Currents in Literacy

How Preschools Can Respond to State Standards

By Candace McKenzie

Amid great fanfare, Washington State adopted the Education Reform Act in 1993 to establish common learning goals for all Washington students, so that when a student left the educational system at the end of high school, they would have a basic standard of education. They focused on four state learning goals to teach students to:

1. Read with comprehension, write with skill, and communicate effectively and responsibly in a variety of ways and settings;

2. Know and apply the core concepts and principals of mathematics; social, physical and life sciences; civics and history; geography; arts; and heath and fitness;

3. Think analytically, logically and creatively, and to integrate experience and knowledge to form reasoned judgments and solve problems; and

4. Understand the importance of work and how performance, effort, and decisions affect future career and educational opportunities.

A commission was established to develop and administer many of the aspects of education reform. During the first few years, they spent most of their time developing clear standards and standards-based assessment. Although they came to the public - often through public meetings throughout the state and occasional newspaper articles - unless you were interested and following public school issues, i.e. you were in the system or a very interested parent or community member, their work went quietly unnoticed.

The Commission adopted standards, Essential Academic Learning Requirements, (EALRs). Each area of academic studies was addressed, with small committees developing EALRs for reading, writing, communication, mathematics, science, social studies, arts, and health and fitness. Benchmark tests were created for the first four areas to see what children know at 4th, 7th and 10th grade levels.

In 1997, the first fourth grade test was given and the entire state woke up. Students in most districts did not do well, and schools began to examine what each grade needed to do to educate the children towards the new standards. They looked back from 4th to 3rd to 2nd to 1st to Kindergarten. Then they began to engage the preschools that were connected with their schools. It was at that time that we began to hear from our preschool teachers, most of whom were not paying attention before this. After all, these were standards for the K-12 system, not for preschool.

I work as one of four Education Coordinators for a state-funded program, similar to Head Start, the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP). We work with 58 centers in the Puget Sound area, in and around Seattle and Tacoma. Some of our centers are in churches, some in social service agencies and some are in school districts. It was our school district sites that began to call us first. "Do you know what the EALRs are? Our district wants to know what our goals are for our children, how we are preparing them for the K-12 system."

ECEAP certainly did have curriculum goals, but as we began to look them over, we recognized how broad they were, addressing developmentally appropriate practice, but skirting around the issue of actual outcomes for preschoolers: "To encourage children: to demonstrate areas of competence...to feel a sense of belonging...to sit and listen to progressively longer stories...to match, recognize and name shapes." Certainly admirable goals, but into today's era of accountability, rather on the light side!

Beginning the Task

My three education colleagues and I decided to be proactive, concerned that if we did not address the state EALRs, the state might address them for us. We started by cutting and pasting our curriculum goals, matching them to the various EALRs. For instance, we matched:

ECEAP Goal: To sit and listen to progressively longer stories.

EALR Goal: Communication:

1. The student uses listening and observation skills to gain understanding

1.1 focus attention

ECEAP Goal: To match, recognize and name shapes

EALR Goal: Mathematics:

1. The student understands and applies the concepts and procedures of mathematics.

1.3 understand and apply concepts and procedures from geometric sense.

When we finished, most of our curriculum goals fit under some section of the state requirements. We also found there were areas of academic studies where we had no definite goals or where there were few goals. For instance, we had nothing for: "The students understands the nature and contexts of science and technology," or "The student examines and understands the major ideas, eras, themes, developments, turning points, chronology, and cause-and-effect relationships in the U.S., world, and Washington State history."

At first look, we thought we would never find any goals to fit under ideas so abstract and complex. But our team began to slowly fill a few of the spaces with some simple ideas, and then we took off with a variety of ideas. For "nature and contexts of science" we added "to begin to understand that machines and technology help us understand and live in our world." Observe a child taking apart an old blender or watching a bulldozer dig and you can see the beginning of understanding technology.

The "understanding of major ideas, eras, etc." seemed again a daunting task, but again a short list surprisingly emerged:

• begin to develop the concept of time
• know they were once younger and did different things than they can do now
• know they will be older and able to do different things than they can do now
• know the name of the city and state in which they live
• understand the form of a story - the beginning, the middle, the end.

All these were doable for a preschooler and a beginning foundation for historical perspective.

Bringing the Teachers Onboard

Now that we had a first DRAFT, we wanted to have a reality check. We decided to talk to the people who were actually working with the children. What did they think of these goals? Were they doable? Were some over the top? We sent out an invitation to our teaching staff of approximately 160 teachers, asking them to participate in examining our new curriculum goals, to read them over and critique them. They would be able to not only nix some, but add any that they thought we missed. Thirty teachers responded that they would like to help, a good percentage of our overall group.

