Introduction

When classes begin for the 2019–2020 school year, approximately 4 million children will start kindergarten.¹ What these young learners experience over the next year could have profound implications for their futures: Research suggests that students who attend a high-quality classroom in kindergarten and the early elementary grades that follow are more likely to attend college, save more for retirement, and even live in wealthier neighborhoods.² What steps can be taken to ensure that children, especially those in under-resourced communities, have high-quality kindergarten experiences?

Research suggests that many schools take a haphazard approach to the transition into kindergarten. To the extent that kindergarten transition activities take place, they are frequently low-intensity practices, such as sending brochures about kindergarten home to families, rather than more effective, high-intensity activities that involve individualized contact with parents that occur prior to the first day of school. Schools serving large numbers of students from low-income families are less likely to provide kindergarten transition activities than wealthier schools, meaning that students and families likely to benefit most from these activities are the least likely to receive them.³ For this reason, improving the transition to kindergarten is a necessary component of the work to provide equitable opportunities for children no matter the socioeconomic status of their parents. Improving transitions, including the better connection of instruction, learning environments, discipline, curriculum, data, professional development, and family engagement, and building cross-sector relationships can make a big difference for the quality of children’s kindergarten experiences.

In the 2017 report Connecting the Steps we highlighted the work four states were doing to ease the transition into kindergarten.⁴ But while states can encourage intentional, local efforts to smooth transitions to kindergarten, the planning of a stable, well connected transition between early education and kindergarten falls largely within the purview of individual school districts and schools.

In an ideal scenario, a student entering her classroom on the first day of kindergarten will be met by a teacher who is already familiar with her and her family. If the student—call her Marilyn—attended a pre-K program, the kindergarten teacher had a chance to speak with that teacher to discuss her strengths and areas of growth and was given access to assessments or observational notes about Marilyn, including information about her attendance in pre-K. Marilyn’s pre-K and kindergarten teachers will have had opportunities to attend professional development sessions together in order to ensure alignment and coherence in expectations and curricula as students move from one to the other.

Even if Marilyn did not attend pre-K prior to kindergarten, ideally her parents will already be familiar with Marilyn’s kindergarten teacher and the elementary school itself due to their involvement in parent education and engagement sessions. Perhaps Marilyn’s kindergarten teacher visited her home during the summer to learn more about her background and her parents’ goals and expectations for the upcoming school year.

And, hopefully, Marilyn herself is familiar with her kindergarten teacher, classroom, and new school. She might have made numerous visits to the school over the last few months to eat in the cafeteria, observe a kindergarten classroom in action, and become less intimidated by the idea of entering elementary school. Perhaps she even had the opportunity to attend a two-week summer program at the school to become familiar with school routines and expectations. Ideally, Marilyn and her family have even had a chance to map out and practice a safe route to school. When all is said and done, this “new” experience for Marilyn should not feel that new at all.