Testimony of Michelle Bodden before NYC Council Commission

Dec 8, 2004 12:00 AM

Good afternoon. I am Michelle Bodden, UFT vice president for elementary schools and before that a primary-grade teacher in Brooklyn for eight years.

The UFT and our national affiliate, the American Federation of Teachers, have been champions of preschool education for a very long time.

The UFT, after extensive internal discussion, narrowed its recommendations for spending the CFE settlement money to four critical priorities: improved teacher quality, smaller class sizes, school safety, ­and pre-K education. Our recommendation on pre-K grew out of very persuasive research and also from the observations of our early elementary teachers—that children who have attended pre-K come into kindergarten ready to learn, healthier, better behaved and better able to handle the demands of school. Research shows these advantages persist into adulthood.

But I am not here to review the research, compelling as it is. I have two purposes in testifying before you today. The first is to look at where we are and where we ought to be in providing preschool to all the children in the city. The second is to talk about the characteristics of high quality preschool and caution you about preschools that do not meet these quality goals.

1. There were 217,327 three- and four-year-olds in New York City at last count. More than half of these children were born into poverty, a 15% increase, by the way, from a decade ago. They are, therefore, the children for whom quality preschool can mean the difference between productive lives and lifetimes of personal and academic failure.
2. Of this population, less than one-quarter, 48,000 four-year-olds, are in pre-K programs in the New York City public schools, either in targeted or Universal Prekindergarten.
3. There are no three year olds in public preschool at all, despite overwhelming evidence that two years of preschool is what really makes the difference for disadvantaged children.
4. Most of the 48,000 four-year-olds in preschool attend half-day programs – two-and one-half hours a day. Working parents have been begging for full-day programs so that preschool can be a realistic option for their children. Even increased day-care funding that would allow a combination of pre-K and day care could address their dilemmas. In fact, we are not even spending all the UPK funds available because demand for half-day programs is just not that high.

   We commend the Bloomberg administration for the part of its CFE plan that would expand pre-K to a full day program for four-year-olds and to launch a half-day program for three-year-olds. This would be an excellent use of CFE funds. And we commiserate with the city as it confronts the dilemma of where to put them—though we point out that when we had an increase in enrollment, as we did in the last decade, the City found all sorts of ways to create seats, albeit temporary ones, very quickly.

5. There is not enough room for expanding pre-K in the public schools. Seventy percent of UPK children are in programs operated in and by community-based organizations. The good news is that CBO pre-school teachers are state certified and the programs are often well run and effective. The bad news is those teachers tend to have a lower salary scale than public school teachers, so there is a lot of turnover at these sites.

6. Finally, we are not where we should be in tracking children’s academic progress. Universal pre-k began in 1998, and the cohort of four-year-olds from that first year entered the 4th grade last year. The DOE has an opportunity to identify these students and compare their reading and math scores on the fourth grade tests with those who did not attend pre-K. We urge the Department to make such an evaluation and report it to the public. This kind of fine-grained analysis is an essential part of the DOE’s mission, and would be very useful in focusing pre-K resources to areas of the city where they could have the greatest impact.

In the couple of remaining minutes, I want to address the issue of pre-school quality.

The evidence from preschool studies is very clear that rushing children through childhood in order to jack up test performance is not quality preschool. Yet our early-childhood teachers report there is a concerted effort in their schools to push down the First Grade curriculum into Kindergarten, and the Kindergarten curriculum into Pre-K.

Just as an example, here is the daily schedule of one Brooklyn kindergarten this year:

8:40-9:00         morning meeting
9:00-9:15         read aloud
9:15-9:30         word study
9:35-10:25       library (or if it’s Thursday, art)
10:30-11:20     reading workshop
11:25-12:15     lunch
12:20-1:10       writer’s workshop
1:15-1:35         shared reading
1:35-2:05         science (or if it’s Tuesday, music)
2:10-2:40         math
2:40-2:50         read aloud

No recess. No centers. Almost no arts. Two periods of gym a week. No play. Long literacy blocks that are not appropriate for most four-year-olds and could in fact be damaging.

Test prep has taken over, even in the early years, when children should be learning group and social skills, trying out music, art and dance to learn what their bodies and voices can do, taken outdoors, allowed to explore and be introduced to the joy of learning.

Play is the work of children, and preschool must be a place where that work takes place. Cutting children off from those experiences in favor of scripted learning programs that focus on academic skills alone is short-circuiting their development and turning school into enemy territory.

Of course expanded resources are important, but it is also important that we put the resources into high quality pre-K.

• It should be taught by certified teachers who are specialists in early-childhood learning and understand the developmental needs of three- and four-year-olds. Those teachers should be supported in using their professional judgment on curriculum and scheduling.
• Pre-K must include the arts and other elements of curriculum that allow children to develop their higher-order thinking skills, not just their rote abilities.
• Programs should involve parents and use the opportunity to educate parents on child development.
• They should integrate children with mild to moderate disabilities, establishing these children’s rights to the same education services as their peers
• Pre-K is a place to assure that health and nutrition services are provided to young children.

These goals are certainly within our reach.

Thank you for your attention.