like Teachers Pay Teachers — meaning what students learn varies widely, not only from district to district, but from classroom to classroom.

What students learn might not even be aligned from one grade to another. In a new, unpublished paper still in revision, researcher Engel found “notable inconsistencies” between pre-K and kindergarten classroom math content and how it is taught in New York City schools. Engel said results suggest that in many classrooms, kindergarten math might be poorly aligned with both pre-K and elementary school.

When teachers have access to well-aligned materials, students may learn more. At Marcus Hook Elementary, a Title I elementary school in the Chichester District, kindergarten teacher Danielle Adler’s students were deep into first grade addition, using numbers up to 12. They had already completed all the SpringMath kindergarten math skills in March, so she let them keep going.

“In the past we did focus more on counting, recognizing numbers and counting numbers,” Adler said, “But over the last three years I’ve seen the kids’ skills grow tremendously. Not only what they’re expected to do, but what they’re capable of doing has grown.”

What kindergarteners are expected to do at school has changed dramatically over the last 30 years, including more time spent on academic content. Adler and other kindergarten teachers agree that they hold higher expectations for today’s students, spend more time on teacher-directed instruction and substantially less time on 

Some worry that increasing time spent on academic subjects like math, and pushing kindergarten students beyond the basics of numbers and counting, will be viewed as unpleasant “work” that takes away from play-based learning and is just not appropriate for 5- and 6-year-olds, some of whom are still learning how to hold a pencil.

Engel said kindergarteners can be taught more advanced content and are ready to learn it. But it should be taught using practices shown to work for young children, including small group work, hands-on work with objects such as blocks that illustrate math concepts, and learning through play.

Mathematician John Mighton, the founder of the curriculum JUMP Math, said it’s a mistake to believe that evidence-based instructional practices must be laborious and dull to be effective. He has  to think more like children to make more engaging math lessons.

“Children love repetition, exploring small variations on a theme and incrementally harder challenges much more than adults do,” he wrote — all practices supported by evidence to increase learning.

Simple lessons, when done well, can teach complex ideas and get children excited.

“People say kids don’t have the attention,” to learn more advanced concepts, he said, but he strongly believes that children have more math ability than adults give them credit for. Getting students working together, successfully tackling a series of challenges that build on each other, can create a kind of  — a feeling of mutual energy and harmony that occurs when people work toward a common goal.

That energy overflowed in Adler’s classroom, for example, as students excitedly colored in graphs showing how many addition problems they got correct, and proudly showed off how the number correct had grown over time.

VanDerHeyden pointed out that, for young kids, much of a math intervention should look and feel like a game.

It’s often harder than it looks to advance kindergarten skills while keeping the fun — elementary teachers often say they have low confidence in their own abilities to do math or to teach it.  that teachers who are less confident in math might not pay enough attention to how students are learning, or even spend less time on math in class.

Teachers like Murphy have made some tweaks geared to engaging students. In class she calls SpringMath “math games,” and refers to timed fluency tests as “math races.” She even turned choosing a partner into a game, by spinning a wheel to see who students will get.

“We can do all these little things so they’re having fun while they’re learning,” Murphy said.

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Legislation that would require school districts with 4-year-old kindergarten to collaborate with community child care providers got a mixed response at a Senate hearing Tuesday.

Child care providers testified in favor of the proposal, /. It’s the only one of 10 child care bills Republicans have offered this session that has won broad support from people who work in the child care field.

Witnesses from the Department of Children and Family Services (DCF) — the state agency that oversees licensed child care providers in Wisconsin — spoke favorably about the proposal’s objective while raising questions about some of its details. DCF’s testimony was for information, not an endorsement or in opposition, said Deputy Secretary Jeff Pertl.

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The Department of Public Instruction (DPI), which on its website , testified against the legislation. Tom McCarthy, DPI’s deputy state superintendent, said that “from a value perspective DPI does not oppose using the community approach to grow [child care] opportunities across the state,” but that the bill presented problems as written.

The legislation, , aims to shore up child care providers by bringing back 4-year-olds, which many providers lost when school districts took on 4K kindergarten programs.

The age group is more economical for providers to care for. Under state regulations, children who are 4 to 5 years old require a ratio of one teacher for up to 13 children. For younger ages, fewer children are allowed per teacher, with the lowest ratio for children age 2 or younger: one teacher for every four children.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Wisconsin school districts began expanding their 4K offerings, Pertl testified Tuesday at the Senate Education Committee hearing. An Assembly hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.

Wisconsin allows schools to contract with licensed child care providers to carry out their 4K programming, known as 4K community collaboration or “mixed delivery.” That has diminished considerably as more districts take on the programs themselves.

Pertl said about one out of four Wisconsin school districts that offer 4K are collaborating with child care providers.

Rep. Karen Hurd (R-Fall Creek) told the committee that in conversations she and her Republican colleagues had with providers over the last several months, the loss of 4K children “is one thing that came up over and over — what cut the legs out from under the child care industry.”

Providers “were left with the more expensive, younger, staff-intensive mix of children to serve,” said Priya Bhatia, DCF early care and education division administrator.  “This bill would provide more stability and continuity of care for children and families.“

The legislation would require school districts offering 4K kindergarten to contract with local child care providers to provide those classes if they wanted to in addition to the 4K classes that the school district operates.

Enlisting more child care centers as 4K providers for public schools would also make it easier on parents who need “wraparound care” — child care before and after the kindergarten classes, Bhatia said.

If families must travel between a school’s part-day 4K program and a child care provider, “this causes disruption for children and can be a transportation burden for families,” Bhatia said. “The 4K community approach reduces these disruptions by providing a more seamless educational program and wraparound experience in a single location offered by a provider that parents already know and trust.”

Bhatia said there were three primary concerns that would make 4K community collaboration more successful if they were addressed in the bill:

Counting children in 4K as the equivalent of a full-time student under the state’s school financing system. Currently 4K students count as one-half of a full-time student when state aid is calculated. Working out a payment formula for school districts that contract with child care providers that both parties to the contract can accept.

