Category Archives: Play

Heroes in education – young and old

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On Thursday evening, many educators gathered in Cambridge, MA to honor Jonathan Kozol as he received the Deborah W. Meier Hero in Education Award. The event was sponsored by our colleagues at FairTest – the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. Monty Neil, FairTest Executive Director, welcomed us to the event with an uplifting account of the ground swell of protests to high-stakes testing that have emerged this school year – and especially this spring. The movement continues to be “embryonic”, though it does feel as though parents, teachers and students across the country have begun to find their collective voice of resistance. Chicago Public Schools cancelled a district-mandated assessment for their youngest students last month – this followed quickly on the heels of the “Play-In” protest a CPS headquarters and a boycott of the state-mandated Prairie Achievement Exam by high school students. These parents, students and teachers who are standing up, boycotting, rallying and protesting are also heroes in education.

On a related note, educators in New York are gearing up for a Rally for Public Education in Albany on June 8th.  They’ve asked us to spread the word. Below, see a Top Ten list of reasons for attending the rally – as well as a YouTube video to help spread the word.

TOP TEN reasons to March on Albany in the Rally for Public Education:

10. You have realized public education is being hi-jacked by for profit organizations.

9. You are tired of reading about how ineffective you are at your own profession by people who know nothing about education.

8. You believe high stakes testing is out of control in NY.

7. You believe you have not had enough time to learn the Common Core yourself, let alone have your students tested on it!

6. You believe your students’ personal information, including their state assessment results and their IEPs and other personal data should be kept confidential.

5. You believe your effectiveness rating should be kept confidential, and don’t want a link on the district web page to this information or directions given to get this information.

4. You believe that NYS should report to the public the amount of tax payer money spent on developing, administering, grading and reviewing state assessments.

3. The word PEARSON makes your skin crawl.

2. You work in Averill Park (Insert your own school district.)and have lost about a quarter of your faculty due to unfair state budget cuts!

AND THE NUMBER ONE REASON….

1. You are a caring professional who wants the BEST public education for your own students, children, and grandchildren and you know this isn’t it!

Michelle Smead, Averill Park Teachers’ Association

An Open Letter to Secretary Arne Duncan – from an Early Childhood Educator

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This is an update to our previous post on the fantastic “Play-In” protest at the headquarters for Chicago Public Schools. The Play-In was organized to advocate for more appropriate curricula in Chicago’s early childhood classrooms and it had the support of the Chicago Teachers Union. In fact, Michelle Strater Gunderson, who is the Early Childhood Committee Chairperson for the Chicago Teachers Union wrote a powerful Open Letter to Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. She wrote:

“As an early childhood educator, I was thrilled to hear President Obama’s strong focus on preschool education in the State of the Union address. We have a preponderance of research evidence that tells us quality early childhood education makes a difference in the learning lives of children, and providing expanded opportunities for parents and children is a step in the right direction.

Yet, there are many concerns as this policy unfolds.

It is understandable that when the government spends money on a program that there should be accountability to the public. It is a grave concern, however, that most of the policy you create uses standardized testing as the measure of success in education. A regimen of intensive testing is counterproductive and against developmentally appropriate early childhood practice. Children do not need to experience their first feelings of defeat at the hands of a test when they are three.”

Read the entire letter here.

For a powerful visual of just how testing has taken over in the early childhood classrooms in Chicago Public Schools, check out this blog post from At the Chalk Face. Make special note of how few days are coded white – meaning there are no tests given. There are also days where three colors are overlapping – meaning teachers are juggling three different assessments at that time. When so much time is spent testing, how much time can actually be spent teaching?

Fighting the Good Fight

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Here at DEY we are always happy to share news of parents, teachers and citizens standing up – to fight back against high-stakes testing and the corporate takeover of education.

On April 17th in Chicago, a group of parents, educators and children staged a “Play In” at Chicago Public Schools headquarters as a way to advocate for more appropriate curricula in Chicago’s early childhood classrooms. This inspiring event had one central message:  “less tests, more play”. Read here to learn how bubbles, play dough and puzzles can be used in a peaceful (even joyful!) protest.

