Some of her students skip down the school’s steps, while others can take each stair only step by step. Some can count to 10, others already read at a second-grade level. A few have never seen numbers, and others still don’t know the alphabet. All of them will need to know how to write a five-sentence paragraph by the end of the school year.
Before the high standards of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act took effect on the nation’s 115,000-some K-12 schools, Wycislak says she spent more time helping those kids who came in less prepared with learning basic skills.
Now there is little time for that. The faster-paced learning environment, a result of No Child Left Behind, has teachers as early as kindergarten laying a foundation with their students to prepare them for the federally required tests they must start taking in 3rd grade.
Although services like Head Start are available to help at-risk students before they begin kindergarten, that program reaches just 36,483 of Illinois’ 143,320 low-income preschool aged children before they get to kindergarten, leaving tens of thousands of kids at an even greater disadvantage.
According to the A + Illinois, a lobbying group for reforming the funding and quality of public education in Illinois, “one in three children who enter school are not ready when they start kindergarten. Yet 40 percent of at-risk preschoolers cannot enroll in early childhood and school readiness programs because of a lack of program funding.”
In 2006, Illinois made some strides to try to correct these disparities by intervening early in a child’s life. The Illinois General Assembly last year passed the $45 million initiative “Preschool for All Program,” which was sponsored by state Rep. Barbara Currie (D – Chicago) and state Sen. Kimberly Lightford (D – Westchester). The new law gives about 10,000 more 3- and 4-year-olds the opportunity to attend preschool.
This past school year, 76,508 kids are enrolled in Illinois’ at-risk preschool programs, up from 72,652 in 2005-2006. Despite the increase in enrollment, it still falls short of the 143,320 at-risk kids in this age group.
Wycislak says she sees this scenario play out each year in her classroom.
“I had one little girl who came from very little. Her family lived in one room. All she said she wanted for Christmas was her own bed to sleep in,” Wycislak says. “Her parents had to work all the time and were not around to help with the kind of extra support kids need.”
The 5-year-old girl, who Wycislak says never held a pencil or used scissors before kindergarten, learned to cut, color and hold a pencil. Her fine motor skills blossomed in kindergarten, Wycislak says. But because she didn’t know her letters or letter sounds, she wasn’t learning to read with many of the other kids.
Wycislak says the girl knew she was behind. “She was aware that she had an achievement gap,” Wycislak says. “So I told her, ‘You should be proud. Look at everything you can do.'”
The girl’s response: “But I can’t read.”
This case not withstanding, Wycislak says teachers have to keep moving ahead, so the rest of their students can perform well on the tests required by No Child Left Behind – even when other students might be struggling to keep up. Because of financially strapped school and state budgets, she says there isn’t enough intervention available to children who are struggling to learn concepts that some kids learn before they start school.
“Teachers today are teaching to a test, that’s all, and that’s very limiting,” says Jody Wallace, early childhood program manager for the College of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University. “It’s not the best learning process.”
To compensate, programs like Head Start have placed a heavier emphasis on literacy because of No Child Left Behind, says Becky Spiridis, education coordinator at Two Rivers Head Start Agency in Batavia, Illinois.
For example, Spriridis says that after leaving Head Start, children are supposed to know at least 10 letters and their corresponding sounds. Five years ago, they were told not to teach letters because that started in kindergarten.
Spiridis added that a lot of what students know after leaving Head Start depends on how much parents are willing or able to work with them at home.
Wallace says that children, like the little girl in Wycislak’s kindergarten class, have many outside factors that influence how and when they learn. She says the requirements of No Child Left Behind are expected in an “unreasonable” timeframe – especially when funding to intervention programs is considered.
For example, McHenry County’s Head Start program has 251 funded spots for kids, with an additional 77 on a waiting list.
“Not everyone who needs our services can get in because there isn’t enough funding for it,” says Karin Nuelle, executive director at the Communication Action Agency for McHenry County, which oversees Head Start in that county. “We have to use a point system to decide which kids have a higher need.”
Nuelle says the point system considers whether a child is disabled, speaks a different language, and takes into account certain family dynamics like abuse and neglect. Age also factors in with 4-year-olds getting accepted before 3-year-olds.
Last year, Nuelle says Head Start saw cuts at the federal level. While the 1 percent reduction didn’t force them to cut kids from their program, administrators were forced to cut the summer program. So instead of receiving 12 months of attention, kids got nine months.
The faster paced-learning environment in Betsy Wycislak’s class is paying off for some of her students.
According to 2006 test scores, 90 percent of the school’s 3rd- through 5th-grade students passed the required tests last fall – up 3 percent from last year, and 13 percent higher than the 77 percent passing rate for the same grade levels statewide.
However, demographics favor the school. Roughly 7 percent of its students come from low-income families, compared to the 40 percent state average. Although schools with more low-income students are making gains, as recent test scores show, they are not passing at as high a rate as schools in wealthier areas.
And despite last year’s cut to Head Start, Nuelle, of McHenry county’s Head Start agency says this year’s budget, which took effect August 1, looks “a little better.” With $1.5 million for this fiscal year, Nuelle says, “There were no increases in funding, but at least there were no more cuts.”
“You want kids to succeed, and you want them to learn all the same,” Wycislak says. But she also says that kids shouldn’t be punished because they aren’t prepared to meet the higher standards the moment they walk through the door on that first day of kindergarten.
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Nationwide Public Schools & Education
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kindergartners low income no child left behind preschool tests
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