The bill would require districts to pay at least 95% of the local per-pupil funding for 4K students to the providers enrolling those students, with the district retaining up to 5% for administrative costs. Bhatia suggested it would be more appropriate for the child care provider and the district to work out “the appropriate balance” between each party.

Ensuring uniform licensing standards focused on the 4K teachers. Child care providers have questioned DPI’s licensing standards that cover children from birth to third grade as “more geared toward early and elementary education rather than 4K,” Bhatia said.

The legislation would require child care workers who teach in a 4K program to have a bachelor’s degree or an associate degree and to be enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program with a four-year timeline.

The differences in licensing standards between teachers employed in school district 4K programs and those working with that age group in child care centers is one problem that skeptics of the legislation have pointed to.

Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) questioned what he called “eliminating the professional standards for teachers in the bill.” The bill’s Assembly author, Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart), reiterated the bill’s educational requirements for child care workers and stressed that they would be overseen by DCF.

“These people are already taking care of these children,” added Sen. Romaine Quinn (R-Cameron), the Senate author.

“But there’s a difference between child care and school,” Larson replied, calling teachers professionals who have attained a degree.

“Early child care providers are professionals who go through and get a degree in educating children in early childhood,” responded Goeben, a former child care provider, adding that “it’s a little demeaning to say they would be less able to educate in their field and their expertise.”

McCarthy, of DPI, said one concern that the department had was that requiring districts to contract with child care providers to provide 4K lessons could conflict with the heightened attention to early literacy and reading under legislation enacted in 2023. That law includes uniform curriculum standards, while child care centers participating would have greater freedom in curriculum selection under the bill.

McCarthy also questioned how contracted child care providers would respond to children with disabilities or other special needs.

Corrine Hendrickson, a child care provider and organizer of an advocacy and support network for providers and parents, said child care providers involved in community collaboration have a good track record of  helping children with special needs get services.

“Children with special needs are more likely to be identified and receive supports in communities that collaborate, as the child care program knows who to talk to at the school,” Hendrickson testified.

Hendrickson said that the legislation also supports federal funding changes that are going to favor mixed delivery. Other states are already further along in focusing on the community collaboration approach “to promote every child having access to high quality preschool without impeding access to working parents [for] the care and education of all children between the ages of six weeks and 12 years,” she said.

Joan Beck, a child care administrator in Dodge County, said that her center had enrolled 4-year-olds but lost them to a 4K program that opened in her community. She said her staff considers parents “our partners” while supporting them in the early education and development of their children.

“We take education seriously,” Beck said. “Our education starts at birth.” DCF, she added, provided extensive oversight that contributed to her child care program’s quality.

“Rather than looking at it as, we’re taking [children] out of the public schools, why can’t it be we’re partnering with the public schools?” Beck said. “Look at us as reasonable people who can do the job.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

Inside a classroom at the , a group of small children sit in a circle with their teacher to learn about the alphabet, but how they go about learning their letters is what makes this lesson unique — and fun.

These children have , small touchpads loaded with learning games. Distributing the Seedlings to schools, care centers, state and local agencies, and families is the mission of , a nonprofit founded by former State Board of Education member that seeks to prepare underserved children ages 3 and 4 for kindergarten through interactive games teaching letters, numbers, shapes, and colors.

For this classroom game, a child holds a Seedling displaying a letter over their head, and asks their classmate and teacher questions about the letter like, “does my letter make the ‘W-uh’ sound?” or “does my letter come after ‘V’ in the alphabet?”

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The child can then use the answers as clues to determine the mystery letter. Once the letter is correctly guessed, they can trace the letter on the Seedling tablet, successfully learning a portion of the alphabet while using visual, auditory, and tactile skills.

What makes this game and these Seedling touchpads even more special is that the devices were given to Ashe County Schools, and many other locations across North Carolina and beyond, at no cost.

Over 22,000 Seedlings have been distributed to children since 2016, according to ApSeed. The nonprofit distributes them for free to families and locations such as Head Starts, pre-K programs, child care services, at special events, health care practices, or WIC centers.

ApSeed currently serves 16 counties in North Carolina, four counties in South Carolina, and other locations in California, New York, Liberia, and Zimbabwe.

Funding for ApSeed comes from grants and private donations as well as from government appropriations. In 2022, the General Assembly allocated $2.5 million to ApSeed, which in turn provided service for about 12,000 children.

Making a ‘big hairy audacious goal’

ApSeed is part of what Alcorn calls a “big hairy audacious goal,” or “BHAG.” Alcorn said a BHAG is something to achieve on the macro-level at least 10 years out that requires leadership and helps to create a future that would otherwise be impossible.

A BHAG for ApSeed is to promote higher graduation rates to create a well-educated workforce for the future of the state and elsewhere by starting early with a community’s youngest learners. Alcorn emphasized that those who graduate high school are more likely to have higher wages once entering the workforce.

Alcorn said when a student is able to succeed academically early on, the success continues to have a ripple effect throughout the child’s educational journey.

“If you’re pretty good at pre-K you’ve got a good chance of being a good kindergartener, right? And then if you’re good at kindergarten, you’ve got a pretty good chance at first grade,” Alcorn said.

Helping children succeed is a priority for ApSeed, Alcorn said, but helping communities succeed is an additional priority, he said. When schools have success, that encourages others to reside in that area, he said, benefiting that community.

Alcorn is working toward a return on investment, hoping to see long term-results that start with a child first beginning to learn.

Dr. Eisa Cox, superintendent of , said increasing the area’s graduation rates is part of her district’s strategic plan, and that effort is a dedication that begins with early learning. Cox said if a child is unprepared for kindergarten, they will be less likely to graduate.

“It’s a long-term commitment to how we support families and how we support learning, from the time they begin learning clear through postsecondary education,” Cox said. “We want kids to graduate ready with skills and the knowledge and the confidence that they can do whatever they want.”

