I’m writing this editorial series partly to help me wrap my head around a new government program called ‘Universal Preschool Colorado’ and generally referred to as “UPK”.
I received a friendly email from the Colorado Department of Early Childhood, explaining why “Universal Preschool Colorado” has the acronym “UPK”. The acronym stands for “Universal Pre-Kindergarten”. So that question is cleared up. (“UPC” might have been a poor choice.)
The Pagosa Peak Open School board of directors voted last week to engage with the Colorado Department of Early Childhood and the Universal Preschool Colorado program, with the goal of opening a preschool classroom in the school building within the next 24 months. There is a documented need for child care in Archuleta County, resulting from a shortage of child care centers and home-based child care providers.
I voted in favor of that motion. But I have concerns.
Disclosure: I currently serve on the Pagosa Peak Open School Board of Directors as the board secretary. This editorial reflects only my own opinions, and not necessarily the opinions of the Pagosa Peak Open School board as a whole.
Essentially, the state-sponsored, state-defined education of children, once mandated to begin at around age six with first grade (with the option to enroll in kindergarten, if desired) will now — here in Colorado — be funded to begin at age four, or in some cases, age three. The idea behind this change is that children have been entering kindergarten without being “kindergarten-ready”.
The Colorado Department of Education has established several academic “bars” that children are expected to be able to jump over by the end of kindergarten, so that they can hopefully be “first-grade-ready”.
And then there are expectations to meet in first grade, so as to be “second-grade-ready”…
And so on.
Third grade is an important stepping stone, for a couple of reasons. Colorado’s state-sponsored standardized test, the Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS), is administered to students in grades 3 through 8, in math and reading. (Students in fifth, eighth and eleventh grades take the CMAS science assessments.) Third graders who fail to jump over the government-defined bar will likely require special attention — possibly for the entire duration of their school career.
Children in kindergarten are also ‘tested’ on their academic skills. That’s how we can identify the children who already need remedial classes in kindergarten.
The testing regime produces an unintentional result. Rigorous testing in reading and math compels teachers and staff to focus heavily on two subjects: reading and math. Children who excel in reading and math will, in this system, be ‘star’ students.
A student who excels at other human endeavors? Music? Art? Public speaking? Negotiating? Mechanical abilities? Gardening? Philosophy? Empathy? Animal husbandry? Carpentry? Business? Cooking? Teaching?
Unimportant. In a government-sponsored system focused heavily on reading and math, students with special talents in the above-mentioned areas are not likely to be identified as ‘stars’, nor are they likely to receive much encouragement in their areas of interest. Not in our current system, at any rate.
And because we want kindergarten students to arrive with some preliminary reading and math skills already under their belts, pushing testing and academic instruction into ‘preschool’ is seen, by some, as a good idea. Thus, the translation of the term ‘child care’ into the term ‘early childhood education’.
To encourage child care centers and home providers to build reading and math instruction into their programs, the Colorado Department of Education created a rating system for preschools, known as ‘Colorado Shines’. The program is now being administered by the newly created Colorado Department of Early Childhood.
We might suspect that the phrase “Quality Early Learning”, in the logo above, suggests that the primary goal of Colorado Shines is not socialization of young children, but rather, an early start at academic training. “Quality Early Learning”.
From the Colorado Shines website:
You think about a lot of things when choosing child care, including cost, location and availability. In addition to safety, the most important consideration is the QUALITY of the program. Why?
Quality child care and preschool programs help ensure that children have positive experiences during a sensitive and important time of life. Quality child care and preschool programs help children prepare for kindergarten and success in school. As a parent or caregiver, you want the best for your child. Quality care and education in the early years helps children start early and start strong. And the benefits last forever!
The education bureaucracy is no doubt referring to some rather specific type of benefits, that last forever.
On the Colorado Department of Early Childhood website, you can see the Colorado Shines rating for some of our child care providers in Pagosa Springs. Two programs have a quality rating of “4” out of a possible “5”. One program has a rating of “3”; another has a rating of “2”. Six programs are rated “1”. You can view the ratings here. But you will not be able to find out what the ratings are based upon.
As Pagosa Peak Open School considers the option of starting a preschool in its building at some point in the near future, I find myself wondering, “What’s most important, if we want very young children to blossom into caring, contributing adults?”
Americans are fond of talking about ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’. But those terms can hardly be applied to our education system. The education bureaucracy has defined, in considerable detail, the ‘standards’ that must be met by every student, and in some cases, mandates the way a teacher must teach.
Freedom is certainly problematic. Children could end up making their own decisions, about what’s important and what’s not important. About what’s worth doing, and what’s not worth doing. They could grow up with their own ideas about life. They might neglect their duty to become a clog in the big consumer-economy machine.
In Part Four, I included a link to one of my favorite books about childhood and education. Free at Last: The Sudbury Valley School, by Daniel Greenberg.
Do the benefits of freedom last forever? I wonder…