Five Things to Know About High Quality in Kindergarten

Kindergarten is one of the most consequential years in a child’s education. It’s the first universally available, formal schooling a child experiences, and for many children, it’s where they first learn to be a student and a friend. At the same time, it is not required in every state, and it can look and feel very different depending on where families live. There is a lot we need to rethink about kindergarten, but below are the five things I most want school leaders, teachers, and families to understand about quality in kindergarten.

1. Play and academic rigor are partners, not opposites

One of the most troubling false dichotomies in early education is the belief that you have to choose between play and “real” learning. You don’t.

When I talk about play-based learning, I’m not talking about a free-for-all, and I’m not talking only about recess (though unstructured play matters too). I mean using play as the vehicle for learning content, even challenging content. A child building a soccer stadium out of magnetic tiles is practicing spatial reasoning, vocabulary, patience, and problem-solving, while a skilled teacher asks questions that pull in math and oral language. Rigorous learning can and should be joyful for young children. The way young children learn hasn’t changed even as the academic expectations placed on them have climbed. Exploration and student-led, playful learning will always be central to how five- and six-year-olds learn best. So, if we really want young students to succeed academically in kindergarten and beyond, we need to follow the science of early learning and development.

2. Quality kindergarten rests on three indispensables

After reading countless studies on what makes early learning classrooms work, three components stood out to me. I call them indispensable, or impossible to do without:

• Positive and supportive interactions. Children learn and trust in classrooms where they believe their teacher knows, understands, and cares about them.
• High-quality instruction delivered in the way young students learn best. Hands-on, playful, choice-rich learning and conversation, not five-year-olds sitting and listening for much of the day.
• Deep learning across the content areas. Not just reading and math, but science, social studies, and the arts too.

These aren’t nice-to-haves. They are the nonnegotiable baseline of every kindergarten classroom. But they don’t happen on their own. They require the right conditions, including sustainable funding, small class size, teacher preparation, and leadership that understands young children.

3. School administrators can be either architects or demolitionists

This is one of my favorite framings, and it comes from work my team did with principals across five states: when it comes to how young children learn, principals can be architects or demolitionists. Principals set the vision and expectations for teaching and learning. Their influence over the classroom is enormous.

Picture a principal walking into a kindergarten during the literacy block and seeing children scattered on the floor, talking and playing. A leader without early-grade experience might think, “This is chaos,” and push the teacher toward quiet groups and worksheets. An expert teacher, however, knows there are real learning goals inside that play. The difference between a principal who recognizes the learning and one who doesn’t can make or break a child’s kindergarten experience. Many elementary principals have never taught at the early grade level, and only one state requires early childhood content in principal preparation. So leadership isn’t a side issue; it’s a key ingredient of meaningful change.

4. Children don’t need to get ready for kindergarten; schools need to get ready for the new kindergartners

We have the readiness conversation backward.

I sat through a kindergarten orientation when my daughter was in pre-K. One slide announced “NO NAPTIME!” The next stated that kindergarten is much more academically rigorous, followed by a list of everything five-year-olds would be expected to do in kindergarten, including writing in complete sentences and recognizing numbers up to 100. The daily schedule listed 45 minutes of phonics, a reading block, a long math block, and just thirty minutes carved out for health, science, and social studies combined. Toward the end of the presentation, there was a long list of things parents could do to prepare their children.

The message families receive is that the child must change. For children who attend early childhood education before kindergarten, the gap between pre-K and the early grades is both wide (missing the playful approach of pre-K) and repetitive (relearning letters, letter sounds, and other basic skills). For children who have not had formal early learning experiences, kindergarten can be a shock to their system. These youngsters are learning to be students for the first time. Children enter kindergarten with a wide range of knowledge, skills, and abilities, and we don’t do a good enough job of meeting their needs.

School leaders need to shift. Instead of asking whether the incoming class can sit still and recognize sight words, ask: Have our kindergarten and pre-K teachers had time to plan together? Do our routines and expectations shift gradually rather than all at once? Does our schedule reflect that these are five- and six-year-olds? Are we engaging families as partners in the transition rather than handing them a checklist? 

Readiness is a two-way street, and schools hold far more of the power to make it work.

5. Play-based learning is an equity issue

There’s a persistent assumption that children from families with low incomes, because they may be further behind, need a stripped-down, drill-the-basics education, while play is a luxury for everyone else.

As researcher Dale Farran has pointed out, families with high incomes often actively choose play-based options for their children, with exposure to a rich range of topics. So why wouldn’t that same approach be right for children from families with low incomes? We know from research that children from families with low incomes and children of color are less likely to be in classrooms that meet their developmental needs, and they’re often the hardest hit by under-resourced kindergartens. Access to joyful, playful, rigorous learning isn’t a frill. It’s a matter of fairness, and it’s one of the clearest ways leaders can serve the children who need them most.

Kindergarten is where children’s relationship with school begins. The question every leader, teacher, and family should be asking is simple: Are we building their love of learning, or are we chipping away at it? We have the research and the examples to get kindergarten right. What we need is the will to expand and scale approaches that work.