Planting a Seedling

Terry Richardson, director of exceptional children and pre-k programs for Ashe County Schools, said the opportunity for multi-sensory learning on the Seedlings is important as children develop their unique learning styles.

“It’s auditory, tactile, and visual. Every child learns in a different way. We don’t know what their learning style is until we get them and we are teaching, and to see what their learning style is,” Richardson said. “They can learn every area of literacy and math on the ApSeed tool through the visual, the tactile, or the auditorial because it’s integrated within each app.”

The Seedlings come preloaded with games and have no Wi-Fi or camera capabilities to ensure safety and promote the age-appropriate learning of the child using it.

Each Seedling comes with headphones, a charger, information for families on kindergarten readiness, and a protective case with a handle.

The touchpads have a variety of games that range in difficulty levels from “baby games” all the way to multiplication for those children seeking to explore extra challenges. Colorful and happy cartoon animals serve as the mascots for the games and cheer the students on when a question is answered correctly.

Richardson recalled getting goosebumps during an ApSeed distribution event that brought out over 500 families, and said she has seen children with Seedlings around her community.

“I’ve gone to different activities in the community and you’ll see kids carrying little ApSeed around and things like that because it’s such an engaging, appropriate learning tool for literacy and math that are developmentally appropriate for their ages,” Richardson said.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

High-dosage tutoring is one of the most effective tools to help students recover from lost learning, including in subjects like reading, where . 

But what if schools didn’t wait until students fell behind? What if all kindergartners got a reading tutor from the start?

That’s what the early-literacy tutoring company is testing out. They have a hunch the results will look good. 

By contracting with schools and tracking outcomes, the company hopes to convince more schools and districts to invest in early literacy tutoring, according to Matt Pasternack, Once’s chief executive and co-founder. 

“It sounds crazy, but why couldn’t you just teach every kid in America to read one-on-one?” Pasternack said.

The program includes daily, 15-minute sessions during school, but is flexible, according to Pasternack.

Pasternack said the curriculum is informed by the , a growing movement to change literacy instruction and re-emphasize phonics. Alone with a tutor, students are taught to recognize letters, the sounds that they make and how they blend to form words. 

By the end of the year, Pasternack hopes all students can decode fluently, which he thinks will enable them to learn “more autonomously in every grade afterward.”

The two-time grantee received roughly half-a-million dollars from Accelerate, a national nonprofit that has given roughly $21 million to various groups to scale tutoring efforts post-pandemic. Once worked with “hundreds” of students during the 2022-2023 school year and will work with over 1,000 during the upcoming school year, according to Pasternack. The program has been offered at public, charter and private schools in states including California, Hawaii, Texas, New York, and Ohio, and in Washington, D.C. 

The program costs schools about $400 per student and has been given to entire classes and as an intervention for selected students.

Schools are required to provide personnel to be tutors, such as paraprofessionals or other existing school staff. Once provides a scripted curriculum and ongoing coaching. Pasternack said school staff are generally not compensated for the additional tutoring duties, but the program is working to partner with local universities so they can get course credit. 

One-on-one key to teaching phonics

Pasternack said “one-on-one instruction simplifies the implementation of the science of reading.” 

He said phonics is challenging to execute in large classrooms because it requires “near-perfect classroom management.”

“In order to teach those types of skills, you need to hear what every single child is saying,” Pasternack said.

“Master teachers” excel at large-group instruction, but many others struggle, Pasternack said. 

Rebecca Kette, an intervention specialist at Orchard STEM School in Cleveland and a former Once tutor and coordinator, said one-on-one time was beneficial to meet her students’ needs.

“I think a constant struggle for classroom teachers is that individualized attention for children,” Kette said.

Patrick Proctor, the at Boston College and a professor focused on bilingual education and literacy, said without individualized attention, teachers can’t meet students’ phonic needs.

“A whole-group phonic program is not designed to meet every student where they are at, but rather is focused at on-average expectations of where students should be,” Proctor said in an email.  

‘Everything in a package’

Once tutors get two half-days of training upfront followed by weekly sessions with Once coaches. All tutor sessions are recorded and viewed by the coaches, who provide feedback during weekly meetings. 

“The way that they tutor and train people, you understand the curriculum and are able to deliver it,” said Joseph Salazar, a Once tutor and coordinator and an English as a Second Language teacher at Seaton Elementary in Washington, D.C.

Salazar said he knows how much goes into designing lessons, so he appreciates Once’s script and curriculum. Even if he didn’t have teaching experience, he said he’d feel confident.

“Once provides everything in a package,” Salazar said.

Empowering school employees, like paraprofessionals who may not have prior experience in literacy instruction, is important for scalability, according to Matthew Kraft, an education and economics professor at Brown University who has studied .

“Scaling tutoring requires expanding the pool of tutors,” Kraft said in an email. “Paraprofessionals offer an attractive pool of labor for tutoring because they have lots of experience working with students and they are already employed by school districts.”

Early results and criticism 

Pasternack said research about Once is “extremely preliminary.” He’s “hopeful” more results will be available “by the middle of this year.”

by LXD Research highlighting the impact of the Once program on students at seven schools last academic year concluded there was a positive correlation between Once lessons and students’ scores on the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessment.

“Overall, the more lesson cycles students completed in Once, the higher their scores,” Rachel Schechter, the report’s author, writes.

Salazar said that of the six students he tutored last year, all started below benchmark and five met or exceeded reading-level benchmarks by the end. 

Kette said her students showed “big gains” in oral-reading fluency.

Laura Justice, at Ohio State’s Department of Educational Studies and the executive director of its Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy, agreed there is “strong evidence” for the efficacy of small-group lessons on decoding and comprehension skills. But before scaling a program like Once, it’s important for claims to be “assessed using experimental methods,” she said. 

Justice said there isn’t evidence supporting the idea that one-on-one is more effective than small-group tutoring. 

Pasternack said he’s open to exploring small groups, but that it would pose several challenges for the program.

