In Boston, Bringing the Best of Pre-K Practices into the Elementary Years

Children building towers out of wooden blocks, small groups of students moving through centers based on what strikes their interest, and teachers reading books aloud with children huddled around them listening intently: these are things a visitor would expect to find in a high-quality pre-K classroom anywhere in the country. In Boston Public Schools (BPS), however, these are typical sights visitors see not only in pre-K classrooms, but also in classrooms full of kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders.

At a time when many kindergarten classrooms are resembling first grade by devoting more time to teacher-directed instruction and less to child-directed activities, BPS is intentionally taking the opposite approach by bringing the best practices of high-quality pre-K into the early elementary grades of kindergarten through second grade. “We know that literacy is about knowledge building and knowledge building is about experience, vocabulary, and language. That’s true for everyone. So we think that a lot of what happens in pre-K is what should be happening for all children up through and beyond second grade,” says Melissa Tonachel, program director at the BPS Department of Early Childhood (DEC).

The work involved in transforming the early elementary grades in Boston didn’t happen overnight, but is instead the result of about twenty years of work, with much of it focused on creating a curriculum that aligns the content and instructional practices of the pre-K through second grade span. The DEC was established in 2005 by Boston Mayor Menino amid his push to have BPS “provide all four-year-olds in the city with full-day school within five years.” Five years later, 85 percent of the 85 BPS elementary schools contained at least one pre-K classroom. The DEC ultimately decided to develop their own pre-K curriculum, called Focus on K1 (K1 is the term for pre-K in BPS), that consisted of two evidence-based curricula: the Building Blocks math curriculum and the Opening the World of Learning (OWL) language, literacy, and social-emotional curriculum. According to a recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), the curriculum used in a pre-K program is a critical determinant of overall quality and effectiveness.

It was a 2012 study that played an important part in convincing the DEC to extend its Focus curriculum beyond the pre-K years. That 2012 evaluation found that Boston’s pre-K students were often transitioning into kindergarten classrooms with lower quality instruction, redundant and non-thematic content, and primarily whole group, teacher-directed instruction. In response to these findings, the DEC began rolling out the Focus on Early Learning curricula with a goal of aligning the content, instructional practices, and teacher professional development within and across pre-K through second grade. In 2015, a new BPS superintendent agreed to allow the DEC to make curriculum decisions for the K-2nd grade span rather than only pre-K and kindergarten. That same year, a BPS internal analysis found that children who attended the district’s pre-K Focus programs performed better on third and fifth grade standardized tests than children who do not attend the program, providing evidence that the Focus on K1 curriculum was leading to student gains.

The resulting curricula for kindergarten through second grade (Focus on K2, Focus on First, and Focus on Second) intentionally mirror many practices found in a pre-K classroom. These include the use of center time, where children play or work together on an activity; teacher-led small group instruction; read-aloud books; and independent literacy stations. Lessons are theme-based, allowing for deep content instruction, as well as project-based, encouraging collaboration with peers. Additionally, the curriculum is aligned across pre-K through second grade so that the skills taught at the beginning of each school year naturally build upon those learned by students at the end of the previous year.

While many schools across the country do away with learning centers at the end of pre-K or kindergarten, in Boston those centers remain in first and second grade under the label of studios. First graders participate in six studios: Art, Building, Drama, Library, Science and Engineering, and Writing. Second graders are able to engage in five different studios: Art, Building, Discovery, Research, and Writing and Storytelling. These studios provide students with opportunities to explore the major ideas of each unit through a variety of media in a play-based, hands-on format. Tonachel describes what a visitor might see in a BPS first or second grade classroom that’s implementing the Focus curriculum: “Children are spending more time in small groups and interacting with each other and materials than you might see in other classrooms, where the teacher is in control of all of the instruction…. It's really guided play - teachers are setting children up with specific materials and provocations, and children are choosing materials intentionally to communicate about the knowledge that they're building.”

In many ways, Boston is setting an example of pre-K through second grade alignment that can serve as an example for other districts across the country. A 2023 study of Boston’s alignment efforts from pre-K to first grade found that this sort of instructional alignment may help to sustain the initial benefits of pre-K programs through first grade in a subset of outcome domains. The same study concluded that Boston’s experience provides evidence that, “given sufficient investments in coaching and professional development and structures that provide some oversight over both PreK and elementary school settings, it is feasible to implement aligned curricula from PreK to first grade with moderate to high levels of intervention fidelity.”

The focus on coaching and professional development has been a key part of successfully implementing the aligned Focus curriculum across the district. Prior to the implementation of the Focus curriculum across pre-K through second grade, pre-K teachers received intensive training and ongoing coaching while kindergarten through second grade educators received mostly one-time curriculum training. Under the Focus program, however, kindergarten through second grade teachers also receive curriculum training, coaching, and monthly curriculum-focused seminars led by an instructional coach. BPS teachers implementing the Focus curriculum have access to a coach to assist with implementation, though the impact of that coaching depends on a willingness to be coached and the time to work with a coach: “Coaching has an impact when teachers are interested and willing to be coached and principals create schedules that allow for common planning time and collaboration,” says Tonachel.

Creating and implementing an aligned pre-K through second grade curriculum is not without its challenges. For one, elementary school principals are focused on the entire pre-K through fifth grade span and might be resistant to a curriculum that specifically focuses only on pre-K through second grade. “Principals start feeling like, ‘Uh-oh, I need to align this with what's happening in fifth grade.’ They want a whole elementary school package,” says Tonachel. And in districts like Boston with a tradition of schools that are highly autonomous, it’s ultimately up to individual principals to agree to implement a new approach at their schools. Additionally, shifting from a first and second grade experience that largely consists of whole group, teacher-led instruction to one more focused on small groups and student autonomy can be a difficult transition process. A survey of kindergarten teachers in 2017 and 2018 found that 56 percent of kindergarten teachers feared losing control of their classroom with the Focus curriculum’s emphasis on small groups, peer interaction, and student-directed learning.

To ensure that the Focus program is working well for both students and teachers, BPS has been part of a research-practice partnership since 2007. The partnership works both to provide fast-turnaround research to guide immediate improvements as well as longer-term causal studies to determine overall impact. Currently, researchers are following four cohorts of children who applied to the BPS pre-K program between 2007 and 2010 to determine the long-term impacts of the program and areas for improvement. A separate study of about 500 BPS students who attended pre-K, kindergarten, and first grade in BPS found that children who experienced strong instructional alignment across those grades had greater gains in literacy and math skills through the spring of first grade compared with students who attended pre-K in a non-BPS program.

Next steps for the DEC include piloting a Focus curriculum specific for use in mixed-age family child care settings throughout the city. In the past, DEC staff has provided training to districts in Rhode Island and Maine interested in adopting the curriculum in their elementary schools. Currently, officials are using philanthropic funding to develop a toolkit featuring video examples and observation tools to assist administrators and teachers interested in implementing the curriculum. The entire curriculum is also available to view and download on the DEC website for no charge, complete with week-by-week lesson breakdowns.

Boston’s experience shows that a developmentally appropriate, evidence-based curriculum that is aligned across grades is achievable in a large urban school district. By aligning curriculum and instruction from pre-K through second grade, BPS has strengthened classroom quality, supported sustained gains, and created learning environments where children build knowledge through rich, hands-on experiences. The takeaway for other districts is clear: with intentional curriculum design, meaningful coaching, and structures that support collaboration, it is possible to bring the best of pre-K into the early grades.