In The Atlantic, John Tierney writes The Coming Revolution in Public Education. His article expertly outlines the criticisms of the current reform movement:

“… the reforms have self-interest and profit motives, not educational improvement, as their basis; corporate interests are reaping huge benefits from these reform initiatives and spending millions of dollars lobbying to keep those benefits flowing; three big foundations (Gates, Broad, and Walton Family) are funding much of the backing for the corporate reforms and are spending billions to market and sell reforms that don’t work; ancillary goals of these reforms are to bust teacher unions, disempower educators, and reduce spending on public schools; standardized testing is enormously expensive in terms both of public expenditures and the diversion of instruction time to test prep; over a third of charter schools deliver “significantly worse” results for students than the traditional public schools from which they were diverted; and, finally, that these reforms have produced few benefits and have actually caused harm, especially to kids in disadvantaged areas and communities of color.”

…as well as the ground swell of resistance! Check out the entire article here. It is a must read.

And one more thing…here is a letter of resignation from Gerald J. Conti, a social studies teacher at Westhill High School in Syracuse, N.Y. His letter was posted by Valerie Strauss on her blog, The Answer Sheet. Conti’s eloquent words and scathing review of the current education system help to paint the picture of what is happening to quality education in our country. “After writing all of this I realize that I am not leaving my profession, in truth, it has left me. It no longer exists.”

When Education Goes Wrong: Taking the Creativity and Play Out of Learning

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Here at DEY we hope that you do not miss Dr. Nancy Carlsson-Paige’s Tedx Talk from the Calhoun School in New York City. Carlsson-Paige weaves stories from real children into her powerful talk as she illustrates the misguided direction of current education policies in our country.

Follow this link to the TEDx talk on YouTube:

“The difference between understanding concepts and reciting facts is very important for us to understand right now, because it captures the essence of what is happening in education today. There is a gross misunderstanding of what education is that has swept across the country.” -Dr. Nancy Carlsson-Paige

Will Obama’s plan lead to what is best for children?

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Much has been happening in the early childhood world. On February 14, President Obama released details of his new Plan for Early Education for all Americans. Although this focus on early childhood education might be viewed as positive, we have deep concerns about aspects of the plan, such as the call for “a rigorous curriculum” and the “plan to implement comprehensive data and assessment systems”.

Valerie Strauss, from the Washington Post, raises the same concerns in her post Why is Obama calling for a ‘rigorous curriculum’ for 3-year-olds? She writes:
 ”Young children need to have multiple, varied, challenging, hands-on and open-ended sensory experiences, not worksheets. Children should be encouraged to interact with their environment and build relationships with each other in order to develop critical thinking skills and empathy.” 

and

“There’s nothing wrong with rigorous curriculum, of course, but “rigorous” is not exactly the word you think of when little kids come to mind. How about a creative curriculum? How about a curriculum based on social emotional development?

If the program winds up forcing very young children into learning situations that are not developmentally appropriate and that are test obsessed, an initiative that sounds great will be just the opposite.” Read Strauss’ entire piece here at The Washington Post.

Similar questions are raised by Erika Christakis who wrote the piece The Catch-22 of Obama’s Preschool Plan for Time Magazine. She writes:

“Kindergarten classrooms today have been scrubbed of many of the essential ingredients including freedom for dramatic play, creativity, and conversation. Gone are blocks and dress-up corners and dedicated play time. Artwork has been replaced with word walls promising a “print-rich” environment that few five-year-olds can, in reality, actually understand. Drill and kill worksheets are the norm. Many kids can’t handle the pressure: suspensions in the early years have increased dramatically since the 1970s, even trickling down to preschools where children are expected to be “ready” for a kindergarten curriculum that would have been more appropriate to a 1st or second grade classroom 20 years ago.” 

and

“If states continue of this wrong-headed path, there’s no reason to believe President Obama’s laudable proposal won’t inflict the same high-stakes testing climate on even younger kids. That would be a disaster because a disproportionate emphasis on academic skills in the preschool years violates everything we know scientifically about healthy child development: that three- and four-year-olds learn best when learning is embedded in social relationships, real life experience, and unhurried exploration. In short, young children, like all other mammals, learn through play.”  Read Christakis entire piece here.

Finally, we present DEY’s latest member of our National Board of Advisers, Dr. Doris Pronin Fromberg, Professor of Education at Hofstra University, who sums up her reaction to Obama’s plan this way:

Applause is due for President Obama’s support of universal pre-kindergarten. Below are some thoughts about The Upsides; The Downside Cautions; and Possible Future Outlooks.