“All the kids need to say the exact same sound at the same moment otherwise they’re going to listen to each other, rather than reading,” Pasternack said.

Justice also said it should be tested whether daily sessions really boost outcomes more than sessions two or three times per week.

“There is a threshold of additional instruction that is needed to help children advance, but instruction above that threshold does not necessarily pay off,” she said in an email.

Pasternack said that Once has “documented cases” of students that missed sessions and attended approximately two or three sessions per week. 

“The kid just moves half as quickly,” Pasternack said. “You can’t move faster in less time.”

Proctor said he’s skeptical about the logistics of scaling Once. Tutoring a class of 16 students one-on-one for 15 minutes each amounts to four hours of instructional time a day. But, since school days are complicated, he said it would take longer. 

“Likely it wouldn’t happen every day for every child because schedules are challenging,” Proctor wrote. “Multiply that by every day of the school year and you get a lot of slippage.”

Pasternack responded by saying schools aren’t required to use Once programming everyday.

“We work with each school to create a schedule that works for that school,” Pasternack said.

Proctor also challenged the belief that schools “need to be going so heavy on phonics and decoding in kindergarten.”

“The point of kindergarten is to develop social skills, introduce children to literacy, language, and numeracy, explore music, play,” he said.

But Pasternack said declining kindergarten enrollment makes him think current standards may not be working.

Additionally, Pasternack said Once isn’t just about decoding. Each lesson emphasizes phonemic awareness, includes comprehension questions, and revolves around reading an episode, he said, “in a suspenseful and engaging epic journey of a group of animals searching for safety, wisdom and connection.”

Ultimately, Pasternack said he hopes Once can build on existing research and “broaden the conversation.”

“We don’t want to play games with the data,” he said. “We are truly curious. Does scripted, explicit, one-on-one instruction in foundational literacy change the trajectories of the students who receive it in kindergarten?”

Correction: Rachel Schechter is the founder of LXD Research and the author of a report on the Once tutoring program. Her named was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Overdeck Family Foundation provide financial support to both Accelerate and The 74.

Fewer Kentucky kindergarteners were ready to learn in the 2022-2023 school year than in 2018, according to a new report that measures child welfare.

This insight comes from the , released by Kentucky Youth Advocates Wednesday. Kids Count is part of a national initiative from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Kentucky Youth Advocates (KYA) compiled the state’s report with data from the Administrative Office of the Courts, Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Department for Medicaid Services, Kentucky Center for Statistics and others.

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Fewer kindergarteners being ready to learn is a symptom of , early childhood expert Sarah Taylor Vanover with KYA told the Lantern. For the past three years many children missed out on pivotal socialization. That means they’re coming into school without the skills to self-regulate and work with others, Vanover explained.

“Three and four -year-olds…might have been having Zoom story times during the pandemic, but they weren’t getting to learn to play together,” she said. These early years, Vanover said, are when children learn to use their words to express emotion. But a lot of kids now, she said, “missed a lot of those things.”

The report also found that more children were in foster care from 2020-2022 than 2015-2017. And, fewer children left foster care and were reunited with biological families.

KYA staff looked at 16 when compiling the Kids Count book. They include the number of children in poverty, foster care and the juvenile justice system; education achievements; teen births and more.

The data shows some positive markers for Kentucky’s youth. There were 2% more fourth graders proficient in reading in the 2022-2023 school year than in the 2021-2022 school year. The number of high school students graduating on time increased from 90% to 91%.

“We’ve seen profound resilience of communities through recovery from natural disasters and the pandemic – yet those challenges present lasting impacts on family stability, mental health, education outcomes, and so much more,” Terry Brooks, the executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates , said in a statement. “And unless and until we tackle childhood poverty – impacting more than one in five young people – Kentucky kids will continue to fall behind.”

Youth quoted in the report also said that during the next legislative session, lawmakers should invest in mental health resources, addressing food insecurities, substance use prevention and more.

Child population by race

Kentucky had 1,113,478 youth ages 0-19 in 2022, the new report shows. Of those, 854,336 are white, 105,880 are Black, 78,533 are Latinx, 21,579 are Asian, 1,462 are Native American or Native Alaskan, 1,182 are Native Hiwaiian or Pacific Islander and 50,506 are two or more races.

Economic Security

Nearly half – 44% – of Kentucky’s renters live in households that spend roughly a third of their income on rent and utilities. Eastern Kentucky counties are most affected by this, the data shows, with a swath of counties having 50-59% of their families paying a third of their income in rent and utilities.

The solution to this, the report says, is to invest in affordable and rural housing.

The report also includes a dive into , a sector long troubled in Kentucky and worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The “significant burden” of child care, which costs more than $7,000 per year on average in Kentucky, means one in nine families experience an interruption in their workforce participation. Meanwhile, most of Kentucky’s counties – 79 out of 120 – are child care deserts, meaning they don’t have enough child care to match the number of children in need of it.

There is also a waiting list for afterschool programs in Kentucky, which are also short staffed.

Advocates said the state should dedicate funding to this sector as a solution to the crisis. They also want to see lawmakers help Kentucky’s children get free meals at school. Currently 12% of Kentucky schools do not participate in , which allows the nation’s highest poverty schools and districts to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications, according to Kids Count.

How healthy are Kentucky’s children?

Researchers want to see lawmakers increase reimbursement rates for dental providers to expand the Medicaid network for dental care. That’s because they found that people with Medicaid who had fewer dental care options ended up getting emergency department care for “non-traumatic dental conditions.”

“This treatment is not only outside the scope of most (emergency department) providers but also expensive, costing Kentucky more than $44M annually,” the report states.

Lawmakers should also consider investing in the mental health workforce through an increase in reimbursement rates, researchers said, since 1 in 6 children ages 13-17 have anxiety or depression.

On juvenile justice

Researchers want to see Kentucky lawmakers invest in community based alternatives to , which they say cost the state less than detention and are more effective. (During the interim, committee members dedicated to examining the have heard from a number of such programs).

