Kemberly Chavez bounces into the afternoon session of Mecca State Preschool, stopping to give her teacher, Maria Zendejas, a quick hug. The 4-year-old with big brown eyes and swinging ponytail removes the pink backpack that matches her ruffled dress and joins classmates seated in a half-circle on the brightly colored rug. They whisper and giggle until Zendejas commands their attention.
The 16 preschoolers, all of them English language learners, join their teacher in singing "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider," first in Spanish, then haltingly in English. They sit, enthralled, as Zendejas animatedly reads a book about Santa Claus. At the end of the story they are delighted when she pins tiny jingle bells to their clothing.
From left to right: Samantha Vivian, Kemberly Chavez and Daniela Montano get caught up in the story
Soon it's time for serious academics. The students recite their numbers, letters and colors in unison. They touch various shapes and identify them in both Spanish and English. Children are asked to walk to the front of the room and point to their own names in print. They smile after receiving high praise from Zendejas, a member of the Coachella Valley Teachers Association (CVTA).
At lunchtime, students line up at the sink to wash their hands with soap and water. After a hearty meal of chicken, carrots, cornbread and apples - with plenty of sharing and cooperation as children serve and pour for one another - they again line up at the sink and brush their teeth with gusto. Then it's time to practice hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills by cutting with scissors and coloring.
"It is important for students to learn basics before they enter kindergarten," says Zendejas, who has taught preschool for 15 years. "Not only are we teaching these children academic and pre-reading skills, but we are teaching them English. They are also learning socialization, good listening skills and hygiene.
"These kids are a lot more competent and confident when they go to kindergarten," she adds. "Our graduates are usually the leaders when they enter kindergarten."
The district's early childhood education programs, including the preschool, Head Start and day care programs, serve 647 poverty-level children. There are hundreds more on waiting lists. Curriculum is dictated by the district's prekindergarten standards, which are similar to the preschool standards recently released by the California Department of Education. Coachella's standards include reading awareness (such as reading books right side up and front to back); phonemic awareness; numbers sense; and writing strategies. There is even an "algebra and functions" standard that says students must be able to differentiate between same and different - for example, given apples, bears and dogs, the student has to tell which groups are the same and which are different.
Teacher Maria Zendejas at Mecca State
With standards filtering down to the preschool level, it's not surprising that standardized testing is also found in some California preschool sites. To help the district measure kindergarten readiness, Coachella Valley preschoolers took the nationally normed, standardized Brigance Test for the first time this year.
Once thought to be child's play, early childhood education is now taken seriously by many education experts, who consider it to be the building block that creates the foundation for K-12 success. Early childhood education programs like those found in Coachella play a key role in improving student achievement throughout California.
While politicos rush pell-mell to implement school reform measures - including standardized tests, a longer school year in middle grades and a high school exit exam - school readiness is seldom mentioned. Perhaps this is because such programs are costly and take time to show results.
First Lady Laura Bush is giving the cause a boost by choosing early childhood education as her "cause." She promises to use her position to promote the benefits of early learning.
"What many political leaders fail to hear above all the sound and fury over school reform is one sour note," comments Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. "Our society continues to tolerate one of the most primitive and chaotic 'systems' of child care and early education in the Western world."
In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, he wrote, "Until school readiness becomes a core element of reform, many school crusaders' most cherished proposals are doomed."
There is a dearth of affordable, high-quality programs for early childhood education. Many consider this a crisis that not only affects young children and families, but negatively impacts K-12 learning, colleges, businesses, social services and society in general.
Ivan Alvarez and his friend Ernie spend their recess time on the playground equipment at Tlaquepaque Head Start Center in Coachella.
"We estimate that as many as 75 percent of children in California are in programs that are not educationally or developmentally appropriate," says Kathy Lewis, deputy superintendent for child and family services for the state Department of Education. "Many places don't know how to stimulate kids or how to help kids learn. Too many times people think of education as starting in kindergarten, but now we know that children start learning on Day 1."
A national study of early childhood education (Kagan and Cohen, 1997) noted, "A growing body of research has established that the majority of America's young children spend their day in settings that are poor to mediocre in quality - settings that compromise a child's long-term development."
A 1996 study by the group Zero to Three based in Washington, D.C., found that the health, safety and development of infants and toddlers are jeopardized in at least half of all settings, including child care centers and family day care.
Quality programs do exist in California, but they usually have long waiting lists or high tuition, which limits the choices of families seeking quality educational opportunities for children. Preschool slots tend to be three times more available in wealthier California communities than in blue-collar areas. More affluent parents are able to afford private preschool, while state and federal programs serve some, but by no means all, poor children. This leaves working poor and lower middle-class families with the least access to quality programs for early childhood education.
Approximately half of California's 1.1 million 3- and 4-year-olds attend some form of public or private child care or preschool. With many of these programs only offering half-day care, parents are forced to rely on a patchwork of overlapping programs. Fuller states, "Maybe this rickety structure made sense in the 1950s when only one in six mothers was employed. But today, two-thirds of all women with preschool-age children work outside the home."
School districts are not mandated to offer prekindergarten classes, except to children with delayed speech problems and other disabilities. However, some enlightened school districts and county offices of education do voluntarily offer preschool programs for children.
The state of California spends roughly $2.6 billion per year on child care and preschool, which is delivered to counties and school districts by more than 10 programs. Since taking office, Gov. Gray Davis has expanded state preschool programs by $93.6 million, bringing the total to $295 million, which serves approximately 100,000 low-income children.
This does not include Head Start, a federally funded program that serves youngsters living at the poverty level. Some educators complain that the income requirement is so low for Head Start that many families living in poverty no longer qualify.