The Upside:  There is research to support the cost-benefit to society of fine quality early childhood education, particularly for children from low-income homes

During the past 40 years, different studies have found a $1.00 investment in fine quality early education yielding as high as a $16.00 cost-benefit return by reducing retention, school dropouts, improved high school graduation, less incarcerations, and improved employment histories.

The Upside: Children from low-income and immigrant families benefit significantly from pre-kindergarten/Head Start settings.

The Upside: There is research that finds kindergarten children attained higher test scores when their teachers were specifically state certified to teach early childhood education.

The Downside Caution: Early childhood teachers typically work with 100% of school principals and central school administrators who have had no required preparation to understand the distinctive ways in which pre-kindergarten and kindergarten learn.

In order to effectively supervise, support, and evaluate early childhood teachers, school administrators would need to understand how teachers can match early learning with a rich repertoire of teaching activities; classroom organization, scheduling, and equipping.

The Downside Caution: Federal funds in recent years have followed the path of the past 14 years of educational funding by focusing on testing and evaluation. Part of the impact has been an increase of teaching narrowly to the test and downright reporting fraud by frightened adults. The testing funds typically have categorized rather than qualitatively or quantitatively improved rich learning.

(If you have 15 minutes of curiosity, I invite you to view a TEDx talk on the economic impact of high-stakes testing when compared with fine quality early childhood education. Google: Doris Fromberg TEDx as well as  Lawrence Schweinhart TEDx).

The Downside Caution: Federal funds have found their way into massive overlays of administrative costs as well as testing costs.

The Downside Caution: More than 95% of kindergarten children attend public schools. Their teachers are required to have professional state certification. Barely 50% of children attend any pre-school programs, and their teachers often do not have specific preparation in how to match teaching with the conditions with which young children learn. There is a 45-55% turnover rate among non-public school early childhood staff members.

In 1993 Trellis Waxler stated that, if the federal government had invested modestly in college scholarships for Head Start teachers instead of isolated bits of uncoordinated staff development, there could have been less turnover, more stability, and stronger educational benefits to the young children.

Pre-kindergarten funding within states has streamed into non-public school settings which might or might not have professionally state certified teachers. Many of the settings drill children in unproductive ways and support the children’s alienation from school.

The Possible Future Outlook: Focus funds on supporting states to require professional state-certified preparation for all teachers, building level, and school district administrators who are responsible for the education of pre-kindergarten children. Professionals are able to assess young children through multiple means, sequence their learning experiences, and differentiate instruction effectively.

The Possible Future Outlook: Minimize administrative costs. Maximize relevant materials (other than tests), equipment, and require professional educators for the benefit of young children.

Fine quality professionally certified educators who can match teaching with the conditions with which young children learn are likely to support the society’s needs for STEM (Science-Technology Engineering, and Mathematics) professions. Moreover, young children who have a richly engaging early education have the potential to become productive adults and informed citizens.

*See Related References below

At this point, with so many questions and concerns, here at DEY, we will be watching closely and with caution. We wonder, can the Obama plan can be shaped into a plan that leads to what is best for children and to a plan that does no harm?

Related References from Dr. Doris Pronin Fromberg:

