This article appeared in Dimensions, Fall 1993, volume 22 number 1, pp.5-8. The article is one in a series of public policy reports.
Dimensions is published by the Southern Early Childhood Association (SECA), P.O. Box 56130, Little Rock, AR 72215-6130. This article is copyright 1993 by, and is reproduced here with permission of, the SECA.
"I always thought the whole world was mine to explore, and I still resist anyone's efforts to regulate only a part of it to me—or to any child."
—from "25 Lessons for Life" in Marian Wright Edelman's The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My children and Yours
Since its announcement in 1990, National Education Goal 1 has found its way into the vocabulary of virtually every educator working to make life better for children and their families in the U.S. The fact that few disputed the edict of the Governors and the President that "By the year 2000, all children in America will start school ready to learn," was sign enough that change is eminent. In addition to the obvious fact that babies are born with built in drives to touch, investigate, and learn language quickly and competently, there were and are those who rightly remember that the concept of school readiness—be it the child's or the school's, or (most recently) both—is at least a century old. Simply stated, school readiness is the child's right to an education that: 1) respects the learning and cultural and linguistic individuality each child brings to the classroom; 2) incorporates developmental appropriateness, family involvement, and nurturing environments; and 3) provides nutrition, health care and a host of comprehensive services that school staff use in preparing their classrooms and schools for the nation's young learners.
In addition to ongoing federal school readiness initiatives, the President and congress recently responded to the spirit of Goal 1 by ensuring vaccinations for all U.S. Children. Like Lilian Katz, at least some education policy-makers with children's interest at heart realize that there's no need to wait until the year 2000 to act. "Readiness," she argues, is not only the cornerstone for all the other education goals, but also the "right of every child in a democracy."
That's why for at least the last two years, Katz and many early childhood education experts and advocates have advised policymakers to rethink and perhaps even rewrite this first and most important national goal to emphasize change needed at the school level to ready schools for the child. At the same time it ensures that children are not mentally or physically prevented from learning. "Never mind waiting for the year 2000 for a goal that would meet the full cost of quality in all early childhood programs, "Katz urges. But her colleague, Ann Mitchell of Bremerton, Washington, skips to the heart of the matter: "All over America schools from kindergarten operate on principles that go directly against what we know about children how they learn," she claims. "The child is not as important as subject matter. What comes first, not who. If a child does not learn, then he is the failure, not the system or method."
Seeing children as failures hurts families, and the nation contends Ernest Boyer of the Carnegie Foundation. He calls schools "unacceptable" when they prejudge and delineate children by their preparation for the school, rather than calling the school to task for not being ready to support all children's learning. In its excellent treatise on "Making Schools Ready for children," the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) insists that schools must first collaborate with parents, communities, and non-school based care providers like child care centers and Head Start. Second, in reaching out to preschool organizations, schools must also ensure child-sensitive classrooms that make reality of developmental appropriateness by customizing instruction and learning, AASA argues. Ideally, these classrooms should allow children to learn by doing relevant, hands-on tasks with a minimum of seat- and paper-work. Third, no fewer than two teachers should guide no more than 20 students in a classroom; and those teachers should be trained and paid in accordance with their worth—not in the marketplace, but to the future that is embodied in the young minds they are working directly to develop. Finally, AASA advises, schools must reach out to involve parents in their children's learning and make use of ungraded classrooms, mixed-age class groupings, and cooperative learning.
Katz, who directs the ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education at the University of Illinois, believes the school needs to ready itself to respond to the wide range of cultural experiences, linguistic experiences and needs children bring with them to school. By modifying the curriculum to include spontaneous, dramatic play; arts and crafts activities; and work in small groups, schools can ready themselves. Activities should be relevant to the child's present world, and should be undertaken informally and interactively. Veteran teacher Anne Mitchell adds that schools must see and work with the whole child in a world that's whole, not fractured into separate subjects. She says that schools should focus on socialization, by helping a child to determine when it is best to follow the crowd and when it is best to follow personal drummers that others cannot hear. "Children's feelings," she explains, "especially about themselves, very much influence their behavior, as well as the way they learn."
