Full-day public kindergarten is an essential part of education choice

October 5, 2004

By Ellen Shemitz
President
Children’s Alliance of New Hampshire

"Choice" is a popular buzzword in education and political circles these days. Ironically, those years that are the most important in creating children’s ability and appetite to learn — birth through age 5 — are those in which many parents have few choices, if any at all. New Hampshire’s leaders can give parents more choice and improve student performance by including public kindergarten among the state’s minimum standards.

It’s hard to believe that as the rest of the country invests in quality education experiences for 3- and 4-year-olds, here in New Hampshire we’re still talking about kindergarten. Sure, the conversation has shifted in recent years. More people now understand the educational and developmental boost children get from early education and kindergarten. More people now understand the relationship between quality early learning and long-term educational success. And now, the state Board of Education has recommended that the state require every community to offer public kindergarten.

At the Children’s Alliance, we believe the state should require and provide funding for every community to provide both half- and full-day public kindergarten options and allow parents to choose which is best for their children and their families. The reasons for a full-day kindergarten option are both educational and economic.

Children who attend full-day kindergarten start grade school more ready to learn. Studies of the effects of full-day (defined as about six hours) kindergarten have found that students, particularly from disadvantaged families, learn more than in half-day programs. Studies that have tracked kindergarten students into grade school report strikingly similar results.

Kids who had attended full-day kindergartens were better prepared to succeed in first grade: they were more-independent learners, more engaged in the classroom and more thoughtful. They also were more socially and emotionally prepared: worked more productively with other students, related more positively and confidently with teachers, and less prone to anger, blaming, withdrawal and shyness.

The economic argument is two-fold. In the short term, quality full-day kindergarten supports today’s workforce. In New Hampshire, 61 percent of parents with children under age 6 depend on family, friends and center-based professionals to care for their children while they work. Those parents are more productive workers when their child is settled for the day in a high-quality program, rather than being shuttled from home to a friend’s house to kindergarten to day care.

In the longer term, quality full-day kindergarten creates and strengthens tomorrow’s workforce. Children who love to read and learn at age 5 are more likely to stay in school, graduate from high school, and be good learners for the rest of their lives.

Our state has been enormously successful importing workers for its burgeoning high-tech industries from other states, but must begin to grow its own high-skill workforce. More than half of all new jobs being created in New Hampshire require a bachelors degree.

The only argument against requiring public kindergarten, full- or half-day, is New Hampshire’s method of education funding. The simple truth is that our reliance on local property taxes to finance education is the sole reason that 16 communities, containing about 20 percent of the state’s 5-year-olds, still don’t provide public kindergarten. New Hampshire’s Constitution says that what the state mandates, the state must pay for. So if our minimum standards include public kindergarten for all, the state must fund kindergarten for all.

Over the coming months, this clear mandate will be blurred. Instead of requiring communities to offer public kindergarten, Governor Benson supports giving parents of 5-year-olds $2,000 cash vouchers that could be used toward tuition at a public or private kindergarten. The call for vouchers is an end run around public kindergarten. Their use would allow the state to continue to avoid the true costs of education, and, because $2,000 is but a fraction of what most all-day private kindergarten costs, would send cash to families that can already afford kindergarten tuition while denying education to those less able to pay.

It is time for New Hampshire to choose to support its children and its working parents. Let’s put an end to our distinction as the only state in the country that does not offer public kindergarten for all children. We ask all citizens to demand that their political leaders support public kindergarten so that our youngest children enter school ready to learn and our state continues to thrive.