At Education Week: The Mismatch Between Half-Day Kindergarten and the Common Core

We’ve written before about kindergartners’ widely divergent school experiences, with some attending full-day kindergarten and others offered only half-day classes. Regardless of the amount of time kindergarteners spend in the classroom, they will soon have to meet the expectations of the Common Core, new, more rigorous standards in English/language arts and math, which have been adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia (one of those states, Minnesota, adopted only the ELA standards).

In a commentary for Education Week, I discuss why students attending only a half-day of kindergarten might miss out on learning opportunities that are important to young children’s development and to meeting the standards of the Common Core. To help children reach the high expectations of the Common Core while still offering a well-rounded kindergarten experience, states should fund a full day of kindergarten and require school districts to provide it.

I also note a new report from the National Association for the Education of Young Children that raises concerns about the Common Core standards being “pushed down” into pre-kindergarten programs, without a similar effort to “push up” best practices of early learning into the K-3^rd grades.

Read the entire commentary here.