Common Core jeopardizes foundation of learning (By Wendy Lecker) - Wait What?

Common Core jeopardizes foundation of learning (By Wendy Lecker) - Wait What?:

Common Core jeopardizes foundation of learning (By Wendy Lecker)

 Fellow Connecticut educate advocate Wendy Lecker has been one of the most powerful and important voices on behalf of public education and against the corporate education reform industry’s unending assault of public school teachers, public schools and the rights of students and parents.  While many policymakers, education administrators and even the organizations responsible for protecting and promoting public education have turned a blind eye or engaged in the politics of appeasement, Wendy Lecker has continued to speak the truth and promote the notion that a just society strengthens not undermines its commitment to a comprehensive public education system.

In her latest piece entitled, Core jeopardizes foundation of learning, and initially published in the Stamford Advocate, Wendy Lecker takes down the claim that the “Common Core” is the “Solution” to the challenges facing the nation’s public schools.

Core jeopardizes foundation of learning (By Wendy Lecker)

This spring, parents and students across the country led a massive movement to refuse Common Core tests to protest over-testing and the changes in education wrought by the new standards. In the face of this revolt, supporters are attempting to salvage the Common Core by claiming that while testing may be a problem, the standards themselves are educationally superior. Moreover, they assert, the standards do not dictate what is to be taught in school. These claims are false: many of the standards are bad for education and demand developmentally inappropriate educational practices in schools.

Recently, experts at the organization Defending the Early Years issued a report focusing on one of these bad standards: the standard calling for kindergartners to “read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.” Translation: children must learn to read in kindergarten.

This mandate contradicts everything we know about child development and forces kindergarten teachers to engage in damaging practices. Play has been severely reduced or eliminated in favor of direct instruction, worksheets and frequent testing.

As I have written before (The disturbing transformation of kindergarten), the milestones of child development have not changed in a century. While there is a wide range of development at this age, most children in kindergarten are not ready to read. Reading requires understanding that symbols, letters, represent sounds and put together, in words, represent ideas or objects. Kindergartners’ brains cannot comprehend that kind of abstraction. They also typically do not recognize certain shapes and lines that are essential to understanding letters. This “lack” is normal, and it explains why play is essential in kindergarten.

As child development expert Diane Levin of Wheelock College told me, through play, children develop the foundation for reading. When a child builds with blocks or engages in socio-dramatic play, s/he is making a representation of something in a different form — a step toward abstract thought. By painting and drawing, a child begins to understand that two-dimensional lines can represent three dimensional objects — a precursor to comprehending that letters can represent sounds and words can represent objects or ideas. By telling stories or putting on plays, a child understands sequencing. In playing with objects, s/he learns to categorize. These activities are intentionally designed to help children build a strong foundation for the kind of skills required for formal reading instruction later on. Children need to first build this foundation experientially, in the concrete world in which they live, in order for the skills to have meaning for them.

During the above-described play, children may start to recognize letters and words. However, for most children, formal reading instruction at this age is not meaningful or engaging. They may learn to mimic and comply with instructions, but without the necessary foundation, they will not integrate the lessons. In fact, studies show that children who begin formal reading instruction at age seven, having first developed strong oral language skills in a play-based environment, catch up to children who learn to read earlier and have better comprehension skills by middle school.

Emphasizing formal reading instruction in kindergarten has crowded out the play-based, child-directed activities essential to building a strong foundation for successful academic learning. Teaching reading earlier does not give children get a “head start” on academic learning; it is a roadblock.

Losing play-based kindergarten also deprives us of a vital tool to help children’s social and emotional development. The majority of American public school students live in poverty. Brain experts have shown that many of the factors associated with living in poverty cause “toxic stress;” which impairs, among other things, the development of their executive function, making it difficult for children to concentrate, remember and control impulses. This impairment has a lifelong impact, impeding the ability to sustain relationships, cope with stress, make healthy life choices and learn successfully.

Play helps develop executive function, coping mechanisms, and problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills. Through play, children also learn to build social supports with peers — a key to resilience. Eliminating play robs children of an opportunity to develop these skills. Replacing play with developmentally inappropriate, frustrating and meaningless demands 

Common Core jeopardizes foundation of learning (By Wendy Lecker) - Wait What?: