School Culture and Readiness to Support Early Learning

Problem: Though California has been working to expand access to public pre-K, public programs still serve fewer than 50 percent of the state’s four-year-olds and only 11 percent of three-year-olds.¹

In 2011 the Kindergarten Readiness Act established transitional kindergarten, and California’s new funding formula has given local communities more flexibility in allocating dollars. But younger children are still not a big part of the student body in most elementary schools, in part because buildings were not set up to support early education. There are often only one or two rooms with bathrooms inside the classroom, for example, which younger children need. State preschool programs are crammed into portable classrooms in some places. Developmentally appropriate manipulatives and art supplies are too often not readily available. And as New America found in a 2016 paper, school leaders often do not have the training or expertise they need to promote high-quality teaching during the early years.²

As communities work to expand not only access but the quality of early learning programs both inside and outside of public schools, some of these systemic barriers are becoming apparent. Leaders are realizing the importance of building a public-school culture that both trains staff to support high-quality interactions with young children and ensures that the system as a whole recognizes the value of a strong early learning program at all levels.

Solution: Some school districts are working on getting buy-in from principals and middle managers through training and outreach.

The Fresno Unified Early Learning Principals' Academy brings together principals in informal, collegial settings, with coaching and practicums to help them support their teachers in early grades and capitalize on investments and resource-shifting the district is making in early learning programs meant to set kids up to succeed in school.

Fresno’s Early Learning department developed a monthly class for principals. The five-session, three-and-a-half-hour class drew from the six competencies outlined by the National Association of Elementary School Principals in its guide, Leading Pre-K–3 Learning Communities: Competencies for Effective Principal Practice. Since the first cohort of 15 principals in 2014, 60 out of the district’s 65 elementary school principals have taken part.

Deanna Mathies, executive officer of Early Learning, said the kindergarten and early elementary grade classrooms were too often using instructional models not appropriate for young children—classrooms with desks in rows, for example, and too much whole-group instruction that expected children to sit still and listen for long periods of time. “In order to really get to quality and to create a continuum of learning for young children, we had to get to the site leaders,” she said.

The district is also engaged in new efforts to work more often in cross-department collaborative teams to solve problems at the school, classroom, and individual level for all children, from infants through age 22.

Kindergarten and early elementary grade classrooms were too often using instructional models not appropriate for young children—classrooms with desks in rows and too much whole-group instruction that expected children to sit still and listen for long periods of time.

Mathies said there is a shifting mindset around the early childhood program inside Fresno Unified. Responsibility for young children’s well-being is no longer seen as being “just out of the preschool office.” Instead, she said the attitude is: “How do we all respond in the system for all children? We’re doing the same thing at the community level. How do we coordinate? If we don’t serve the majority of the children, and if we don’t integrate…we’ll never change things. We’re on the road here…we’re testing it out, and we’re closer than we’ve ever been.”

Franklin-McKinley School District is also working to train principals and administrators. The district offered an Early Learning Community of Practice to help leaders better understand why early learning is key to eliminating the opportunity gap, how to identify elements of quality in classrooms, and how to leverage their site and existing resources to maximize opportunities. Some sessions were held in collaboration with principals and leaders from the surrounding area in order to encourage school leaders to see themselves as part of a movement working to spread progressive practices that support early learning.

Oakland has also been working on improving support for early learning. The district employs a kindergarten readiness manager who aligns work happening in its Community Schools department with that of the Early Childhood Education department and the elementary school sites. This work includes family and community outreach, collaboration between preschool and kindergarten teachers to smooth student transitions, and a four-week kindergarten readiness program targeted to children with minimal or no preschool experience and refugee/newcomer students. The program focuses on building social-emotional skills to help students make a more successful transition to elementary school and also offers bilingual literacy workshops for families, home visits, and developmental and dental screenings.

Some sessions were held in collaboration with principals and leaders from the surrounding area in order to encourage school leaders to see themselves as part of a movement.

Progress, however, has been slow. Districts have found that building a culture that supports and values early learning at all levels will not happen overnight.

Challenges

Teachers in all three districts, for example, have been challenged by administrators who struggle to understand the appropriate balance between play-based learning and academics. Administrators and leaders may have very different ideas about what constitutes strong learning environments in pre-K through third grade. Examples abound of principals who critique what they see in classrooms where students are participating in hands-on learning in centers instead of sitting quietly and listening. This makes it difficult for teachers who are aiming to improve their practice if they feel that their site administrators do not support the ideas they are implementing or what they are learning in professional development.

Arranging time for teachers to attend professional development has also been a challenge. At one recent session that was being attended by pre-K teachers from across the district, a site administrator called a mandatory staff meeting at the same time, preventing a group of teachers from attending the afternoon session and signaling that the early learning professional development was not something that was valued.

Franklin-McKinley is working to better understand how to adapt the principals’ training model to get better participation or convey information about developmentally appropriate practice to leadership in other ways. Fresno has had success with early childhood administrators walking through schools and visiting classrooms alongside principals.

Administrators and leaders may have very different ideas about what constitutes strong learning environments in pre-K through third grade.

Leadership transitions and local politics can also make a significant impact on a community’s ability to conduct large-scale systems reform in early childhood. In all three of the communities in California we have been following, the departure of leading administrators, along with the complexities of local politics, has made it challenging to sustain momentum.

Franklin-McKinley got a new superintendent in 2015, after longtime innovator John Porter retired. The new leader, Juan Cruz, did not arrive with an early childhood background, but has come to understand why these investments are worthwhile. The district has continued to build on the years of work Porter put in alongside other community leaders in Santa Clara County to improve the system of early childhood education and to bring Educare California at Silicon Valley to the region. But the district has also experienced turnover in middle management and in the leadership at Educare.

In Fresno, the retirement of longtime superintendent Michael Hanson, turmoil at the school board after its president made controversial remarks about sex education and the LGBTQ community, and union contract disputes have all affected systems work in early childhood at some level. Leaders describe having to work to bring the new superintendent’s team, along with new board members, up to speed on the history of reforms. They do, however, describe the new leadership as “the right leader at the right time” and say they welcome the fresh opportunities for collaboration, new working styles, and the chance to move the work forward.

In Oakland, early childhood reform is taking place amidst a budget crisis and fiscal mismanagement. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in the fall that the situation in Oakland is “so desperate that top-level administrators are voluntarily giving back part of their paychecks, and layoffs as well as classroom cuts are imminent.”³ This is compounded by the departure of the district’s new chief of Early Childhood Education after only two and a half years. All of this slows and impedes progress, as new relationships must be built and new cultures of work adapted to.

But a remarkable task force, with representatives from across the city, continues to organize, build relationships, and focus on equity and responsiveness to young children of color in Oakland. (See Box 3 for more about the task force.) Work inside the school district’s Early Childhood Education department to maximize enrollment and bring in additional state dollars, as well as provide support and training for teachers and staff, even amidst a budget crisis, has been well received. A new ballot initiative that would bring additional dollars for early care and education is upcoming.⁴ Despite hardship, there is energy in the city, and hope that Oakland Starting Smart and Strong, along with other work, will help galvanize a vibrant reform movement to protect and nurture young children.