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reprint or license this‘High quality’ is key element for 4-K success
State’s $21.5 million in total funding might not be enough to create top-notch programs
By LISA MICHALS
lmichals@thestate.com
Mornings at Clemson Road Child Development Center dawn like they might in a storybook.
Smiling parents and children hold hands and parade into classrooms. Sweet farewells and “have-a-great-days” linger as children head to a clipboard to sign in for a day of purposeful play that will be jampacked with learning.
Dolores Allen, who teaches 4-year-old kindergarten, and teaching assistant Chris Reagan greet parents and help students start their morning journal entries — usually pictures.
First, students scrawl their names on the clipboard sign-in sheet. It doesn’t matter that the C’s aren’t perfectly arched or that the S’s lack symmetry. The act itself is the lesson: developing fine motor skills that prime students for handwriting lessons later in life.
This weekend, state lawmakers earmarked $17.5 million to expand 4-K and $4 million for pilot programs — the Legislature’s answer to a court’s decree to better prepare poor children for success in public schools. But a pair of words keep popping up: “high quality.” Experts say only premium programs pack the punch that educators say is needed to help the most disadvantaged children prepare for kindergarten.
Many educators worry that the General Assembly’s commitment might not be enough to achieve high quality — to provide the highly qualified teachers, small classes and research-based curricula that are hallmarks of high-quality programs.
“Every single study that has shown impressive gains for children has always had a high-quality program,” said Columbia University Teachers College associate dean Sharon Lynn Kagan, a national early childhood education expert. “So we have no evidence that you can get the kind of benefit that people are extolling about pre-kindergarten and early childhood education unless it’s high quality.”
Lists abound detailing how high-quality programs can be achieved.
State officials say this: Richland 2’s 4-year-old kindergarten program, next to Killian Elementary School, is a model of high quality.
The program serves at-risk students who might qualify in various ways, including low family income or low scores on school-readiness assessments.
In mid-May, Allen’s class of 15 children gathered in a circle to talk about what their day would hold, including breakfast, songs and continuing lessons on the week’s theme: aquatic life.
Evidence of the theme is splattered all over the room, including a field of jellyfish mobiles hanging from the ceiling, with paper-plate bodies and plastic streamer tentacles. They’re hung low enough to brush adult heads but in perfect proximity for 4-year-olds to identify their projects.
After the discussion, Allen gives instructions for lining up to go to breakfast. The instructions are lengthy: The children will line up in a boy-girl-boy-girl pattern. As Allen explains the process, one boy fidgets and starts to stand up, then sits back down, starts to stand up again, then sits back down.
“It’s helping him focus,” said lead teacher Dodie Rodgers, a former S.C. Teacher of the Year who oversees the Clemson Road program. “It’s helping him stretch his attention span.”
The lessons are subtle and often foster social and emotional development — crucial milestones for children this age, according to brain development research. Children are learning how to control their impulses, how to interact socially and how to work in groups and independently.
The boy-girl-boy-girl plan also helps children begin to understand patterns, Rodgers said.
They are all skills needed to succeed in kindergarten.
At breakfast, children balance their plastic foam trays filled with cereal, pancakes on a stick and milk cartons. At the beginning of the year, most struggle to open the finicky milk cartons. By the end, it’s no problem.
Later in the day, children play a game in which they toss a beanbag back and forth. Most still haven’t mastered the art of catching, and that’s OK; the lesson is simply for children to work together.
“By learning cooperation, they learn not to say things like, ‘Man, you can’t catch,’” Rodgers said. “They’re so self-centered at this age. They’re learning to be sensitive to others.”
PANACEA-FILLED PROMISES
Look at the research, and early childhood education sounds like a cure-all for the educational, and even lifelong, challenges of poor children.
Children who attend high-quality pre-kindergarten are more likely to: start school “on grade-level,” graduate from high school, be employed later in life and avoid violent crime.
That prompted a circuit judge to rule that the state needs to do more to help its poorest, youngest children who historically struggle throughout their school careers.
Under the spending plan lawmakers have agreed upon, the state will spend $2,880 per child. That means local districts will have to make up the difference to meet the $7,000 per child Richland 2 spends on what’s considered a model program or the $8,000 to $10,000 per-pupil national figure experts say is needed to support a high-impact 4-K.
HIGH QUALITY: COSTLY AND COMPLICATED
High quality.
It’s a simple enough term.
But it’s not so simple to do. Nationally, programs tend to be fairly low to mediocre in quality, Kagan said. In addition to being expensive, high quality is tougher to create in rural areas — the parts of South Carolina where children need high-quality programs the most.
That’s because rural areas often have limited local resources that help urban programs thrive, such as access to professional development opportunities for teachers.
“We’ve got a disjuncture because we have policymakers expecting great outcomes from programs that are mediocre,” Kagan said.
State Sen. Nikki Setzler, D-Lexington, said the Senate’s plan to offer $2,900 per child, which is close to what the state will likely spend, is just a starting point.
But he disagreed with experts’ costly estimates of annual spending.
“It may shock people, but a good full-day program in South Carolina costs about the same as K-12 (education), which is about $10,000 a child,” said Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research.
Not including facility and building maintenance costs, that number drops to about $8,000 per pupil, Barnett said.
In 2005, Barnett’s institute rated South Carolina state-funded pre-kindergarten programs highly. Somehow, the state-funded programs are managing to do more with less.
The state met eight of 10 quality standards measured by Barnett’s institute, such as requirements for teacher training, small class sizes and accountability.
However, South Carolina ranked 37th out of 38 states in terms of resources devoted to the programs. The 2005 report showed that half-day programs received about $1,500 per child.
Today, that number is about $1,700.
Local school districts — some of which spend local money to create full-day programs — also are using local funds to keep program quality high, said Robin McCants, director of the S.C. Department of Education office of early childhood education.
“It does make it difficult when there is not an adequate amount of funding,” McCants said.
Richland 2, for example, spends $7,146 per student for its 4-year-old kindergarten program, which serves about 195 at-risk students in full-day programs. About 200 children are on waiting lists.
“The need for 4-year-old kindergarten in South Carolina is a given,” Rodgers said. “But what will determine success for our children is how it is implemented.”
Reach Michals at (803) 771-8532.