It costs about $588 every day to jail a minor, the Kids Count report says, while costing about $75 in diversion.

“Kentucky has an established record of failing to meet the basic standard of care for kids in detention and improve outcomes of justice-involved youth,” Kids Count states. “When a child makes a mistake, diversion and other community-based alternatives to detention, such as mental health services, mentoring, and educational supports are more effective in reducing recidivism. Youth who complete these programs also have a higher likelihood of completing high school, attending college, and earning more income in adulthood.”

The insights in this report should be a “roadmap” for Gov. Andy Beshear as he enters his second term as Kentucky governor, Brooks said. It should also, he said, guide Kentucky’s lawmakers, who in 2024 will make budgetary decisions when they convene for the legislative session.

“What we want these numbers to do,” Brooks said during a Wednesday press conference, “is galvanize Gov. Beshear. And we want it to galvanize (Senate President Robert Rivers” and we want it to galvanize (House Speaker David Osborne) into creating a common ground, common sense agenda for the common good of Kentucky’s kids.”

To read the full Kids Count report, visit

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on and .

Not only is the program — called — targeted to students who to learn remotely during the pandemic, but the study was conducted by experts who typically advocate for in-person tutoring.

“I was nicely surprised,” said Susanna Loeb, a Stanford University education researcher and leader of the , which has been tracking efforts to expand high-dosage tutoring. “The trick is to get [tutoring] to as many students as we possibly can. Being able to do it virtually could really help in the scaling and expansion of this kind of intensive, individualized attention that many students need.”

The evaluation, conducted in 12 Texas elementary schools as part of the Uplift Education charter network, found that over 1,000 K-2 students in the program scored higher on literacy tests than students without the extra support. The results translated into 26 extra days of learning in letter sounds for kindergartners and 55 extra days on decoding for first graders with a one-on-one tutor. Second graders did not benefit as much from the intervention.

While the virtual program was still less effective than in-person tutoring, the model could be a breakthrough for schools in rural areas and those that have struggled to recruit tutors, Loeb said. Districts’ pandemic recovery efforts have sometimes fallen short because they can’t find trained educators or volunteers to do the job. And and others has found that only a fraction of students who need extra help take advantage of on-demand virtual tutoring programs. 

OnYourMark Education, a nonprofit, is a contrast to the virtual models that researchers like Loeb have long criticized. It’s offered four times a week during the school day. The tutors, which include college students, retired educators and those who have worked for other virtual tutoring companies, receive training in the science of reading.

“We’ve put a stake in the ground that our focus as an organization is to really support students to become proficient readers by the time they reach third and fourth grade,” said Mindy Sjoblom, a former Teach for America middle school teacher and principal who founded OnYourMark in 2021. 

But when the program started with Uplift as a pilot, she wasn’t sure if the tutors would be able to form strong relationships with young children remotely. 

“We had to get the timing right,” she said. The 30 minute-blocks they started with didn’t work well. “Honestly, that was too long to expect a 5-year-old to sit and attend to anything, not to mention be in front of a screen.”

Twenty minutes, she said, has proven to be the “sweet spot,” allowing tutors to have informal chats with students — about what they had for dinner last night, for example, or how their basketball game went — before diving into a solid 15 minutes of work on decoding and fluency. 

OnYourMark now works with 22 schools in seven states, and Sjoblom said she expects to add more students before the end of this school year. Last fall, Accelerate, an organization funding effective tutoring programs, $250,000 to support the research effort. The organization is also a semifinalist for the , a $1 million award that recognizes successful education providers.

‘A great option’

Loeb’s team used two common assessments to evaluate the impact of the program — Dynamic Indicators of Basic Literacy Skills, or DIBELS, and MAP Reading Fluency from NWEA, a testing and research organization.

Kindergartners randomly assigned to OnYourMark recognized 3.5 more letter sounds per minute than students who didn’t receive tutoring. First graders’ mastery of sounds and decoding skills also improved.

Loeb said while the one–to-one model is clearly stronger, the program is still effective when students work in pairs with a tutor. 

“This is a great option when staffing is hard,” she said, alleviating the need for tutors to commute and get acclimated to a school. 

The results among second graders were not significant. Sjoblom sees a few reasons for the disappointing outcomes. First, last year’s second graders were in kindergarten during the 2020-21 school year, when many schools were closed for the pandemic. They didn’t master a lot of the foundational skills that most kids get in kindergarten and first grade.

Older students struggling to read, she added, get embarrassed and have a harder time staying engaged with tutors remotely.

But Loeb said to get such results from a startup is still impressive. Yasmin Bhatia, the CEO of Uplift, added that future research will focus on the specific skills tutors should focus on with second and third graders.

OnYourMark, she said, has met the network’s needs in a few ways. First, it’s hard to find tutoring companies even willing to work with younger students. Most, she said, focus on the “tested grades” — third and higher. School leaders, she added, are “putting their best talent in those upper level grade levels.”

Uplift, she added, serves a high-poverty population that typically would be unable to afford a private tutor. And when the network offered at-home virtual or afterschool tutoring, participation was inconsistent. Bhatia called OnYourMark “another way to support parents” and ensure young readers are getting the extra help they need.

“We view it as such a high priority,” she said, “that we made it a part of the school day.”

Disclosure: Overdeck Family Foundation provides support to OnYourMark Education and The 74.

The future of a bill that would effectively mandate kindergarten in Alabama still faces an uphill battle, even as members of a state education commission said that they support the bill.

During a Wednesday meeting of Governor’s Commission on Teaching and Learning — a group of educators, lawmakers and officials — State Superintendent Eric Mackey said the Literacy Act, if they are unable to read at grade level, has led many principals to focus on first grade.

The superintendent, in a presentation , said that some are retaining first graders if they believe they are at risk of retention later in their academic careers.

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“When you get that before third grade, that’s all the better, which is why I think what we hear from our principals are doing is largely focusing on first grade,” he said.