  • Association of Teacher Educators and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (1991). Early childhood teacher certification. Young Children 47, (l), 16-21.
  • Arnett, J. (1987). Caregivers in day care centers: Does training matter?Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 10, 541 – 552.
  • Bodrova,E.,& Leong, D.J. (2007). The Vygotskian approach to early childhood education. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Merrill/Prentice-Hall.
  • Deal, T.E., & Peterson, K.D. (1991). The principals’ role in shaping school culture. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office.
  • Early Childhood Advisory Council & Council on Children and Families (2012). New York State early learning guidelines. Author.
  • Fromberg, D.P. (1992). Certification of early childhood teachers. In L.R. Williams & D.P. Fromberg (Eds.).The encyclopedia of early childhood education  (470 – 472). New York: Garland.
  • Fromberg, D.P. (2006).Kindergarten education and early childhood teacher education inthe United States: Status at the start of the twenty-first century. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education 27(1) 65-85.
  • Fromberg, D.P. (2012). Kindergarten today: Is the match between high-states outputs and low-impact inputs cost-effective? TEDTalk. (You Tube)
  • Fromberg, D.P. (n.d.) A comparison of small-group compared with whole-group instruction in kindergarten. Unpublished study.
  • Howard, E., Howell, B., & Brainard, E. (1987). Handbook for conductingschool climate improvement projects. Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappa.
  • Jerrold, R.H. (2011). A comparison of early childhood linear-academic and nonlinear intellectual teaching methodologies. Doctoral dissertation. Cypress, CA: Touro University.
  • Lazar, I., Darlington, R., Murray, H., Royce, J., &Snipper, A. (1982). Lasting effects of early education: A report from the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 47, (2 – 3), 1-151.
  • McMahon, E.M., Egbert, R.L., & McCarthy, J. (1991). Early childhood education: State policy and practice. Washington, DC: American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
  • National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (1992). 38thannual guide to accredited education programs/units. Washington, DC: Author.
  • Reynolds, A.J.,Temple,  J.A., Robertson, D.L., & Mann, E.A. (2001). Long-term effects of an early childhood intervention on educational achievement and juvenile arrest. A 15-year follow-up of low-income children in public schools. Journal of the American Medical Association 285 (18), 2339-2346.
  • Ruopp, R., Travers, J., Glantz, F., &Coelen, C. (1979). Children at thecenter: Summary findings and their implications. Cambridge, MA: Abt.
  • Rust, F., O’C. (1993). Changing teaching, changing schools: Bringing earlychildhood practice into public education. New York: Teachers College Press.
  • Schwartz, S.L., & Copeland, S.M. (2010). Connecting emergent curriculum and standards in early childhood education: Strengthening content and teaching practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
  • Schweinhart, L.J., Koshel, J.J., & Bridgman, A., (1987). Policy optionsfor preschool programs. Phi Delta Kappan 68, 527.
  • Schweinhart, L.J., et al, (2005) Lifetime effects: The HighScope Perry preschool study through age 40. Monograph of the HighScope Educational Research Foundation No.14. Ypsilanti, MI: HighScope Press.
  • Schweinhart, L.J. (2012). The return on investment of high quality preschool. TED Talk. (You Tube).
  • Seplocha, H.,&Strasser, J.(2009). A snapshot of quality in kindergarten classrooms in low-income districts: Implications for policy and practice. Trenton: New Jersey Department of Education..
  • Smith, W.F., & Andrews, R.L. (1989). Instructional leadership: How principals make a difference. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
  • Warger C. (Ed.). (1988). A resource guide to public school early childhood programs. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
  • Stipek, D., Feiler, R., Daniels, D., & Milburn, S, (1995). Effects of different instructional approaches on young children’s achievement and motivation. Child Development 66, 209-233.

Open Letter to NAEYC – A Call for Leadership in the Field

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Two weeks ago, we posted our Open Letter to NAEYC – A Call for Leadership in the Field. Since then we have received many emails of support, such as:

The letter is articulate, and provides a strong presentation of the opinions of so many in the membership.  Thank you!

I am very concerned about the attention being put on academics for young children without a full understanding of their needs. Please add my name to the letter to NAEYC.

Hurray for DEY! Thank you for helping to unveil and name the gigantic elephant in our collective educational room on behalf of young children and all those who are determined to walk the talk of DAP. Someday, this beast will be tamed for good given the diligence of DEY and countless others who work tirelessly to create a better, more meaningful world for children and families.

I’ll be proud to sign the letter…

As of this morning, 39 early childhood professionals have joined us in signing the letter. Today we are mailing this updated letter to NAEYC. If you are hearing about the letter for the first time, and would like to sign, we can easily add you to the letter posted on our website. Simply send an email to geralynbywater@gmail.com and write “Open Letter” in the subject line. Let us know how you would like to be identified.

And, if you are a prek-3rd grade teacher, please to take a few minutes to respond to our current survey of teachers. We want to hear from you about how demands on you have change since you began teaching – and how your teaching and assessments have changed as well. Thank you!

Moving beyond remote-controlled teaching and learning

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DEY invites you to check out Diane Levin’s latest blog entry on Wheelock College’s Aspire website.

Diane wrote the article because of her deep concern over the extreme misfit she is seeing between so many of the early childhood school reforms currently underway and who the young children of today really are.

