There has been a pushdown of academic expectations for years, and Americans should be asking how much stress this causes all students, especially our youngest learners. If a child struggles in preschool or kindergarten, it might be due to pressure.
Why force children to rush through preschool and kindergarten to learn skills that never would have been considered at this age group, especially knowing that the same students, even those who may learn such skills early, will experience unnecessary stress and anxiety? Or students may feel like they have failed because, despite developing typically, they were led to believe early on that they were behind.
Some of this started with the twenty-two-year-old No Child Left Behind (NCLB), where, with heavy phonics with Reading First, all children were supposed to be reading by 2014. That never happened, although teachers at this time changed kindergarten expectations dramatically.
Race to the Top and Common Core Standards in kindergarten were deemed inappropriate by many early childhood specialists. Still, the standards, despite poor reviews, have mostly remained in place with the idea that increasing stricter requirements for children, especially if they’re poor or have disabilities, means they will catch up with their wealthier and non-disabled peers who may have also faced academic pressure.
Without question, some students will arrive at preschool and kindergarten reading or doing advanced academic tasks. Still, to make this the norm, to drive all children, who are likely developing well but slower, the school should not become a pressure cooker with unreasonable demands.
This increasing push to make all students learn the material from later grades earlier, especially in preschools and kindergartens, has often resulted, especially in underfunded schools, in eliminating or reducing unstructured play, recess, music, science, opportunities for children to socialize, and more.
Mental Health Problems Due to the Early Learning Stress
Concurrently with this academic drive for children to achieve, there’s an increasing uptick in stress and anxiety in children. This has been understood for years.
- In 1988, Lorrie A. Shepard and Mary Lee Smith in Escalating Academic Demand in Kindergarten: Counterproductive Policies described schools screening and holding kindergarteners back due to rigid high proficiency standards. Children who appeared to do better had their individualized needs met and teachers recognized that that they learned at different rates.
- The blog Bored Teachers recently referenced the above study: Narrow emphasis on isolated reading and numeracy skills is detrimental even to the children who succeed and is especially harmful to children labeled as failures…academic demands in kindergarten and first grade are considerably higher today than 20 years ago and continue to escalate.
- In 1990, researchers considered the academic stress placed on preschoolers in Academic Environments in Preschool: Do They Pressure or Challenge Young Children. The results suggest no academic advantages for children from highly academic environments, and potential disadvantages in creative expression (measured as originality) and emotional well-being (measured as test anxiety and attitudes toward school).
- The Alliance for Childhood produced a report in 2009 Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School by Edward Miller and Joan Almon. The Foreword was by David Elkind who wrote the popular The Hurried Child: Growing Up too Fast too Soon. In the report they examine nine studies concerned about the changing nature of kindergarten, and the loss of play. They warn about replacing what had become developmentally accepted protocol for young children with heavy prescriptive curricula, assessments and test preparation, and a strong emphasis on academic skill building.
- In 2015, The Alliance for Childhood and Defending the Early Years publish Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose. They describe many reasons why Common Core is poorly constructed especially due to the ignoring of play and that they falsely imply that having children achieve these standards will overcome the impact of poverty on development and learning, and will create equal educational opportunity for all children.
- Valerie Strauss in a 2015 Washington Post Answer Sheet report reviewed Stephen Carmarata’s book called The Intuitive Parent: Why the Best Thing for Your Child is You. Carmarata notes that Many schools force too much material onto the normally (and naturally) developing mind of young children and may inadvertently push children—especially boys—into looking like they have ADHD when they might not.
- In 2016, University of Virginia researchers Bassok, Latham, and Rorem published Is Kindergarten the New First Grade? They raise concerns about the transformation of kindergarten, showing that teachers in 2010 were far less likely to indicate that their classroom included various activity centers, including art areas, dramatic play areas, science areas, or water/sand tables. These trends are consistent with the possibility that a heightened focus on literacy and math instruction crowded out coverage of other subjects. Also, in 2010, roughly 30% of public school kindergarten teachers reported using standardized tests at least once a month.
