According to a recent study by the Rand Corporation, it's almost certain to be a bust.
The case Napolitano made for all-day kindergarten was simple and superficially plausible. More time on task early would lead to long-term educational gains.
According to the Rand study, however, that's not the way it
works in reality.
Rand looked at the performance of nearly 8,000 students who are
part of a longitudinal database complied by the federal National
Center for Education Statistics.
According to the study, students who had attended all-day
kindergarten did not score higher in either math or reading in
the fifth grade than students who had not. In fact, all-day
kindergarten kids actually scored worse in math. This was true
even when controlling for socioeconomic factors.
This simply confirms what most research was indicating about
all-day kindergarten at the time Napolitano was peddling it.
Previous examinations had shown that all-day kindergarten did
boost student achievement in the short term, but that the
effects wore off by about the third grade.
A recent Goldwater Institute report attempts to examine the
effect of all-day kindergarten in Arizona specifically.
According to the report, schools with all-day kindergarten did
have higher third-grade results on national standardized tests.
However, they did not have a higher passing rate on the
fifth-grade state AIMS test.
The Goldwater study is more suggestive than conclusive. It looks
at schools, not children.
It compared the performance of fifth-grade students in schools
that have all-day kindergarten programs to the performance of
fifth-grade students in schools that do not. However, the
fifth-graders being tested may or may not have been enrolled at
the school in kindergarten, and may or may not have been
enrolled in all-day kindergarten.
Nevertheless, the Rand study is pretty conclusive and it is not
an ideological think tank with any sort of policy agenda. The
study was funded by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, not
exactly members of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
Simply put, the clear conclusions of the Rand study are hard to
shake off, and there is no reason to believe the story will turn
out any differently in Arizona.
Early childhood education advocates will say that this merely
demonstrates the need to intervene even earlier and work harder
to sustain the short-term gains.
However, the case for prekindergarten interventions is on as
shaky a foundation as the all-day kindergarten claim was. The
research is based on small, tough-to-duplicate experiences.
Although Rand says post-kindergarten curriculum should be
studied, it attributes much of the difference in early
educational performance to social and behavioral skills. And it
expresses doubt that these skills can be imparted or improved in
an institutional setting.
In fact, Rand found that students in all-day kindergarten
actually had inferior social skills and more behavioral problems
in later grades.
Some critics have seized upon this to make the claim that
all-day kindergarten is actually bad, rather than merely
ineffective. However, caution is in order about this finding.
It's based upon subjective evaluations by different teachers
over time. It doesn't have nearly the same objective grounding
as the conclusion that all-day kindergarten doesn't improve
future academic performance.
This is not the first big-ticket education reform in Arizona to
be a bust, or at least a likely bust.
In the 1990s, responsibility for building schools was
transferred to the state in part on the grounds that better
facilities would lead to higher student achievement. Since then,
the state has spent $4 billion, with no notable effect on
student achievement.
Two inner-city school districts, Roosevelt and Isaac, were part
of the plaintiff's group that brought the lawsuit that forced
the state into the school construction business. They have
received $24 million and $29 million respectively in additional
state capital funding. Both spend more than the state average on
operating expenses. Yet around half their students aren't
passing the state's third-grade AIMS reading test, even
excluding English-learners.
It wasn't a mistake for the state to provide all-day
kindergarten. Parents clearly wanted it. It makes more sense to
incorporate it into the state's overall educational program,
rather than leave it as a free-for-all among the school
districts.
However, by overhyping the likely educational benefits of
all-day kindergarten, Napolitano deflected attention from other
reforms that might really make a difference.
Reach Robb at
robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com
or (602) 444-8472. His column appears Sundays, Wednesdays, and
Fridays. Read his blog at robbblog.azcentral.com.