Sen. Huppenthal Sets Record Straight on All-Day Kindergarten

GUEST COMMENTARY

Disputing the All-Day Kindergarten Myth

By State Sen. John Huppenthal, Chandler
Jan. 25, 2006

Arizona families count on school boards to act in the best interest of children and to implement programs that move children forward academically and socially. To do that, board members need to act based on the very best research available.

Eric Meyers's column "...full-day K has proved its worth" (East Valley Tribune, Jan. 13) fails to do that.

Meyer quotes a number of studies and reports. However, none of these begin to approach the combined quality and massiveness of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS).

The ECLS followed over 22,000 students from the start of kindergarten through fifth-grade and it featured the most accurate tests ever designed for the measurement of the academic achievement of young children. In addition, the emotional development of each student was measured as perceived by the teacher, the parents and the student. It also employed some of the best scientists in the country whose careers and companies would be at risk were they to introduce bias into their measures. Finally, it had a budget more than 10 times the size of any previous all-day kindergarten study.

The ECLS shows that the temporary gains of all-day over half-day kindergarten are completely gone by the end of first-grade. At the end of third-grade, not only are the temporary gains gone, but full-day kindergarteners are now behind the half-day kindergarteners academically.

Why would full-day kindergarten hurt children? We don't know. However, we do know that a child's attitude towards school is one of the best predictors of academic gain and all-day kindergarteners did not do as well as half-day kindergarteners on measures of motivation, anti-social behavior and pro-social behavior

The ECLS explains what we can plainly see. Over the last 30 years, all-day kindergarten participation has risen from less than 10 percent to over 50 percent. Yet, our nation's reading scores are flat. In 1975, our high school seniors scored 286 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, in 2004 they scored 285.

The long-term damage from all-day kindergarten will become more evident when the ECLS releases the fifth-grade data this year.

The power of the ECLS is such that not only does it tell us very precisely the outcomes of full-day and half-day kindergarten, it provides insight into the inherent bias of even prestigious education research.

For example, the governor touts kindergarten benefits from a comparison of test scores for the Alhambra school district. The average test score for third-graders who had attended all-day kindergarten in the school was significantly higher than their peers.

However, these test scores are an illusion. If you follow any initially-fixed group of students through school, be it full-day kindergarteners or kids who wore white socks on the first day of school, average test scores of the group will quickly rise. This happens as students from apartments and single parent households leave the group at a much faster rate than students from two-parent home-owning households. You might attribute that test score change to attendance in full-day kindergarten or the wearing of white socks on the first day of school, but that would be scientific nonsense.

A study by Ed Sloat of the Arizona Department of Education in 1993 showed Alhambra to be the third-highest performing school district in Arizona. A 2005 Standard and Poors study using a similar statistical technique found Alhambra's performance to be unremarkable. Perhaps all-day kindergarten was not beneficial to Alhambra students.

That such data readily percolates through the education system is not challenged by our research universities, is touted by the governor, is distributed by the Arizona Business and Education Coalition and is presented to legislators by a respected board member of the WestEd research center is evidence of the decay of our education culture. This decay is so severe and our dysfunction so deep that we cannot scientifically prove that our district system is in fact, an education system. Many factors contribute to the average level of measured academic achievement -- our district system of education monopolies is evidently not one of them.

Contrary to such local "studies," Arizona would likely experience all-day kindergarten results similar to the national ECLS measured outcomes. Rigorous studies by both the RAND Corporation and the Manhattan Institute indicate that Arizona schools perform at about the national average.

By spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on full-day kindergarten, we deprive the private sector of precious capital they could use to create opportunity for these youngsters when they attempt to enter the workforce and we do nothing to create a more competitive education system.

For over 150 years, we have propagated an education culture in which the worst teacher in the worst school district is guaranteed a full classroom. The ECLS provides us with one more piece of evidence that this culture is not working. We are way past time for creating an education culture in which every parent has so many choices that a full classroom is evidence that the teacher and the school are among the very best in the world.