For example, Heart Start, a national initiative of Zero to Three, would like to see more attention and accommodation for such emotional foundations of school readiness. Heart Start's recommendations are almost deceptively simple. They want the nation's federal, state, and corporate leaders to ensure that five basic emotional needs shared by every child are met: 1) health; 2) time for unhurried caring; 3) responsive caregiving that results from educated, understanding parents; 4) safe and supportive environments that ensure an adequate standard of living and adequate space in child care settings; and 5) special help for special families through the integration of local and community services.
From a policy perspective, David Denton, Director of Health and Human Services for the Southern Regional Education Board, adds that in Kentucky, New Mexico, and California the most successful policy structures for making schools ready for children, have in fact been driven more by local activity and change that from top-down reform. And, like many of his colleagues and the Governors' National Goals Panel, Denton sees the main barrier to readiness as an assessment issue in which schools are mired and stagnant. How can educators determine a child's readiness to start school? Many have tried with unreliable test whose very purpose is questioned by "maturationists" who maintain each child develops at his or her own pace and no test can gauge or supplant that innate clock. In gauging the preparation of the school for the child, however, progress is even slower. "We're no closer to reaching the readiness goal or in readying the schools for the child than we were in 1990 when it was adopted," Denton notes, "because we don't have a consensus about what it takes to get ready. The whole idea that readiness involves much more than simple intellectual preparation of children has been challenged. When we look at readiness now, we're looking at all the things--from birth forward--that go into making a quality school environment for young children. Policymakers aren't in agreement about what to do with this larger, more complex issue yet, but at least they're thinking about it."
Teachers of young children can create child-centered environments capable of accommodating each child's individual learning level. To do so may involve changes in attitude and behavior for some and a keener awareness of different children's developmental paces for others. Research shows that to ready a classroom for learners, teachers must designate quiet and active areas, be pleasant to look at and be within, and be free from health and safety hazards. According to guidelines form the Program for Infant Toddler Caregivers in Sacramento, California, teachers should give children "the freedom and opportunity to move and explore in a variety of classroom 'safe spaces,' including outdoors." Teachers should follow simple and consistent patters in moving from one activity to the next in the classroom. And, because children feel more secure and exercise more self control when they know what is expected of them, "classroom routines, activities, and materials should be adjusted to the mood and energy changes of children"—especially the very young.
To enhance children's rapidly developing language skills, caregivers and teachers should establish an environment that provides plenty of chances for learners to express themselves verbally and non-verbally in the classroom and to interact freely with other children and adults. Teachers should also listen attentively to infants and toddlers and try to understand what they're trying to communicate. A variety of stories, both spoken and in culturally sensitive written form, should be available and used regularly. Since children's thinking capacities expand and become more flexible as they learn and grow, caregivers and teachers can build on each child's natural curiosity about the world by encouraging experimentation with a variety of materials made available in the classroom.
But perhaps the most important work that teachers can do to prepare the school for the diverse children who enter it is to see each child as a unique human being who deserves opportunities in just and equitable society to continue the learning each is born doing. That, Denton reminds us, translates to child advocacy: "One of the most important things teachers can do for the children and families they work with is to make themselves heard to policymakers and government officials whose job is to even the playing field for children," he advises, "Early childhood educators need to pay attention to legislation that impacts children and work for its passage. Right now there's a small core of early childhood teaching veterans and a huge number of rookies and sophomores who don't last long in the profession because they can't afford to keep at it. They can make a difference if they stay in the field and educate each other and parent to the fact that the school's level of readiness must accommodate all the children who are carried, toddle, or walk through the door."
"No matter how good schools are, how capable and caring the teachers, they will not have as much effect on a child's permanent level of intelligence as has the environment in which he has lived before he started first grade."
—from Joan Beck's syndicated column "Give All Children Head Start on Learning"
In a 1991 Carnegie foundation survey of kindergarten teachers' opinions on school readiness, 64 percent thought improving parent education was the first priority--far ahead of increased funding, and improved health services. Anne Mitchell advocates for "Parent's role in school readiness is key," because they are a child's first and most valuable teachers. Research has shown children to learn more in the first six years of life than at any point thereafter. By the age of four, half of a child's adult intellectual capacity is in place, and by age eight, 80 percent of that capacity exists. Neurologist tell us stimuli in the environment interact with genes in the brain to shape and develop its capacity. Therefore, the importance of good prenatal care and early childhood interventions to ensure a safe, stimulating learning environment in the home cannot be underestimated.
