A Curious Difference

By ANDREA NEAL
Indiana Policy Review
Originally published in the EVV Courier and Press
December 18, 2006

Anyone who thinks all-day kindergarten will significantly improve student achievement should prepare for disappointment. The length of the school day, in itself, has no impact on what children learn. The content and the quality of reading instruction matter.

Disadvantaged students -the ones who would experience all-day kindergarten first under Gov. Mitch Daniels' plan -come to school with less developed pre-reading skills than peers. They tend to stay behind from the beginning.

If we want to target resources effectively, we should make sure these students get help learning the alphabet, connecting letters to sounds and sounding out words.

Consider it remedial instruction for at-risk kindergarteners. Second grade is too late to detect and treat reading difficulties, especially if those difficulties involve basic phonics.

Fourth grade reading achievement scores on the NAEP test underscore the problem. Thirty-six percent of Indiana's fourth graders tested "below basic skills" in reading in 2005. Forty-eight percent of the poorest students, those receiving free or reduced-price lunch, were below basic skills. Fifty-nine percent of black students were below basic skills. If you're wondering which children drop out of high school, look no further.

The problem is not that these children went to half-day kindergarten. The problem is that they did not learn to read well enough. Longitudinal data show that disadvantaged students who begin school with lower reading skills than their more advantaged peers fail to close the gap in reading," according to the study "Code-Oriented Instruction for Kindergarten Students at Risk for Reading Difficulties." The study, conducted by the Washington Research Institute, was published in the August issue of the Journal of Educational Psychology.

"Socioeconomic status accounted for more unique variation in reading scores than any other factor," the researchers reported. "Further these least advantaged students begin school in the lowest quality schools, characterized by larger class size and less prepared teachers."

To translate: Giving kindergartners three more hours a day in a low-performing school with an overextended teacher isn't going to help.

What will help? Giving disadvantaged children about 30 minutes of "explicit supplemental one-to-one instruction in alphabetic and phonemic decoding skills" four days a week, according to the study. The researchers specifically examined the feasibility of using "paraeducators" as the tutors. These are school aides with fewer academic credentials who would cost less than licensed classroom teachers.

A key to success was that the aides received thorough training in the instructional method to be used and followed it exactly, a finding that suggests schools could use volunteers for the same purpose as long as they received the right training.

Students chosen for the study scored in the bottom 13th percentile in phonemic and alphabetic skills. At the end of kindergarten, they scored on average in the 45th percentile in reading accuracy and 32nd percentile in reading efficiency.

"The major finding from this study is that children identified at high risk for reading difficulty at mid kindergarten and provided with code-based individual tutoring demonstrated significant advantages in reading and spelling skills at the end of kindergarten. ... All groups made significant growth during the follow-up year and maintained gains made during kindergarten to the end of first grade."

This brings us back to all-day kindergarten. Let's assume every kindergarten teacher has a full-time aide and a few volunteers available to do one-on-one reading instruction with at-risk students. A full day would be better than a half day if it doubled or tripled the number of children the tutors could reach.

In the same vein, a child who attends half-day kindergarten, then goes home to a parent who talks with him, reads to him and spends a half hour playing with a phonics-based toy, such as Smart Cubes, would no doubt show up to first grade ready to read.

There are reasons, other than academic, to like full-day kindergarten. The most obvious reason is that, in an era of two-parent working families, it's just more convenient than half-day programs.

But let's keep our eyes on the prize. An extra half day, doing more of the same thing we're doing now, fits the classic definition of insanity. An extra half day that included high quality reading instruction with one-on-one tutoring in phonics in low-income schools? Now that would make a difference.

Comment: Here is another point of view. Personally, I believe that children are too old to "begin" to learn in kindergarten. They need to learn in preschool and that begins about age three when they first discover the fun of letters. But local day care has a taboo about teaching anything academic to children. So the result is a constant flood of poor kids from day care who start kindergarten not knowing anything sitting next to the child who can read who has been home with mom or who has gone to an exclusive preschool. The problem will not be solved until day care begins to teach.