Mackey also said that principals want to learn who’s on track in those early years, but the assessments they have do not currently track as well with the state test.

Rep. Alan Baker, R-Atmore, had also said that it was important that they focus on grades before first grade.

“And that really captures really what it’s about, that is the prevention that is identifying those students early on, early as possible,” he said. “And then providing the necessary interventions and supports all the way through and not just waiting.”

Some commission members had questions about why kindergarten was not mandatory in the state and if there was a way to make it mandatory.

Carey Wright, former Mississippi State Superintendent of Education and a member of the panel, said that Mississippi had been able to mandate mandatory attendance for those who enrolled in kindergarten.

“And that helped a lot with our kindergarten in terms of first grade readiness,” she said.

The Alabama House of Representatives last spring passed a bill known as that would have required a student to pass kindergarten or an equivalent test showing readiness for first grade. The bill passed out of a Senate committee but did not come to the Senate floor for a vote.

Sen. Donnie Chesteen, R-Geneva, said that the biggest opposition was “one senator,” as many in the room laughed.

Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, spoke multiple times in opposition to the bill. He said it felt like it would hold more students back.

Smitherman and the bill’s sponsor Pebblin Warren, D-Tuskegee, said they would discuss the bill further in the fall.

A message was left with Warren Wednesday afternoon. As of 2020, only 19 states and the District of Columbia required students to attend kindergarten, according to .

Smitherman, reached Wednesday afternoon by phone, said that his stance on the bill has not changed since the end of the legislative session. He said he is still planning to meet with Warren later this fall, though not in the next couple of weeks.

“It will be addressed, but right now, there’s no scheduled meetings at this time,” he said.

Smitherman cited concerns about the bill including retaining students and a lack of infrastructure to support the needs of first grade readiness, such as busing.

“It’s a great soundbite, and it’s a great, it’s an ambitious goal,” he said. “But we can’t help these children like we need to unless we put the proper structure, the proper resources, and have the proper instructors there.”

Supporters of the first grade readiness bill insisted during debates over the legislation that . But Brown, the Montgomery Public Schools superintendent, wondered why the state could not simply mandate kindergarten, without the extra test.

“What I’m imagining in my mind is: I’m going to get my driver’s license, and my test run is an IndyCar race,” he said. “If I crash, now, I got to go back to school to take the test. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. I want to get them on the front end.”

“Some of us agree with you,” said Rep. Barbara Drummond, D-Mobile. “At least in the House.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

“The pandemic created this opportunity for us to pause and think about how we can gather information in a different way,” says Fearn. “And that includes changing the way the state handles the transition to kindergarten. We are intentionally designing a process to learn about students’, children’s and families’ assets and what they bring to school in a culturally responsive way.”

Tyson Barker, of and member of the kindergarten transition advisory panel, says, “In our experience, many states collect a wealth of student data related to the transition to kindergarten without a clear understanding of how this information will be used to improve educational experiences. Additionally, it is extremely rare for educators and families to be part of the co-creation process. This is a model that can be replicated in many states that are currently reconceptualizing the kindergarten transition.”

Here’s what the new system promises:

A better fit for a different kind of early education system. Oregon’s new way of stewarding the kindergarten transition builds upon , the state’s free, high-quality preschool program available to families living at or below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level; as well as the 2019 Student Success Act, which includes innovative that support mixed delivery.

Oregon supports all children, whether they are enrolled in a school, a Head Start program, a child care center or a family child care setting. Home visiting and parent education are also part of the equation.

Turning the “family interview” into a “family conversation.” Instead of relying exclusively on skill testing, Oregon is asking families directly about what is important to them.

As Fearn says, the shift intentionally advances equity by taking a holistic view of children by giving families the opportunity to share contextual information about themselves. “Instead of talking about whether the children are ready for kindergarten,” she says. “It’s about how systems can get ready for them.”

A key question they ask is, “What brings your child joy?” (Answers include unicorns, books, play and friends.)

Community partners evaluate (and enrich) the dialogue. In order to ensure that the kindergarten transition conversations are respectful as well as productive, the state engaged , a nonprofit dedicated to helping Oregonians share their ideas, opinions, beliefs and resources in policy decisions.

indicate that the pilot is working. Family comments included:

“I know the teacher, but I’ve never been in relationship like this with her.”

“My son can’t always advocate for himself. This felt like an opportunity to advocate for him.”

“We’ve moved around a lot and this is the first time we’ve seen something like this.”

While educators said:

“Engagement with parents or caregivers is a better avenue to gain trust and a collaborating spirit about bringing up this child in the best environment possible for learning.”

“I think you learn so much about your families when you do something as simple as this. What parent doesn’t want to tell you about their child?”

The state is using the Oregon Kitchen Table feedback to develop the next stage of the pilot, which will strengthen culture-specific outreach to families, to name one of the recommendations.

Each conversation makes the whole system better. The data collected helps regional and local partners to develop better programs. The act of listening itself, explains Mandell, “sets the tone about this partnership. It says we value the parents and we want to hear from them directly.”

He acknowledges that the system is still evolving. Data from the family conversations is far more robust than what the state previously used. “How do you aggregate that and not lose that richness?” he asks.

Learning from (and teaching) other states. Fearn says Oregon completed state scans and drew inspiration from the (WaKIDS). “We asked about their family collaboration meetings that take place at the beginning of kindergarten between families and educators,” says Fearn, “and found that while their questions focus mainly on building relationships, we also wanted to explore children’s experience prior to kindergarten.”

Advocates in other states are watching to see how these programs develop. Jenna Nelson of the says her state relies almost exclusively on a tool called the . “Even though we know there are so many experiences that help a child to be successful in kindergarten, the idea here seems to be that the four-year-old teachers just hand the data over to the kindergarten teachers, who report this transfer as being unhelpful at best.” Nelson says the Oregon model sounds promising.

The stand-alone department, Mandell said, is “testament to the focus and emphasis on early learning and care that the legislature and the governor have at this moment. We’re a single place where families, child care providers and early learning professionals can go, that they know will be supporting them.”

