We have full day kindergarten in the district where I live and as an experienced early childhood educator I am horrified at the results. The kids spend most of the day doing paper and pencil work because the curriculum has been pushed down from first grade. There is no time for the kids who enter needing a little time to mature to catch up. The really good and experienced teachers do the best to make the classrooms as appropriate for young children as they can. Most are disgusted by what they are requred to force on the kids. Test scores are up but nobody stops to ask if we are testing what kids really need to know or question the long term psychological effects on kids who aren’t given time to play, explore and satisfy their natural curiosity.

All kids need experiences being in a group away from their parents before they start school. It should be up to the parent to decide how to provide this for their child. We have a tradition in this country of offering a wide variety of options. These have ranged from library story hours to part-week half day nursery schools to day care programs to public school pre-ks and Head Start. Certainly, we need to provide programs for kids whose parents can’t affors a private program but they should also have choice.

I have not been impressed by the public school pre-ks I have seen. They are far too academic and offer a watered down kindergarten curriculum. Few public school district administrators know anything about early childhood and the results are reflected in the classrooms. Making preschool mandatory would only force more children into programs that destroy their intillectual curiosity and kill the joy of learning.

Preschool should not be mandatory. The best place for a child that young is at home, with a parent, not in some government run preschool. I believe a good preschool can be a benefit to children. My kids both attended a co-operative preschool, where the parents are required to attend with their child a certain number of days per month, and hold leadership positions within the school. Anything other than that is, in my opinion, daycare, and I wouldn’t have had my children enrolled. As far as full day kindergarten. That should be optional. Many kids that age are not ready to spend that many hours in school. Once again, it looks a lot like daycare to me.

Well, I think it is a good idea. My reason is that the earlier kids are identified as “different learners”, the better because intensive remediation can begin very early, long before they fall behind the other students.

I remember watching 3rd graders, who were finally identified, struggle to learn to read. What a shame. If only they were spotted earlier and helped earlier, they wouldn’t have gotten behind in the first place, leading to shame and refusal to learn, etc.

You can teach kids to read in such a way that it seems like a game. That’s the way it should be taught. So preschool then can still be fun and games. Apparently kids can be taught to read from age 2 to age 5 or 6. If it is taught in a pleasant way, why not learn to read early? It’s excellent brain stimulation and as I said, kids having trouble can be noticed sooner. And no, forget that garbage about “some kids develop later”. Not so when it comes to explicit teaching of reading. Normal kids will lap it up by about age 4. So those that don’t, well, slow down, make it fun, and see what happens. If there is still resistance, investigate to be sure it is an attitude and not an underlying problem that can be corrected early.

Kindergarten already is full-day in Florida, and has been for many years, although it is not mandatory. I don’t know what I would do if I only had my students for a half day! There is so much that they are required to know (Sunshine State Standards) before going on to first grade.

Florida’s Pre-K program is voluntary. We have free VPK (voluntary pre-k) classes in the public schools and at day care centers during the school year (3 hours a day) and also a summer VPK program.

Like it or not, with the high stakes testing going on, students are being required to know more and to learn it earlier. Even the text book publishers seem to assume that most kindergartners have gone to pre-k. Kindergartners who come into the classroom without attending pre-k (or without having parents who work with them at home) are way behind pre-k graduates who have been in school and have learned some of the basics.

Students who speak a first language other than English benefit greatly from attending pre-k and being exposed to English. Children who may be developmentally delayed can also be evaluated and put in special pre-k classes–sometimes this year of intensive remediation is enough and the child can go onto normal kindergarten, if not, the problem was caught early and s/he can continue getting services.

I don’t see pre-school being made mandatory as kindergarten is not yet mandatory, although most children do attend kindergarten. Public schools have enough problems with funding shortfalls. States have enough problems coming up with funding for mandated educational programs that they aren’t going to add more mandatory programs without additional funding.

I think preschool is a wonderful Idea especially for those children who are the only child, it helps them with social skills, and they learn how to play, it also prepares them for kindergarten, as most of us know kindergarten is no longer playing in the sand box and eating milk and cookies, Kindergarten is like an advanced first grade, if a child has not had any exposure to a preschool, kindergarten is very difficult for those children. Full day Kindergarten is great, it helps them transition into first grade. I teach preschool, and its amazing how many children who don’t attend preschool have a hard time at their kindergarten screenings. Preschool is wonderful and so are full day kindergartens. Usually the only people who have problems with either programs are the parents.

I think is a huge mistake on so many levels. Society is making it acceptable for children to start school much earlier than they should. Studies have shown how beneficial it is to start school at an older age in some of these different countries. Only here in America do they think it is better for children to start school at a earlier age and pushing nursery and preschools off as a good thing. They have things backwards. I think it is a sad sad world we live in. Our children are forced into growing up quicker. No time is left over by the time they get out of school for fun by the time they finish up the ton of homework, spent the little precious time they have with their parents it is off to bed to face another grueling day at school. Only on the weekends that is if they don’t have major tests or papers to write do they get to spend some free time exploring the world in which we live. We think we have problems now just wait until they decide to change Kindy to full day. The teachers will be pulling out their hair because children this age are not meant to have the attention spans to handle sitting that long.

Now if they were to have a fullday and make it fun with activities like games, playing outside more, doing a lot of art, etc. then it might not be so bad.

Kindergarten in MD is a mandatory, full day program. As long as it is taught correctly I think it’s a good idea. The other 1/2 of the day should not be used for anything that would be considered busy work or not age appropriate.

I think PreK is definitely beneficial, but should not be mandatory. I think there should be PreK programs offered through the school system for at-risk kids (in many areas there already are). Students from low SES areas or who have developmental delays benefit a great deal from PreK programs.

I think that preschool can really help kids but I think parents could do just as much.

I think all day kindergarten is a long time for a child to be in school

I think all-day kindergarten is good, provided that curriculum is diverse and deals with all aspects of development: socialization, structured and unstructured playtime, learning sight words and letter recognition, music, physical activity, etc. I think some parents expect these young children to be miniature scholars and want to mostly force reading on them. Mandatory preschool would be a good thing, and would also be a way to help ensure these children’s basic needs are being met before they reach the current school age..

NO NO NO NO NO NO!

I homeschool my kids, and it is legal in every state, what sense would it make to force me to send my kids to preschool when its not even mandatory to send them to school?

Besides, shouldn’t even public school families have the option of keeping their child with them while they are little?

As far as all day kindergarten, that should be up to the individual school districts and parents.