The 3- and 4-year-olds sit on the floor, eyes and ears on teacher Kaya Savannah as she reads aloud the book The Clothes I Wear which shortly incorporates a session on rhyming. No static exercise this; they emphasize words with arm movements in response to Ms. Savannah’s prompts.
“Fall and hat. Let’s see if those words rhyme,” she asks. “Fall, hat.” the class repeats in unison “fall, hat,” followed by a chorus of “fall, fall, fall” and “hat, hat hat.” Asked if those two words rhyme, the class responds “No!” Ms. Savannah asks why not and calls on one girl with her hand raised who says, “Cause they do not have the same ending sound.”
Sponges all, are kids this age the solution to decades of literacy disappointments on the part of too many older students? Pre-K is far from a new idea and has, of course, supporters and detractors. If kindergarten isn’t early enough to rechart their course, will intervention beginning at age three give students a better chance to be reading on grade level when they are 9? Or will it overload young minds and stress them out too early?
There didn’t seem to be any stress in evidence during a visit to two classes at the MLK Early Childhood Center last week. Children were engaged, even jubilant when they came up with the right answer and already masters at Turn and Talk with a classmate.
According to Marisol Castruita, Director of Early Childhood Education for the district, HISD has 167 schools with pre-K programs and 713 classrooms. These are scattered across the district. with more of a concentration in the West (where there are a lot of immigrant children, she says) and the South. They follow the best practices for pre-K as outlined by the Texas Education Agency.
In another class, a dual language one, the students spend most of the day in Spanish with a portion of the day devoted to English in the afternoon. Again, the energy in the room is high.
None of the students here work with worksheets and they come to school in brightly colored rooms with play stations for independent play learning, Principal Michelle Thomas says all the teachers at the school have to be certified which makes it difficult sometimes to find new staff when someone moves on. Even more so if they are looking for bilingual teachers.
Social skills are considered as important as academic concepts; children are introduced to a structured day, the concept that a teacher is in charge of the room and they need to get along with their peers.
Castruita refers to a recent Rice University Kinder Institute for Research report that showed 25 percent of English speaking kids were more likely to be prepared for kindergarten if they’d gone to pre-K first. The report also said 50 percent of children who were primarily Spanish speakers were more prepared for kindergarten after pre-K.
“They learn how to learn when they’re in pre-K,” she says.
However, despite Superintendent Mike Miles’ desire to expand pre-K in HISD barriers remain. In addition to some parents’ reluctance to enroll their children in pre-K after keeping them home during the height of the pandemic, the program is looking for funding, certified teachers, and schools that can make room for additional classes (often requiring en suite restrooms or at least ones that are very close).
And then there’s the $4.4 billion bond issue that didn’t pass, a portion of which would have provided for even more pre-K classes. HISD is adding pre-K classes in the next year, but it won’t be at the number Miles had envisioned.
The irony is, of course, that there are open spaces in some parts of the district for pre-K kids whose numbers have still not quite returned to where they were before the pandemic. Meanwhile a place like the Early Childhood Center on W. Fuqua has a 90-child waiting list. Principal Thomas says she has the room, just not the certified teachers she needs. It’s even harder to get teachers who are bilingual for some of their classes that are dual language.
The French Revolution
In 2018, when French President Macron announced that mandatory school attendance would move from age 6 to age 3, he said the change was to fight inequality that he saw in the poorest areas of France and its overseas territories.
For most French children this meant no difference according to the online news reporting source France 24 which said at that time that 97.6 percent of French children were already enrolled by age 3 in either public or private schools.
These classes, the government declared, were not places for “universal babysitting” but as schools aimed at acquiring language and helping children thrive. The school year goes from early September to late June but it being France, there are several substantial holidays in there and the lunch time meal and recess is far from the hurried affair in American schools. For example, the public school in the village of San Michel du Bannieres, employs a chef who uses locally sourced products to create his meals.
Not everyone in France was thrilled at the news, some saying they feared too much pressure was being placed on children at too young an age. Other than Hungary, the rest of Europe did not rush to emulate France. But the new minimum age which went into practice in 2019 is still the law of the land in France five years later.
The public schools in France are free and run by the government. In smaller villages, parents go to the local town hall to sign their children up for school , bringing the same proofs of address, birth certificates and immunization records that parents in the United States are used to providing.
Rice Institute Study
The Rice University Kinder Institute for Research study that Castruita referred to clearly showed the positive relationship between pre-K experience and how children do in kindergarten and beyond.
Comparing students who hadn’t attended pre-K with those who had, the study found that besides the latter being more ready for kindergarten, that they were “less likely to be chronically absent in early elementary school.”
The study said that extra effort should be made to enroll students for whom English is not their first language. And found that students with pre-K experience were “likely to score higher on the English proficiency test in early elementary school than those who did not.”
In HISD, Castruita doesn’t just base her assessment on numbers and studies, but on her earlier experience as a teacher and administrator. Children in pre-K learn how to communicate with each other, how to follow procedures, she says.. They learn about an environment different from their homes. Without pre-K experience, many children have to start from scratch when they go to school for the first time as kindergartners, she says..
Some of you are probably thinking, well not all children are potty trained by age 3 and even those who have it down have the occasional accident. The TEA says children cannot be excluded from the program if they are not potty trained, Castruita says.
Janice Dingayan, a coordinator with the Early Childhood program, says school employees are precluded from touching the genital areas of children, but are allowed to guide children through taking down their underwear and cleaning themselves. Parents sign an agreement that they will come in and take care of their child after repeated bouts of bathroom accidents. The program tries to avoid all this by stopping for bathroom breaks every two hours. And parents are given information about potty training.
Pre-K in HISD gives preference to the 4-year-old group as this is their last chance before kindergarten. Eligibility is also based on family income and whether the children don’t speak English. Parents who want to enroll their children who don’t meet these guidelines pay $745 a month in tuition at the MLK center, Thomas says.
As the TEA sees it: “Children who can follow directions, communicate their wants, and needs effectively, and get along with other children are better prepared for kindergarten and beyond.”
The pre-K day is a full one at the Early Childhood Center. Thomas says students attend from 7:20 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. This is not a zoned school; they have students from all over the district attending.
At the end of the session in Ms. Savannah’s class, Thomas compliments them all, telling them they did a great job. “Give yourselves a pat on the back. Booya.”
“Booya,” the kids chorus in turn. “Booya, booya, booya.”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