We sent them each a copy of our proposed goals and set a date to meet. The meeting turned out to be more successful than we planned for not only did we go through our goals, we also had a rich dialogue about why we do what we do. Immediately we routed out one overly ambitious item: we had inadvertently included under "chronology" the notion that our 4 to 5-year-olds would be able "to read both an analog and a digital clock." We are not sure how that one slipped by us, but we all laughed when we realized that even a first grader is only working on reading a clock in 15-minute increments. Obviously we had high expectations of our preschoolers.

Most of our other changes were much more subtle. One interesting discussion was around our use of words. In our previous goals, we had language about encouraging our children to "acquire an appreciation of literature." We hoped that through reading in the classroom and exposing them to books that they would learn to love books. But now we were expecting our children to attain certain skills by the time they left our program. We talked for quite a while about how we could gauge "appreciation" and could we expect it just because of exposure. We changed that phrase to "become familiar with a range of books and stories including both fiction and nonfiction." We could guarantee this, because all of our programs infuse books in the classroom.

Not only did we focus on the specific items, we also had quite a discussion around what our expectations really meant. In our past goals, we mostly "encouraged" children. Now we were saying, "By the time they enter kindergarten most ECEAP/Head Start children (will) __." This was a big shift in expectations and there was quite a bit of talk about what this meant in terms of assessment. Would we need to do any kind of formal assessment at the end of the year? No, hopefully during the year, with a stimulating environment and good observations, most of our children would be meeting these criteria. There was a long discussion over whether we should say "most" children or "all." We concluded that most of our children would reach these goals, but there would always be children on their own learning path, and we did not want to set up either the children or the teachers for failure. In the end, we decided to stay with "most," and then we reexamined the various items under that scrutiny. We all left feeling that much was accomplished.

Developmentally Appropriate Practice

Now comes the piece which to me is most important. We decided to add a third column. We had the state EALRs and our new curriculum goals, but there was concern that someone could take our goals and implement them in inappropriate ways. Visions of dittos were passing before our eyes. For example, someone could read "recognize that letters have sounds and that sounds are expressed by letters" and start reading programs in all our centers. We wanted to be sure that teachers approached the goals in developmentally appropriate ways. So our third column gave "examples of strategies." We sent the teachers home from our "goals" meeting with a charge: to come back again in two weeks with some brainstormed ideas about how they would implement these goals in their classroom.

We met once more with the teachers. We put the goals on flip chart paper around the room, divided into individual areas: reading, writing, communication, mathematics, science, social studies, arts, and health and safety. In ones, twos and threes, the teachers circulated around the room adding their ideas to the charts, explaining and laughing with each other. On the mathematics chart, one teacher added, "make a paper tetrahedron with the children." Everyone had to find out how to do that. One teacher had ideas for scientific inquiry, which for many of our teachers is new and/or intimidating. When they finished, we had a wonderful list of hands-on, concrete ideas for young children. We had thought that we might publish just a few so our goals list would not be too long, but there were so many good ideas, we decided to list them all.

Bringing It All Together

Now that we had our basic structure in place, we broadened our community input. We presented it to our center directors, who gave us direction in our overall philosophy for our cover page. In was in our cover page that we stated our beliefs about children as active learners, that learning takes place in a safe and peaceful environment, that we work together in partnership with families and also work with local school districts to plan for smooth transitions to Kindergarten. We also acknowledged that goals and strategies are not exclusive or in priority order, that curriculum activities are planned to accommodate children with mixed abilities and ages, and that if a child does not grasp a particular goal then staff and families can pursue other strategies. Our cover page became our umbrella for our goals and child-centered developmentally appropriate practices.

We sent copies to our Head Start colleagues, where we received good input on diversity. We presented it to our parents through Policy Council. We also sent copies to our K-12 counterparts in our larger Educational Service District office and to our state office in Olympia. After collecting input from all around, we were ready to take DRAFT off of it and move it into our staff handbook.

After nine months of hard labor, we have put together a real working document. The key pieces of its birth is not only our beginning work, but the interest, ideas and excitement of the teachers on the front line. With both goals and strategies offered, teachers are already looking to it for curriculum ideas. Many of our centers are sharing it with their schools, as the schools bring them into the EALR discussion. Some districts are even beginning to use it as a template for early education in their programs. Our plan includes yearly or bi-yearly updates to keep the goals current and expand the strategies. We see it as a work in progress to keep pace with the interests of our children and the goals of our state.

Candace McKenzie is an Education Coordinator for the Puget Sound Educational Service District ECEAP program. She has taught early childhood and parent education classes for Green River Community College. In addition, she advocates for education and equity for women and girls as Mountain Pacific Director for the American Association of University Women.