Transitional kindergarten teachers Chelan Shepard (left) and Mary Beth Stovall arrange pages of math activities in the correct progression during a math session at Preschool California's transitional kidergarten conference. Lillian Mongeau/EdSource Today

Transitional kindergarten teachers Chelan Shepherd (foreground) and Mary Beth Stovall arrange pages of math activities in the correct progression during a math session at Preschool California's transitional kindergarten conference. Lillian Mongeau/EdSource Today

Transitional kindergarten, the new grade level for children whose fifth birthdays fall early in the school yr, is 6 months old in February. At a statewide conference in Pasadena this week — the first large gathering since the programme was implemented — teachers, administrators and advocates talked about best practices and cheered what they see equally long-needed reform.

Long Beach Unified Superintendent Chris Steinhauser praised it, too, but as well tempered enthusiasm with a warning to advocates not to allow their baby-sit down. He said the new initiative should not repeat the experience of California's course size reduction program, begun in 1996 to reduce K-iii course sizes to 20 students per teacher. Because information technology was hastily created, no research was washed at the outset to measure out the impact of smaller classes on academic functioning. Steinhauser said that this fourth dimension teachers and districts should collect their own data to prove the program works and then talk about it to legislators often.

"We cannot allow folks 5 years from at present, when we accept a down economic cycle, to say, 'That early on childhood thing over there, we don't need information technology,'" Steinhauser said.

In fact, the American Institutes for Enquiry is studying the implementation of transitional kindergarten this year, and volition conduct a long-term written report of the quality and outcomes of the program.

Though the programme merely became mandatory this fall, Steinhauser'due south district outset implemented an optional transitional kindergarten program six years agone. So far, little data is bachelor every bit to its touch, but Long Beach Unified assistant superintendent Jill Baker said the early indicators from the commencement pocket-sized grouping of students show that the program is working to bring the youngest kindergarten children up to speed.

Transitional kindergarten came into being statewide every bit a result of a longtime push to change the historic period at which students are eligible to enroll in kindergarten. Unlike most states, California has long allowed children who plow 5 years quondam by December 2 to start kindergarten. Starting in the fall of 2012, the country began rolling dorsum that cutoff appointment to eventually reach the more than common Sept. i.  This schoolhouse year the cutting off birthdate engagement for admission to regular kindergarten is November 1. Next year it will rolled back to October 1, and in 2014-15 and thereafter to September 1.

The fledgling course level nearly lost its funding last twelvemonth when Gov. Jerry Brown cut it out of his proposed 2012-13 budget. Funding was restored in the May 2022 budget revision, prompting many districts to scramble to set up transitional kindergarten classrooms by the start of this school year. At present that Prop. xxx has passed, district leaders said they were more confident that the program would become a permanent part of the didactics landscape.

Improve preparation for first class

Many educators have long felt that the country's youngest kindergartners were starting schoolhouse at a developmental disadvantage.  Most teachers but hoped for a new cutoff appointment, only were thrilled with the inclusion of a provision setting up transitional kindergarten.

"This was a dream come true," said teacher Shannon Varner, a 20-year veteran of early childhood and early elementary education in Monrovia virtually Pasadena.

Virtually every speaker who came to the podium during the large group sessions at the conference thanked the crowd for their work in convincing Sacramento lawmakers to do what was "all-time for kids." There was hardly any grumbling virtually the challenge of creating what is in consequence a new grade level, implementing a new curriculum and training teachers to do things differently.

"Nosotros've wanted [transitional kindergarten] in the field for a long time," Varner said. "Now, we take to go along working hard at it and making it ameliorate."

Trisha Flores, a transitional kindergarten teacher in Newhall, north of Los Angeles, was prepare to practise just that. She attended a morning time session on math in transitional kindergarten considering she said she has taught in the upper unproblematic grades, and she knows how of import those bones math skills are. The leaders of the math session talked about the concepts iv- and 5-year-olds should be able to master and the easily-on activities teachers tin use to go them there. Flores said none of the information was brand-new to her after eight years of teaching, merely she said the reminder that educational activity math to young children doesn't mean giving them worksheets and pencils was a welcome one.

"It solidifies the thoughts nosotros had almost slowing down and getting those foundations in place," Flores said.

The idea that information technology'southward finally all right to slow down was mentioned past several teachers who said it was a relief to know they had two years to get their transitional kindergarteners ready for anest class. The students attending transitional kindergarten this year would all have been in regular kindergarten last year, but were often those falling farthest behind,  teachers said. Now, those students have what some every bit the conference referred to as "the gift of time."

Long Embankment's Steinhauser, a champion of universal preschool, thinks that'south a adept matter.   "TK is one small step towards universal preschool and ane giant footstep towards closing the accomplishment gap," read one slide in his presentation.

Nearly 450 people attended the briefing, organized by Preschool California, an early babyhood advocacy organization, and the Los Angeles County Office of Education. Executive Director Catherine Atkin said she was especially pleased so many teachers showed upwards.

"I experience like we've asked them to exercise this really of import job, and we've put a lot on their plate," she said. "The conference was an opportunity to give them some physical tools."

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