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All-Day Kindergarten Posts Big Gains in
Montgomery
Washington Post, October 1, 2002
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An intensive and expensive all-day kindergarten program in
Montgomery County has produced significant gains for poor
children and helped them begin to catch up with
higher-performing peers, a new study to be released today
shows.
In tracking the reading progress made by 16,000 youngsters
over two years in kindergarten and first grade, the report
found that not only did achievement rise for all students
involved in the program in high-poverty schools, but
low-income students showed bigger gains.
Further, the report found that both poor and middle-class
students in high-poverty schools -- contrary to expectation --
either matched or outperformed their peers in schools
elsewhere in the county, many of whom were in half-day
kindergarten programs.
The most significant exception was for children who do not
speak English, a finding that has prompted Superintendent
Jerry D. Weast to pledge intensive phonics instruction at
schools with the most children living in poverty.
"We are getting some emerging success," said a cautious Weast.
"We're learning that you can attack poverty, that you don't
have to have low expectations just because a child is poor."
The findings come at a time when the General Assembly has
mandated full-day kindergarten for all Maryland schools as
part of a new state aid formula. Montgomery's "kindergarten
initiative" combines the longer day with smaller class sizes,
a revised curriculum and additional teacher training.
Weast, who has won both praise and criticism for implementing
the program first in the county's high-poverty schools, said
the report vindicated his strategy and could prove a model for
schools across the nation dealing with a vexing achievement
gap that divides students along racial and poverty lines.
Indeed, the report found that the gap between higher-scoring
white and Asian students and their African American and Latino
peers had narrowed by as much as 11 points on some measures.
Other county and national studies have found that the
achievement gap that largely divides middle-class and poor or
non-English-speaking students is apparent on the first day of
kindergarten and generally widens through the years, with one
group of students on track for rigorous, college-prep courses
and others for lower-level or remedial course work.
The Montgomery study found that the kindergarten initiative
appears to be working well for children who live in poverty.
In the 17 highest-poverty schools, 51 percent of the children
considered poor enough to qualify for a federal lunch subsidy
met reading benchmarks by the end of first grade, and only 45
percent of poor children elsewhere in the county did.
Despite the progress, officials said the gap still exists.
Nearly 70 percent of the middle-class students in those
schools met the same benchmark -- about the same levels as
their peers in other county schools.
The most troubling finding, Weast said, was for the limited
English speakers, whose reading scores actually dipped
slightly over the two years. And some of their scores on a
test last spring of oral language, hearing and associating
sounds with letters were lower by half than their
English-speaking classmates.
Weast today will announce plans to introduce intensive phonics
instruction in 18 schools that receive federal Title I funding
for low-income students, the first such instruction ever in
Montgomery County.
"It won't be drill and kill," Weast said, referring to
often-maligned, repetitive basic skills programs. "But it
makes a lot of sense for kids who are hearing a different
language at home and hear the intonations and sounds of words
differently. They need to be able to unlock words so they can
pronounce them and then read them."
The kindergarten initiative began in 17 of the poorest schools
in the fall of 2000. Seventeen more schools with large numbers
of poor students were added in the fall of 2001. The report
found impressive gains in both groups. This year, 22 schools
have been added.
Research has found that if a kindergartner meets foundational
benchmarks -- such as recognizing letters and the sounds they
represent and identifying simple words -- they will be on
track to read text by the end of first grade and able to read
fluently by the end of third. Scientists have found that if
children do not read fluently by then, many never will.
"We believe that is the key to academic rigor as they go up
the grades," Weast said. "Reading."
Beyond touting results for poor children -- a national dilemma
that provided much of the impetus behind the federal No Child
Left Behind law that took effect July 1 -- Weast said his
report addresses middle-class parents' worries that their
children will suffer academically at higher-poverty schools.
The report found that such children scored on par with middle-
and upper-middle-class students throughout the county.
"The nice thing about the changes we made is, you don't have
to leave those schools now," Weast said, referring to
middle-class flight that has affected some schools in the
county's more diverse eastern side. "This ought to give
comfort to those parents to stay with us."
School officials said some of the progress made over the two
years may have a lot to do with the "practice effect," the
fact that teachers and principals are becoming used to the new
curriculum and training. Still, the results over time are key,
and officials plan to follow these 16,000 students for several
years.
Studies have found that gains made by children in Head Start,
the federal program designed to help impoverished 4-year-olds,
evaporate by the time the students are in third or fourth
grade: They perform similarly to children who never had the
benefit of such a program.
School officials in Montgomery say they want to change that
with the kindergarten initiative and have followed up with
smaller class sizes and a new, more focused curriculum this
year for grades 1 and 2.
The report has already garnered interest from the national
education community.
Michael Cohen, a former assistant secretary of education in
the Clinton administration who has worked with large school
districts throughout the country, said he was impressed not
only that the studies were detailed and sophisticated, but
that Weast was willing to make changes because of them.
"That has not been a common practice in education around the
country," he said. "So it's important to note, and note when
it's being done well."
Michael Ben-Avie, a researcher with the Yale Child Development
Center, evaluated early drafts of the report and praised
Montgomery leaders for their "willingness to undergo major
change and for their willingness to really address the needs
for our most vulnerable students." He found that the fact that
the kindergarten initiative was a systematic overhaul and not
a series of ad hoc pieces was what made it a powerful reform.
"They have been willing to take a sober-eyed view of the data
and not try to cover it up, which happens a great deal," he
said. "This is remarkable. And the results show they're well
on their way."
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