Word: kindergartens
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...Kindergarten used to be a playground. Then it became a training ground. Now it may become a battleground. In Los Angeles, kindergarten teachers are assigning homework. In Minneapolis, "competency tests" help decide which tots advance to the first grade. A full day of classes has become the rule for all New York City kindergartens. But in neighboring Connecticut, an outcry helped to defeat statewide full-day legislation, and more protests are being heard across the country as pressure grows for tougher early schooling...
...began when the baby boomers put forth their own modest boomlet in the late '70s. Kindergarten classes are filling up once more. Parents are taking a hard look at the first year of school and demanding a greater stress on learning fundamentals. More are sending their children to the preschool programs that launch four-year-olds armed with the alphabet. Schools are responding by fortifying the play-oriented kindergarten curriculum with weighty matters like arithmetic and reading. "Parents now want their children to bring home a stack of papers," says Marilyn Arwood, principal of Waynewood Elementary School in Fairfax...
...will give poorer children the same advantages that many of their middle-class peers already enjoy in private preschool programs. A growing number of administrators agree. They are trying to accommodate the push for early education by shifting to full-day programs. About a third of all U.S. kindergarten pupils are attending school full time, up from...
Other experts complain that the first-grade curriculum has already been pushed down into kindergarten, where pencils and workbooks now claim ever more space beside crayons and building blocks. Says Principal Arwood: "There are some children who are ready for paper-and-pencil activities in kindergarten. There are many who are not. We have a lot of social problems with kids who aren't up to those things." Bertha Campbell, head of the bureau of child development at the New York State department of education, says that demanding kindergartens create too much stress for the youngsters and can have...
...financed a statewide program of home assistance to help parents spot potential problems in future pupils. In Los Angeles, 146 schools offer small children a voluntary "school-readiness" program, which helps the children learn letters and numbers and how to write their names. Says School District Coordinator June Ushijima: "Kindergarten teachers are vying for those kids. Their attitudes are in place when they reach the classroom...