|Current Issue Brief|
Variation in Children's Experience of Kindergarten and the Common Core
By Kyle Snow, Ph.D.
|Historically, kindergarten marked children’s first entry into formal, primarily public education in the United States. However, increasingly children are coming to kindergarten having spent some time in structured, centerbased care. For example, 63.8% of children born in 2001 were enrolled in a center-based program the year prior to kindergarten entry (Flanagan & McPhee 2009). Kindergarten might not mark children’s entry into formal, structured classrooms, but it continues to be the first year for which children’s experiences are governed by policies set within the public K–12 education system.1 As a result, kindergarten provides a bridge within early childhood, linking a time during which children spend their years in a wide range of settings prior to kindergarten, and primary education, where children spend their days in a more structured setting learning with their agemates from a common teacher, teaching to a shared set of expectations and standards (at least within classrooms, districts, and typically, states). It also marks the “line in the sand” between early learning standards (for children 5 and younger) that address all domains to primary and secondary education (K–12) standards, which focus on academic content. Continue reading||Previous Issue Briefs|
|For more information on the Common Core, visit the NAEYC Common Core homepage.|