Here is a snippet:

[A]s young children are controlled more and more by media and technology—what I call “Remote Controlled-Childhood”—they have a hard time constructing knowledge through the process described below. But instead of giving children what they need, today’s education policy makers are responding by mandating remote-controlled approaches to teaching and learning—rote teaching of easily testable isolated facts.

What remote-controlled young children really need is help becoming deeply engaged in the creative learning process described below so they become life-long learners and problem solvers. And all of us who care about promoting the wellbeing of young children can take an active role in working to create early childhood programs that do this.

Continue reading at Wheelock’s Aspire Wire: Ideas, Conversation, Action.

Is technology sapping children’s creativity?

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DEY’s Senior Adviser, Nancy Carlsson-Paige has written an insightful piece on technology and young children – published today in Valerie Strauss’s column The Answer Sheet at The Washington Post.

Here is an excerpt:

Is technology sapping children’s creativity?

My 4-year-old grandson Jake who lives in Guatemala recently called my husband in his office on Skype. No one seems to know how Jake managed to get onto the computer and make the call. And, as I sat talking to a friend, her 3-year old somehow found her iPhone and found his way to a video of Cat in the Hat.


A 13-month old uses a iPad (Matt Cardy/GETTY IMAGES) It wasn’t long ago that we were talking about how much TV kids should watch. And now here we are in the midst of a technology revolution that is happening so fast we can barely keep up with the number of devices and the options for screen time available to kids — on computers, tablets, cell phones, iPhones, flip down car monitors, interactive “app” toys, and on and on.

There has not been time to reflect on how this cascading influx of technology is affecting us all or to study the potentially far ranging influence it is having on our children. While electronic games for young children are flooding the market (72 percent of iTunes’ top-selling “education” apps are designed for preschoolers and elementary school children), the research on their impact is scant.

Click here to continue reading at The Washington Post website.

Does Common Core Affect Pre-K?

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Today on Diane Ravitch’s blog, DEY’s Senior Adviser Nancy Carlsson-Paige weighs in on the Common Core as it relates to preschool.

Hi Diane,

 It’s hard to put your finger on the pulse of what is really going on in early childhood right now, and for good reason.  There are big differences among states, school systems, and individual programs.  But there are also trends that are affecting the early childhood field as a whole, and they are most strongly felt in programs that are State and Federally funded.

There is an increasing pushdown of academic skills into Kindergartens and Pre-K’s.  The Alliance for Childhood first identified the disappearance of play in Kindergartens a few years ago.  Wrongly, the erosion of play-based learning in Kindergartens has now become the norm and is currently filtering into Pre-K’s around the country. This academic focus for young kids is driven by RTTT priorities and the Common Core Standards.  The Common Core extends to kindergarten and requires children to learn specific facts and skills in literacy and numeracy at specified ages.  For RTTT early childhood money, states have to agree to “align with the Common Core”.  These mandates are not based on the knowledge base of the early childhood field, on what is known about how young children learn best.  Those who wrote them are out of touch with young children and what quality programs should offer.

For the full text of Nancy’s post, click here.

Welcome to Defending the Early Years

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This web site is a public forum managed by Defending the Early Years, a nonprofit project whose purpose is to encourage educators to speak out about current policies that are affecting the education of young children.

Our principal concern is defending children’s right to play, grow, and learn in an era of so-called standards and accountability. For years we have worked with organizations like the Alliance for Childhood, Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment (TRUCE), the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Concerned Educators Allied for a Safe Environment (CEASE), and others to promote play-based early education and common-sense policymaking. In 2010 we joined hundreds of other educators in issuing a joint statement of concern about the Common Core Standards for the early grades (see http://www.edweek.org/media/joint_statement_on_core_standards.pdf.)

Now we are seeing a new wave of standards and testing about to wash over preschool. Though it has become fashionable to give lip service to the importance of children’s play, the reality is that play continues to disappear in many schools, even for the youngest children.

Enough is enough. Defending the Early Years was launched to pursue these goals:

  • to track the real effects of these new preschool standards;
  • to promote appropriate guidelines for early childhood educators;
  • to mobilize the early childhood community to speak out with well-reasoned arguments against inappropriate standards, assessments, and classroom practices.

We are collecting evidence from across the country and will be surveying teachers, program directors, and child development experts, publishing our findings, and doing everything we can to make our collective voices heard. Let us hear from you. Tell us what is happening in your classroom, in your school, in your community.