- On October 11, 2022, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, a group of doctors, recommended screening children as young as eight for major depressive disorder (MDD). How do eight-year-olds wind up depressed? Depression they say could show up with functional impairments in school performance, but couldn’t pressure in early grades affect how a child feels?
- In the recent Science Daily March 9, 2023 report, ‘All Work, No Independent Play’ Cause of Children’s Declining Mental Health, Says Study, Florida Atlantic University addresses findings in the Journal of Pediatrics stating: The researchers suggest the increase in school time and pressure to achieve over decades may have impacted mental health not just by detracting from time and opportunity for independent activities but also because fear of academic failure, or fear of insufficient achievement, is a direct source of distress.
- Derek Thompson’s recent 2023 report in The Atlantic: We’re Missing a Key Driver of Teen Anxiety. Thompson cites a 2022 paper by professors at Korea University Dirk Bethmann and Robert Rudolf, showing that teens, when they’ve faced rigor early on and a push towards perfectionism, lose critical leisure time, sleep, and subjective well-being.
It’s time for early childhood specialists, educators, and parents to ask themselves whether they’re pushing children too hard due to questionable standards, to expect the same achievement for all children at the same time. Children should be individually evaluated by their teachers and given a well-rounded curriculum that is challenging but kind and which includes play.
Ask whether the high-stakes expectations today will affect a child’s mental health later. Ask, why the rush?
References and Additional Blog Reports.
(1990) Academic Environments in Preschool: Do They Pressure or Challenge Young Children, Early Education and Development, 1:6, 401-423, DOI: 10.1207/s15566935eed0106_1
Strauss, V. (2015, August 17). Why pushing kids to learn too much too soon is counterproductive. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/08/17/why-pushing-kids-to-learn-too-much-too-soon-is-counterproductive/.
Academic Preschools: Too Much Too Soon?
High-Pressure Preschools: How Much is Too Much?
Setting Children Up to Hate Reading
True early childhood experts have been
Pleading with policy makers for decades to make our kindergarten standards developmentally appropriate. I have watched the deterioration of early childhood programs since No Child Left Behind, which left many children not only behind, but stressed This created a negative feeling toward school and learning.
Instead of improving the crisis in our kindergartens, the stress and inappropriateness of kindergarten programs has only worsened.
When will our educational leaders wake up? I’ve watched the “ so called experts “ become more and more unrealistic in what our kindergartners should be able to learn in kindergarten. All of those so called experts need to revisit their kindergarten policies and standards and let the real experts, the credible and successful early childhood practitioners who know what is best for our children. Instead of the Common Core, we need common sense.
Thanks, Judy. I think “so-called experts” is the problem as you state.
Don’t know if you saw this thread from March 3. Seems to be funded by Stand for Children, which already makes it suspect.
https://twitter.com/nellkduke/status/1631781221947658241?s=20
Yep, I posted about it on Twitter. Deeply disturbing. Thanks for mentioning it, Christine. It’s one of the reasons I wrote this post.
I never did get an answer to my question of why do this. I did get piled on in a minor way from SOR advocates that it was great, but no one explained what made it good for kids. Smelled like social impact bonds to me; private equity gets money out of pre-school. After the original poster tried to tell me I was misinformed about the wonderful things Stand for Children does, there was no more engagement.
You make a good point. I saw that interaction. Hard to believe that one would not know about Stand for Children and its history.
A wonderful and wise article. I have sent it on to my daughter, who has child in kindergarten, who, in my opinion, is being pushed to read and write at too early an age.
Thanks for commenting, Adele. I appreciate it and I hope it is useful for your daughter. I know between the two of you your granddaughter will do well and enjoy reading.
Children require the foundation of joyful self discovery before facing the demands of achievement. When I first became an elementary school principal, I wrote my parents that my goal was to see 5th graders matriculate to middle school with the same enthusiasm they exhibited when they arrived in kindergarten. My experience as a principal and teacher taught me that parents want their children happy about their school, not driven by it. The single minded drive for action over inquiry has fractured our social well being.
