Dear Legislature: Thank You
I support Governor Pawlenty on most things - but some of his olive branches to the mushy middle and dim left just baffle me.
His move to increase pre-kindergarten assessment is one of them.
It baffles the Strib, too - naturally, for different reasons:
Instead, the measure has provided a case study on the limits of gubernatorial influence on this Legislature. In the House, Pawlenty's bill got caught in the crossfire of social conservatives who said it went too far, DFLers who thought it didn't go far enough, and rural legislators opposed to a formula change that would shift a small share of outstate Head Start funds to the metro area. When the bill stalled, House leaders opted not to pull the procedural strings that would get it moving again.
But old legislative hands have a saying: "No bill is dead until they've been home three days." Steps that would improve the education of Minnesota's 3- and 4-year-olds are alive in the Senate. They can still become law this year.
Oh, goody.
Make no mistake about it; these bills have little to do with "educating" children, and everything to do with labelling them even earlier in life than they already are, and making them more compliant product to jam through the system.
Now, I seriously favor abolishing elementary school, so kindergarden (at least the kindergarden used as part of the "K12" system) is on my long list of things to get rid of, to say nothing of "pre-K" programs. The fact that they're make-work programs for the teachers union is the least of the problems.
The Strib continues:
At a minimum, this Legislature should:
• Reinstate and expand the assessment of kindergartners' readiness for school. In 2002-04, kindergartners were sampled for assessment, giving the whole state a picture of their preparation but not allowing districts to see how their own children were faring. That's crucial information for every community.
• Fund an intervention program for kindergartners found "not ready" under the assessment.
Oh, lovely.
$o - create program$ to $end teacher$ after a "problem" - five year old children who, go figger, don't want to have their butt$ jammed into chair$ at that exact moment of their live$?
What next? A program to beat that love of sunny days and playing with insects out of them?
Really - what is "readiness" for kindergarden? I remember the tests my kids took; it screened them for developmental issues, most of which related to the circumstances under which they'd been raised. The subseqent 12 years of school can't fix that - what makes anyone thing the schools themselves will?
• Launch the development of a quality rating system that would let parents know whether their child-care provider, be it center- or home-based, adequately prepares children for kindergarten.
The better to insure that they're used to being poked, prodded, and herded about, earlier and earlier.
So a rare thanks to our legislature; your inertia has bought our children at least a few more months of childhood.
Posted by Mitch at
May 4, 2006 06:45 AM
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Like the money you bust your rear to earn, and the property you "own", add your kids to the list of things that aren't really yours, but merely shared in a joint custody agreement with the nanny state.
Posted by: Nordeaster at May 4, 2006 06:53 AMIt boils down to taxpayer-funded daycare. Like all-day kindergarten-where, btw, they are supposed to arrive having already learned what we (in the late 50's early 60's) learned once we got there (alphabet, counting, etc.). What the hell do the early-grades teachers teach them now? It sure as hell isn't how to read or write. And they have aides to help them with their "heavy work load". I must add, our classes in those baby-boomer days were HUGE-with one teacher, discipline maintained, lessons learned. How DID they do it? Government education-a pox on the whole idiotic bunch.
Posted by: Colleen at May 4, 2006 07:39 AMMitch,
Thank you for your excellent post on this subject. It was indeed sweet to watch the Dems table this bill.
The kindergarten readiness assessment is a piece of garbage because it is based on standards that are garbage - GI/GO!
Every one of the proposals in the Gov's bill are are based on the Early Childhood Indicators of Progress. The majority of these so-called “standards” are a horrific intrusion into parental authority and non-academic psychosocial indoctrination of a radical worldview that the state has no right or authority in which to be setting norms, much less for three and four year old children. This is the worst of the Profile for preschoolers. Even the academic areas of math, language, and literacy have such vague, broad, subjective, and impossible to accurately measure indicators that they are meaningless. Here are a few examples from the document that was still up on the Department website as of March 24, 2006 despite promises over a year ago from the highest levels of the Department that they would be rewritten and limited to academic content and guidelines:
· Math - “Demonstrate increasing interest in and awareness of numbers and counting”
· Language – “Use language for a variety of purposes”
· Self Concept – “Begin to develop awareness, knowledge, and acceptance of own gender and cultural identity”
· Approaches to Learning – “Show eagerness and a sense of wonder as a learner.”
· Social Systems Understanding – “Participate in activities to help others in the community”
Here are a few more problems with the whole idea of the Gov's bill beside those you so eloquently mention:1) It is absolutely not the role of the state to screen, assess, indoctrinate, remediate and otherwise control our youngest children or to promote children being in involved in school at age three or four. 2) These proposals should not be coming from a governor and party that are supposedly for limited government and parents’ rights, because it confuses and discourages the activists needed for re-election. 3) It penalizes families that sacrifice to keep one parent at home to raise children by forcing them to subsidize childcare costs of two income earner families and large corporations by paying for these ineffective and dangerous programs. 4) This bill resurrects the Profile of Learning for three year olds, which the Governor ran on repealing. 5) This bill siphons off $10 million per year on ineffective and harmful preschool programs when there are huge problems and financial needs in k-12.
The Strib is right though that nothing is over until three days after they adjourn. I hope people tell Mr. Pawlenty and the legislators to keep this stuff out. For more details please go to http://www.edwatch.org/ab_state.html under Baby Ed. Thanks!!!
Posted by: Karen Effrem at May 4, 2006 04:55 PM