Families on welfare are eligible to receive direct funding or "vouchers" from the state to spend in any way they choose for child care. Rather than selecting an educational program, they often opt for an unlicensed friend, relative or teenage child to watch their children, thus keeping the voucher money "in the family." This typically means that too many children living in poverty spend the day in settings that do not promote early learning.
"Many places, unfortunately, put children in front of television sets. Or they may be staffed by people who don't understand how children learn," says Diana Decker, a special education preschool teacher who teaches community college classes in early childhood education.
Decker, who is Fresno County's Teacher of the Year and a member of the Central Unified Teachers Association, says such facilitities may offer "inappropriate developmental tasks for children, like pen and paper tasks before hand-eye coordination is present."
"Too many families can't find a suitable location for their children, so they end up turning them into latchkey kids or leaving them in the care of older children," says Helen Fau, past president of the California Kindergarten Association and a member of CTA's Early Childhood Education Committee. "It happens a lot. I've had latchkey kids as young as 5 who are left at home with the television on, waiting for Mommy to come home."
Study after study confirms that good early childhood education programs have positive lasting benefits throughout one's academic career and even throughout one's lifetime. Yet, far too many children are deprived of this valuable experience, and arrive at kindergarten unprepared, say teachers.
"I see kids coming to kindergarten less and less prepared," observes Betty Ann James, a longtime kindergarten teacher in a high-poverty area. "Of 20 youngsters this year, only half knew their colors, recognized some numbers or recognized their own name in print."
In many cases, they cannot follow simple directions, says James, chair of CTA's Early Childhood Education Committee and a member of the Association of Rowland Educators. "Their language development is very poor, even when they are mono-English (only English) speaking. Their language is choppy, consisting of phrases like 'shut up' or 'watch this.'"
"Children coming into kindergarten without preschool don't know their colors, how to count to 10 or what to call body parts like nose, mouth and ear," says Fau, who is a member of the Ocean View Educators Association in Ventura County. "They don't know how to pick up a book and turn the pages right side up. Some of them don't know what a letter or a word is, even in their own language."
These observations reflect findings in a report called Ready to Learn, which says many American youngsters aren't fully prepared to start school by the time they begin kindergarten.
As the preparedness level of kindergartners has declined, the demands of kindergarten have greatly increased. While kindergartners used to spend most of the day playing in the sandbox, singing and taking naps, today's generation of kindergartners is expected to handle challenging academic curriculum. They are assigned regular homework and even take tests.
"More and more demands are being put upon us by the state, and youngsters don't have the pre-skills they are supposed to have when they walk into kindergarten," says James. "We have to teach the pre-skills before we can teach the standards. I have children who are age 5 chronologically, but 3 years old developmentally."
Students without the advantage of preschool may begin elementary school lagging behind their classmates and proceed to fall even further behind. James tries to build upon the skills of those who are kindergarten-ready and also bring others up to speed, which is a difficult juggling act.
"Kids who have been in preschool have skills to build upon," says James. "Kids without preschool very often cannot sit still, get along with others, or recognize their names. The state's concept is to throw them in with those who are kindergarten-ready and have them learn through osmosis."
"It's much harder teaching kindergarten these days," says Mark York, a teacher at Holly Oak Elementary School in San Jose. "We have moved from a developmental kindergarten to a highly academic kindergarten over the last seven years. We are supposed to teach them things that were taught in third grade 25 years ago."
York, an Evergreen Teachers Association member who serves on CTA's Early Childhood Education Committee, says only a few of his 30 students have attended preschool. "The rest were in day care, with babysitters, or at home with a non-English-speaking family."
He notices a big difference. "Children without preschool won't sit still. They bounce around the school. Some have severe discipline problems. They are not ready academically to handle our program."
Teachers worry that putting too much academic pressure on young children can have detrimental effects. "We're talking about human lives," says James. "If kindergarten is not a positive experience, then the rest of school may not be positive. If you are told at age 5 that you can't do something right, by the time you get to third grade you may not try anymore."
Many educators lament the fact that most kindergarten sessions are only half a day long. They echo the sentiment, "If I had them all day, I could accomplish so much."
A study by UCLA sociologist Meredith Phillips concludes that the learning gap between poor children and those who are more affluent grows smaller when children are enrolled in all-day kindergarten.
Children start kindergarten at a younger age in California than most states, which may contribute to the readiness problem. There is a growing movement to have the starting age for kindergartners be at least 5, to better meet the demands of today's rigorous classroom.
While serving in the Assembly, Secretary of Education Kerry Mazzoni authored AB 25, a bill supported by CTA. It would have rolled back the entry age for kindergarten over a three-year period, requiring children to be 5 by Sept. 1 rather than the current deadline of Dec. 2. It would also have required schools to offer a kindergarten readiness program for children not enrolled in preschool.
Legislators scaled down the bill, which is now a voluntary pilot program that allows districts to increase the starting age for kindergarten to age 5 on Sept. 1 of the academic year and institute kindergarten readiness programs for children whose schooling is delayed. Schools that choose to participate in the program next year will receive funds to compensate for the temporary loss caused by changing enrollment dates.
Linda Vasquez uses the sandbox as an impromptu classroom at Tlaquepaque Head Start Center.
Assembly Member Herb Wesson (D-Los Angeles) has recently introduced a bill, AB 634, that would make kindergarten mandatory rather than optional.
With so many students lacking kindergarten-entry skills, increasingly rigorous curriculum and ever-higher expectations from the accountability movement, many educators advocate making "universal preschool" available to all youngsters rather than having children hold off until kindergarten to begin academic learning.
"I strongly believe children need to attend preschool before they enter regular school," says York. "With the state standards of what we need to teach in kindergarten in place, we can no longer afford to teach students what they should have learned before they arrived here."