What a beautiful goal, Paul! How I wish all principals looked at that transition that way. As a long-time middle school teacher, I would have definitely appreciated it, as I’m sure the students and parents would have as well! Thanks for sharing!
As a long time educator in public schools I was so disturbed by the pressure to perform at younger and younger ages I advised my daughter to put my grandchildren in a private low pressure kindergarten at 5 and then again in the high pressure kinder at public school a year later when they were six which has worked out so well for them. They could have never taken it at the age of five. Just a shame that we are doing this to children.
Thank you for sharing, Mary. I don’t think you’re alone when it comes to removing children from public school for a less pressured early childhood. I agree that it’s a shame.
“Carmarata notes that Many schools force too much material onto the normally (and naturally) developing mind of young children and may inadvertently push children—especially boys—into looking like they have ADHD when they might not.”
As a former special ed teacher this quote caught my attention. My own suspicion has been that it would be much harder to identify those students who might genuinely need intervention for learning issues as opposed to those whose behavior was really stress related.
Excellent point. I think how many children are identified as having reading problems when they’re simply learning according to their development.
Nothing epitomizes the degree to which the downward push of learning standards has ignored all that we know about brain development in young children than the Next generation Science Standards (NGSS).
NGSS for Kindergarten:
Plan and conduct an investigation to compare the effects of different strengths or different directions of pushes and pulls on the motion of an object.
Analyze data to determine if a design solution works as intended to change the speed or direction of an object with a push or a pull.
Make observations to determine the effect of sunlight on Earth’s surface.
Use tools and materials to design and build a structure that will reduce the warming effect of sunlight on an area.
Use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive.
Use and share observations of local weather conditions to describe patterns over time.
Construct an argument supported by evidence for how plants and animals (including humans) can change the environment to meet their needs.
Use a model to represent the relationship between the needs of different plants or animals (including humans) and the places they live.
Ask questions to obtain information about the purpose of weather forecasting to prepare for, and respond to, severe weather.
Communicate solutions that will reduce the impact of humans on the land, water, air, and/or other living things in the local environment.
Ask questions, make observations, and gather information about a situation people want to change to define a simple problem that can be solved through the development of a new or improved object or tool.
Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem.
Analyze data from tests of two objects designed to solve the same problem to compare the strengths and weaknesses of how each performs.
NGSS for First Grade:
Plan and conduct investigations to provide evidence that vibrating materials can make sound and that sound can make materials vibrate.
Make observations to construct an evidence-based account that objects can be seen only when illuminated.
Plan and conduct an investigation to determine the effect of placing objects made with different materials in the path of a beam of light.
Use tools and materials to design and build a device that uses light or sound to solve the problem of communicating over a distance.
Use materials to design a solution to a human problem by mimicking how plants and/or animals use their external parts to help them survive, grow, and meet their needs.
Read texts and use media to determine patterns in behavior of parents and offspring that help offspring survive.
Make observations to construct an evidence-based account that young plants and animals are like, but not exactly like, their parents.
Use observations of the sun, moon, and stars to describe patterns that can be predicted.
Make observations at different times of year to relate the amount of daylight to the time of year.
Ask questions, make observations, and gather information about a situation people want to change to define a simple problem that can be solved through the development of a new or improved object or tool.
Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem.
Analyze data from tests of two objects designed to solve the same problem to compare the strengths and weaknesses of how each performs.
SMH
Beyond belief. Thanks for sharing, Rick. Have to say I didn’t know if K or 1st grade got any science, but I wonder who drew up these standards. It doesn’t sound like they know anything about kindergartners or 1st graders, children in general.
Good grief! This is completely at odds with anything early childhood educators know about child development. David Coleman and pals are so far out of their depth they’re underwater.
Here’s their website. https://www.nextgenscience.org/
NGSS was spawned by the founders of Achieve, a non-profit, education reform group. However, these science standards have been written to closely align with Common Core standards.
Elementary NGSS testing is usually in grade 5.
Take a peek at what those kindergarteners have in store:
http://www.nysed.gov/state-assessment/nys-grades-3-8-science-learning-standards#els-test-samples