News

Is All-Day-K OK?
Voters will decide on June 8
By Elizabeth Prata

The MSAD 15 School Board of Directors is presenting a daring budget item. In these times of tightening belts and paring down, which the SAD says they did in order to form this year's school budget, they left in one large program that they hope will pass: All-Day Kindergarten.

The Administrators get together early in the process and hand over their year's requested budget to the Superintendent, who in turn further refine it and hand it to the School Board for discussion. This year, all departments got together and set aside their own immediate needs and focused every dollar they could toward the All-Day K program.

The Principals and Administrators made it clear that they supported it all the way up the line. Their reasoning was that the children would exhibit benefits over a period of time, carrying those benefits through to the higher grades. The result, proponents say, are fewer remediation efforts and children in Title 1.

Holly Merrow is a Kindergarten teacher in MSAD 15. She addressed the Board in April with a Power Point presentation, outlining the merits, as the teachers see it, of an All Day-K program.

She said that there would be more time for the children to learn how to interact effectively with peers and adults. There would be more time for one-on-one instruction and differentiation. There would be more time available for small group instruction, more time for in-depth teaching, and more time for the children to work cooperatively with peers. In an All-Day program, as opposed the three hours in a half-day program, the children would have more time to make gains socially and would be better prepared for grade 1, Merrow said in the presentation.

A research of the educational literature finds that all-day K program do have merits. The researchers found a constructive relationship between participation in a full day program and later school performance.

J. Cryan, whose work was published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly in 1992, found that "full-day kindergartners exhibited more independent learning, classroom involvement, productivity in work with peers, and reflectiveness than half-day kindergartners. They were also more likely to approach the teacher and they expressed less withdrawal, anger, shyness, and blaming behavior than half-day kindergartners. In general, children in full-day programs exhibited more positive behaviors than did pupils in half-day or alternate-day programs."

Well over 3.3 million children attend kindergarten in the United States, nearly as many children as attend first grade. In Maine, in 2002-2003 the number of Maine schools offering All-Day K was 123. The percent of Districts with Kindergarten offering All-Day-K: 55%. In 1997-98, that number was 45 districts offering All-Day K, or 10% of Maine schools, for an increase of 45%. In 2000, 60 percent of school districts nationwide had kids enrolled in full-day programs.

"That's because it's a good thing," Said SAD 15 Superintendent Victoria Burns. "If I could advocate for one thing that would make a difference in the performance of our children, it would be All-Day K,' Burns said. "This is one program where we can add more instructional time, something that is hard to do further up the ladder. It's one program that can make a difference to the kids, and I hope that the voters will vote for it."

Critics say that just changing the length of the kindergarten day does not guarantee an increase in performance. Creating developmentally and individually appropriate learning environments for all kindergarten children, regardless of the length of school day is the main issue. Right, Burns

If the All-Day K programs that are implemented feature seatwork, worksheets, academic stress, or other developmentally inappropriate curriculum items, then any gains would be lost. If the All-Day K features developmentally appropriate, child-centered all-day kindergarten programs then there will be gains that will be felt through the first years of the child's educational experience.

Recent research does find that in full-day programs the less hectic instruction geared to student needs and suitable assessment of student progress contribute to the program's success. While these benefits can be found in high-quality half-day kindergartens, many children seem to benefit, academically and behaviorally, from all-day kindergarten.

Burns said that the $165,873 annual cost would be well-spent. A Half-day K will not be offered if the full-day K passes, although the District is open to putting in a half-day K if parents advocate for it.

Experts in the review of research caution that the length of the school day is only one measurement of kindergarten. Other important issues include the nature of the kindergarten curriculum and the quality of teaching.