Parents and community members can learn about and adopt programs like Parents as Teachers and drop-in parent centers that provide parenting information, group support, and other assistance for parents charged with making their homes better learning centers for young children. "Some parents don't have a clue as to what they're expected to do for their children," claims Katz. "Furthermore, parents are people who have pressing survival issues along with their children's education to concern themselves with," she reminds us.
All adults who work with small children can strengthen each child's thinking and learning ability by conversing and discussing the world, and by giving children plenty of opportunities and time to work with their peers outside the home before starting school. Parents who do not send their children to preschool or child care can enhance their children's cognitive development by talking to staff at the child's future school and securing games and other learning activities that children can use at home. As the significant adults in children's lives, parents and teachers also can enhance a child's "social readiness by offering children positive experiences in group settings outside the home," suggests Katz. Further, children are more likely to cope successfully with their first school experiences if they have had positive prior group experiences away from their homes and familiar adults, Katz maintains.
Communities on the other hand, do best when the agencies serving children and families collaborate with one another to streamline delivery of health and social services that families need most. The Kentucky model with its ungraded classrooms and families built into the school is fast being recognized as one of the nation's best state-led attempts to allow children to continue learning at their own rate. Other communities can build their own family centers and collaborative councils to ensure readiness on the part of the schools and children.
Young infants begin all learning through physical movement, taste, touch, sight, smell, and sound. By moving their arms, hands, legs, and other body parts and by touching and being touched, infants develop an awareness of their bodies and their ability to move and interact.
—from the California Infant/Toddler Program Quality Review Instrument
When early childhood practitioners consider how little was known about early childhood Education outside the field of active practitioners even five years ago, they have reason for guarded long-term optimism. "National Goal 1 has validated the field of early childhood education by increasing public awareness," concludes Cindy Rojas-Rodriquez, a Senior Training and Technical Assistance Associate at the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory in Austin, Texas. "At least more policymakers, business people, and parents now know what we're talking about when we say readiness. Before the Goal, there was little if any knowledge among the general public and even less concern nationally about how to make life better for young children. Now we're cautiously optimistic since early childhood educators feel there's at least the chance for improvement. It may take awhile, it may be slow, but at least there's a body of research and practice around which we can build a plan of hope for true school readiness."
Similar indications come from such advocates in the field as David Denton, Lilian Katz, and Sharon Lynn Kagan who admit policy is still, for the most part, miles behind the rhetoric of the first national goal that generated so much excitement in 1990. But while Denton sees little chance for the kind of pervasive change envisioned by school readiness advocates during the next few years, given current economic hard times, he is optimistic about meeting the goal in the next 10 to 15 years. "In this country," he notes, "the political process is the nation. It's us. We can look to other countries for examples, but until we learn to celebrate children's learning, we'll never be able to ready ourselves to help them learn." To be successful, such an effort will clearly require a concerted, collaborative effort on the part of parents, teachers, administrators, and community people. Are you ready?
American Association of School Administrators. (1992). Getting your child ready for school...and the school ready for your child. Arlington, VA, pp.21-24.
Balaban, Nancy. (1992, July). The role of the child care professional in caring for infants, toddlers, and their families. Young Children, pp.66-78.
California Department of Education. (1988). Infant/toddler program quality review instrument. Sacramento, CA: The Program for Infant Toddler Caregivers.
Kadel, Stephanie. (1992). Interagency collaboration: Improving the delivery of services to children and families. Greensboro, NC: SouthEastern Regional Vision for Education.
Kagan, Sharon L. (1992). Readiness past, present, and future: Shaping the agenda. Young Children, pp.50-53.
Katz, Lilian G. (1992). Readiness: Children and their schools. The Eric Review, 2(1), 2-6.
Mitchell, Anne L. (1993, July). Viewpoint: Shouldn't preschool people advocate for better elementary schools, too? Young Children, pp.58-62.
U.S. Department of Education/U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (1993). Together we can: A guide to crafting community-based family-centered strategies for integrating Education and human services.
The Institute Reports are discussion documents on significant issues for SECA members. This SECA Institute Report was prepared by Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. For more information about SECA or its publications, write to the Southern Early Childhood Association, P.O. Box 56130, Little Rock, AR 72215-6130; 501/663-0353.
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