I walked into our Pella studio on a recent morning, and Dave, a friend and co-worker had a question for me before I even had a chance to put my computer bag down.

“What do you think about the gun legislation they’re considering at the Statehouse?” he said, or something close to that.

Like many of you probably are, I’m numbed by all of the mass shootings in America and angry that NRA-influenced Republicans haven’t allowed us to move forward on gun control measures that most Americans want. I know that Republican legislators in every state are working hard to increase Americans’ access to guns in more places, including schools. There have been 145 mass shootings just this year as of April 11. Gun deaths have recently exceeded violent car crashes as the  of American children from ages 1-18.

I don’t remember exactly what I said to Dave, but I probably mumbled that I don’t know much about it; why?

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“Republicans want guns at schools, and they also want hunter training in schools. I don’t have guns in my home, and my kids don’t have guns in their homes, yet they want to expose my grandkids to gun culture when neither I, my wife or my kids, and their spouses want that. We don’t want anything to do with it,” he said.

Or something like that. And I’m not a good enough writer to be able to describe how frustrated Dave is.

What he said and what I was thinking and said at the time are a blur, but here is some of it: Republicans are hammering our public schools, underfunding them to make sure they underperform, banning books, demanding important curriculum be cut, not letting history they don’t like being taught, making teachers do more with less, demoralizing them, driving them from the profession which will make our schools worse, making teachers out gay and trans kids even if it puts them in harm’s way, and more.

And all of this while giving public money to fund private schools with no fiscal accountability for the ultimate purpose of taking public money meant to further the public good and putting it into private hands and schools that reinforce Republican ideology. Republicans say it’s about school choice. It’s not. It’s about ideology and power. I wrote about that .

The legislation Dave was referring to is . Part of that legislation allows guns on school grounds. Like Dave and the Democrats in the Legislature, I don’t believe guns should be allowed on school grounds.

My concern here, however, is the section that encourages teaching “firearm safety.” This is what Dave and I talked most about — the introduction of kids to the gun subculture even though their parents want no part of. Let me say here I understand the role guns play in rural America. I wrote about it five years ago in the.

While the title of the relevant section of the bill is “Firearm Safety Instruction Programs in Schools,” this isn’t what it’s really about. What it’s really about is the indoctrination of students into that subculture. And who is going to do that indoctrination? The NRA.

Yes, the NRA. The organization that has for generations been actively undermining all efforts to bring into law common sense gun regulations that the American people want. That NRA. The NRA that lobbies against gun registration, red flag laws, and assault weapons bans. The NRA that lobbies against needed regulations that would help prevent mass shootings in schools is now going to be in Iowa schools indoctrinating our children into their worldview should this legislation pass. The very organization that serves as a catalyst for school shootings will be in our schools from kindergarten through grade 12 before some of our kids can even read.

Seem hard to believe? The relevant section is below (I don’t see a similar section in the companion bill in the Senate, ).

It appears that these programs are to be “offered or made available” and that schools are “encouraged” to implement the model in kindergarten through grade 6 based on the NRA’s Eddie Eagle programming. This is insidious. Before some kids can even read, gradually and subtly, the NRA is using cartoons to teach kids an important lesson — to be safe around guns. But at the same time, they are normalizing the NRA and its policies that are an ever-present and increasing danger to public health, especially to our children. And they are doing it in the most effective way possible with this age group. With cartoons.

Look at the NRA’s  Aren’t they a fun group? Is there a character your elementary school-aged kids or grandkids might identify with? They provide a lesson in a little over eight minutes. “STOP! Don’t touch. Run away. Tell a grown-up!” (I’m going to resist going down the rabbit hole of deconstructing this cartoon, although I am tempted.)

I believe kids should learn about gun safety, but it could be part of a lesson in health classes, for example. Or in a once-a-year classroom lesson or assembly (some people will say here that only the NRA offers such lessons; that’s a lame excuse).

But this legislation doesn’t call for a lesson. It calls for programs based on those offered by the NRA. Courses. Instructors. How long will these programs or courses be? What will they cost? It says the program will be developed and distributed. By who? I suspect some private company is creating that curriculum now, and it will be sold to the schools or the state, and even more taxpayer money that should have gone into our schools will be siphoned into private hands.

It sounds like the programs can also be developed locally, and the instructor doesn’t have to be a certified teacher. When taking these courses, what won’t our children be learning that they should learn instead? And do we need classes every year? Of course not, but that will deepen the indoctrination.

Maybe the NRA will offer the courses for free! Why not? After the indoctrination, these little tikes will be gun owners and NRA members in a few years. And maybe even have MAGA tattooed on their foreheads! Or Trump on a cross! Or wearing an AR-15 pin on their clothing like certain Republican members of Congress!

The bill says schools should offer hunter education courses in grades 7 through 12. That proves it isn’t about gun safety. It’s about indoctrination. You can teach gun safety in a lesson. A hunter education course is a different thing. I have nothing against hunting. It’s part of rural life.

The tragic irony is that beginning in kindergarten, this legislation will normalize the NRA and its harmful anti-gun-regulation stance in our schools, even as more and more school children are being killed in mass shootings.

And just like taking public money and putting it into private schools to promote Republican ideology, letting the NRA into our schools’ curriculum will do the same thing. Our kids will have been indoctrinated into gun culture, the NRA, and likely the Republican Party. This is part of their long game.

There is another irony here. The effort to bring the NRA into our schools is apparently . If so, Democrats are playing into Republican hands.

I suspect Dave and I will be talking about this part of it Monday morning.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on and .

The Alabama House Education Policy Committee Wednesday approved a bill that would require students to attend kindergarten or show the ability to do the work to advance to first grade.

, sponsored by Rep. Pebblin Warren, D-Tuskegee, passed the committee after members adopted a substitute written by Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, the chair of the committee.

“All this is is a first grade readiness bill to make sure when a student gets to the first grade, they have the competencies that can make them successful to move on in the education system,” she said.

