Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/rethinking-mandates-to-teach-educational-skills-to-young-children/5023934/
What Is Going On?
Soon after the federal government and many states began to issue mandates requiring the formal teaching of basic academic skills to young children in early childhood settings, as well as a great deal of testing to determine whether the standards are being met, we began hearing serious concerns from teachers about the impact the new requirements were having on their teaching as well as on the development, learning, and behavior of the children with whom they worked (Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 2004; Miller & Almon, 2009; Ochshorn, 2015). And, despite the fact that many of the key educational leaders who had called for this early academic teaching said it was most needed for children from low-income homes, it was often the teachers of young children from families with limited resources who voiced the loudest concerns about the negative impact the mandates were having on their children and teaching.
Because of the concerns we kept hearing, we wanted to try to better understand what was going on in so many of our classrooms around the country and make recommendations about what could be done to make current requirements and practices more appropriate. We wanted to hear directly ...