One might be table-washer, another may be assigned to handle toy-bucket duties and another to be line leader, but every day, every toddler in Sara Hinklin's preschool class has a job.
It's not that Blue Mountain Elementary in Longmont is running some sort of labor camp for 3- and 4-year-olds. This is all part of St. Vrain Valley School District's plan to get kids used to school and used to learning years before they walk into a first-grade classroom. That's why in Hinklin's class, every activity, every conversation has a purpose. And that purpose is learning, and getting kids ready mentally and socially to start their formal education.
Six years ago, the St. Vrain board decided to make early-childhood education a priority. The district got a $5 million grant, sold the idea to voters who approved a mill-levy override and got to work. Now, all 26 of St. Vrain's elementary schools offer preschool and full-day kindergarten, making it one of just a handful of districts in the state that can say that.
Last spring, as the first group of kids enrolled in those preschools started taking the state's all-important standardized tests, St. Vrain began to see the payoff.
"It does take a commitment, but now we are starting to see the benefit, and it's huge. We see it not just in test scores but in motor skills, in social skills. And the parents engage at a much earlier age and become much more invested," said Superintendent Don Haddad.
St. Vrain is experiencing something education experts and researchers have been preaching for decades: The earlier kids get into a learning environment, the better. St. Vrain leaders got the message years ago. And those early-childhood-education efforts came despite a multimillion-dollar budget crisis in 2002 caused by financial mismanagement that forced the state to step in and bail out the district.
Denver voters, who approved a tax hike for preschool in 2006, did too, even as Colorado lagged behind other states in funding preschool and full-day kindergarten. Now, signs that momentum is growing to give more Colorado kids access to kindergarten and preschool reach all the way to the governor's office.
And the first thing Denver Public Schools has announced it will do with proceeds from the bond issue that passed last month is build a new preschool center for 200 to 250 mostly low-income kids on the Kepner Middle School campus in southwest Denver.
Colorado Classroom covers local and state education issues affecting K-12 and higher education students in the state of Colorado.
"I think what we've experienced over time is more public understanding of the benefits of early-childhood education, and as research has gotten more sophisticated, I think public will is building toward accepting that early-childhood education is important," said Jennifer Landrum, vice president for early-childhood initiatives at the Colorado Children's Campaign.
The Denver Preschool Program just added some research of its own to the pile of literature extolling the benefits of early-childhood education.
Since the city's voters approved spending an additional 12 cents in sales tax for every $100 spent, the program has served 25,000 students, boosting preschool enrollment from 7 percent of Denver 4-year-olds to nearly 70 percent, thanks in part to more than $40 million in help with tuition payments.
About three-quarters of those kids scored average or above in literacy and math assessments, 50 percent better than would be expected in the general population, according to an evaluation of the program by a study by Mary McGuire Klute of the University of Colorado at Denver's school of public affairs.
Klute, whose research was done in collaboration with the Clayton Early Learning Institute, found that "English-language learners and other children at risk of falling behind in school due to poverty are showing evidence of making progress toward closing the achievement gap by the end of preschool."
It's the same in St. Vrain, Haddad said.
"At the elementary level, what we've seen with at-risk kids is they've gone from 18 percent proficient to 88 percent proficient in third-grade reading," he said.
Haddad said the district is especially encouraged by the results of tracking individual at-risk children as they move from preschool to third grade. Overall, the district's third-grade reading scores have improved by 4 percentage points, from 77 percent reading at or above grade level in 2007 to 81 percent achieving that in 2011.
At-risk kids include those from low-income families, who typically have more difficulty in school, as well as those who come from homes where English isn't the first language, and those with special-education needs.
But advocates insist test scores shouldn't be the only measure of success.
"Doing better doesn't necessarily mean better test scores," said Lynn Karoly, an economist who studies early-childhood education at the Rand Corp. "It means reduced rates of grade repetition, higher rates of high school graduation and other life-course benefits, like less crime, less delinquency, better life outcomes as adults."
If all that's true, why does Colorado trail many states — it is 36th in funding preschool and not among the 10 states that fund full-day kindergarten — in giving kids a shot at early learning?
"It takes real resources, and in many cases the cost per child is higher," Karoly said.
Haddad said he couldn't estimate the total amount St. Vrain has spent on early-childhood education in the past six years — there have been contributions from bond issues; there was a $5 million federal grant — but he does call the investment "considerable."
"In the end, you save money because it's much less expensive to fund students at the beginning of K-12 than to remediate them through the system as they fall behind. That cost is huge," he said.
That's especially true for special-education kids — students with learning or other disabilities that mean they need additional help.
Which is one reason that while all St. Vrain preschool teachers are licensed, several, including Hinklin, are certified for teaching special education as well.
In fact, in Hinklin's Thursday-morning class, nearly half the toddlers have been identified as having learning disabilities or other special-education needs.
One reason early-childhood education costs more is that classes have to be smaller. It may work to have 20 kids in a first-grade class, but that many 4-year-olds in a single classroom with a single teacher is a recipe for chaos.
"The economy and the recession has made us take some steps back, but for the most part the trajectory has been one where states are putting more resources into this area as they are able," Karoly said.
Since 1988, the Colorado Preschool Program has tried to help low-income families afford preschool. But like everything else, the program suffered during the recent recession. Currently, 20,150 children are enrolled in the program in 170 of the state's 178 school districts, according to Gov. John Hickenlooper's TBD initiative. But there are between 7,000 and 14,000 more who qualify but can't get into the program.
The program, like all education in Colorado, lost money during the recession.
But this year, as the economy recovers and the state has more money coming in, much of the money stripped from education may be put back. In addition, Hickenlooper, in his budget proposal, has recommended that $23.9 million of the $201 million he hopes to put back into K-12 education will be directed toward expanding full-day kindergarten and preschool around the state.
But advocates caution that it's not enough to pour money into any old preschool program.
"It's important to say not all early- learning programs are going to be successful," Karoly said.
St. Vrain has adopted a districtwide curriculum, but just taking a quick glance into Hinklin's class, you'd never know it. Kids seem to be playing — and they are. That, experts say, is how 3- and 4-year-olds learn.
But a closer look reveals that "everything she does has a purpose," said Blue Mountain principal Kristie Venrick.
All the chairs have numbers on them. Each child's photo is on the wall, attached to a colored piece of construction paper cut into a different shape. And by mid-November, all 14 of Hinklin's kids know that when they sit on the rug for stories, they sit on the shape that corresponds to the shape on their photo.
And when Hinklin asks what they had for breakfast, she's not just compiling culinary data, she's helping them with speech and vocabulary.
Sometimes, they help her too. When Hinklin tells the kids they have two minutes until "play" time is over, she holds up two fingers and waves her arm around the room so every child can see them. One extremely helpful child, Tobin Atherton-Wood, also holds up two fingers and waves them in the faces of several children, in case they might have missed Hinklin's message.