Warren has brought the bill numerous times, but .

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Gov. Kay Ivey called for a version of the legislation in her State of the State speech last month.

The committee approved a substitute of the bill, which the committee’s chair, Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, said was “better written” and less “piecemeal.” The substitute rewrote sections of the code rather than replacing small sections repeatedly.

Collins said that the bill is a “first grade readiness” bill and not “mandatory kindergarten” legislation.

“I wanted to make sure everybody knew it’s not a ‘mandatory kindergarten,’ ” Collins said. “It’s a ‘being ready for first grade as a child.’”

As of 2020, 19 states and the District of Columbia require kindergarten, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

A portion of the bill would allow local school districts to allow four-year-olds who turn five by the end of December to attend school and five-year-olds who turn six by the end of the calendar year to attend first grade. Underaged children would also be able to join the class if they moved from a public school from another state where they were in that grade. Otherwise, the bill provides kindergarten for those who are five at the beginning of the school year.

Rep. Frances Holk-Jones, R-Foley, raised concerns about it. Holk-Jones said “summer children” have more “mental health issues” and are more likely to commit suicide as teenagers.

“The statistical data of teen suicides between age 15 and 19, the highest percentage come from summer children, which are your June July and August,” she said. “What you are also proposing is to open that up to September through December.”

When asked for the source of the data after the meeting, Holk-Jones said she did not have it with her.

Rep. Mark Gidley, R-Hokes Bluff, had similar concerns and cited his own experience as someone with a summer birthday.

“I was always the youngest in the class, and I’ve suffered as a result of that,” he said.

Gidley said he had no problems with the rest of the bill.

Holk-Jones asked Warren if she would consider removing that portion of the bill during discussion. Warren said she would further down the line, but she wanted to keep it as it is for the moment.

“I will be amenable if we pass this bill and later on, we start seeing that there was an issue,” Warren said.

HB 164, sponsored by Rep. Andy Whitt, R-Harvest, also passed committee. The bill would require students to learn financial skills before graduation.

Both bills move to the Alabama House of Representatives for consideration.

HB 218, sponsored by Rep. A.J. McCampbell, D-Linden, has been moved for next week. The bill would change the “failing” moniker of the bottom 6% of schools by test score to another term. The committee was not in agreement that changing it to “fully supported school,” as the bill suggests, would be the best option.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

For many teachers, however, those moments rarely come. Squeezed by budgets and the constant pressure to teach to district-mandated standards, teachers feel less able to engage with the children freely in ways they know are developmentally appropriate. This is especially true with younger children, who, according to stacks of research going all the way back to John Dewey, need to involve their whole selves — their bodies, their senses, their curiosity and their interactions with others — to learn about the world around them.

Early childhood experts Betsy Grob and Fretta Reitzes have created the in collaboration with to address these issues and provide kindergarten teachers with the support they need to bring their creativity, heart and knowledge to the classroom. Both are Bank Street alumni and are authors with extensive experience teaching and facilitating professional development for early childhood educators. The conference, to be held April 3 and 4 at Bank Street College, is now in its fourth year and provides a rich offering of keynote speakers and workshops led by classroom teachers offering practical, inspirational information ranging from current research to inventive ways to use boxes in the classroom.

Grob and Reitzes intend that the conference not only be useful to the kindergarten teachers who attend but hope that it will serve as a model and inspiration for similar events that can support the unique role kindergarten teachers play in our education system.

“This is about our responsibility that we as educators have to provide the next generation of children who are now 5 years old to be connected to the world in a way that is meaningful for them and to relate to their classroom, their community and the world around them,” Reitzes says. “Our goal is to introduce teachers to different ways of helping children find their voice.”

Reitzes and Grob share a concern that kindergarten classrooms have increasingly begun to look like “watered-down first grade.”

“Teachers are expected to teach ‘reading, writing and arithmetic’ without understanding how 5-year-olds learn,” Betsy Grob says.” Kindergarteners need play and discovery through art and music, taking trips and then processing that as a group. We want teachers and student teachers to be able to understand how they can create a curriculum that makes sense for a 5-year-old.” And still get the job done in meeting standards, she says.

Creating a learner-centered curriculum often involves letting go of preconceived ideas on the way to better ideas, Reitzes and Grob say. They offer the example of a kindergarten in a New York City public school that was required to do a unit on transportation. That’s a fairly broad category, but one class got together and voted to do a study of subways.

The rigid “academic” approach to teaching kindergarten has serious downsides not only for the teachers, who end up thwarted, frustrated and burned-out, but for the children themselves. The teachers know that what they’re doing doesn’t make sense because of what they know about kindergartners, Grob and Reitzes agree. All too often kindergartners don’t want to be in school because it doesn’t fit who they are as learners.”

Along with colleague Julie Diamond, Grob and Reitzes wrote “,” which codifies much of what they have learned from decades as classroom educators and faculty. That combination of practicality and inspiration for creating a rich kindergarten curriculum are at the heart of the conference as well.

“The thing about 5-year-olds is that it’s a very specific developmental stage,” Reitzes says. “They are no longer 4 and they know they’re not, but they’re not 6 yet, not first-graders, and so much of what’s being imposed on them with academic standards is a huge disconnect with where they are developmentally. Standards can be reached in learner-centered classrooms that honor where the child is developmentally.”

Each year the Teaching Kindergarten Conference has had a specific focus. This year, it’s “Sowing the Seeds of Social Justice,” emphasizing the role of teachers as they inspire children to be empathetic members of their community and learn what it means to advocate for fairness. Grob and Reitzes feel strongly that this is timely and essential for teachers and the children they teach.

In addition to offering practical advice and inspiration to attendees, the conference provides the opportunity to build community and connections. Many teachers return each year for renewal in their commitment to “fight the good fight” in bringing developmentally appropriate kindergarten education to their own schools. Just as children need to be part of a community, teachers also need to feel connected and supported in the work they’re doing.