Photo by Amanda Westmont

Photo by Amanda Westmont

Education leaders in California are turning their sights to making sure students have a strong foundation in mathematics when they enter kindergarten. And that means introducing students to math in preschool.

Preschool math was the focus of a meeting of leading educators and researchers from effectually the state at Stanford University last week. Participants included Michael Kirst, the president of the California State Board of Instruction, Catherine Atkin, president of Preschool California, and Kris Perry, executive director of Get-go five California.

The coming together was led by Deborah Stipek, former dean of the Stanford University Schoolhouse of Didactics, and Alan Schoenfeld, a professor of teaching at UC Berkeley.

Historically, at that place has been footling coordination or word among the numerous California organizations, educators and researchers involved with early babyhood teaching almost how to develop strategies for incorporating math into the preschool experience. Terminal week's convening was intended to start that conversation.

Stipek told EdSource that while reading and writing skills take gotten a good deal of attention in preschool, math has not gotten the attending information technology deserves.

In fact, research led past Greg Duncan, currently at UC Irvine found that mastery of math concepts in preschool are "the near powerful predictors of later learning."

A 2009 National Research Council report called lack of high-quality preschool math instruction a major problem, specially for disadvantaged children who will begin schoolhouse already behind.

The report underscored the capacity of preschoolers to master early math skills. "In fact, well before first grade, children tin larn the ideas and skills that support later, more circuitous mathematics understanding," the study noted, with basic understandings of number, geometry, and measurement being especially important.

Those concepts are frequently absent from or underdeveloped in the preschool curriculum. "Math for the most part is not done very much in preschools," Stipek said. "When you look at what is typically done, it's things like calendar and counting."

One goal of last calendar week's meeting was to share draft findings and recommendations from an earlier coming together at UC Berkeley last fall. That event convened national experts to discuss existing research on early math, what makes for quality didactics, the preparation and back up early educators demand, and policy deportment that states and the federal government should consider. The Stanford meeting last week was designed to initiate a conversation almost these issues in California.

Co-ordinate to the conveners, a compelling reason to take on these problems at present is that new state assessments aligned with the Common Core State Standards are probable to make new demands on California students. That will mean students will need a stronger grounding in math concepts early.

California's current math tests are multiple-choice. But the tests existence developed by the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium, assuming they are implemented equally envisioned, will include items that require students to explain their reasoning and performance tasks that require students to plan a response to a real-earth scenario.

A major challenge for California in introducing students to math fundamentals is that the quality and settings for early childhood education vary across the state. Caregivers and teachers have widely different educational backgrounds, and may have little background in math. And as Lynn Karoly and her fellow researchers described in a 2008 RAND Corporation written report, early education settings range from public and private childcare programs and preschools, to care from a parent or from another adult in a habitation setting.

California has already taken some steps to promote preschool math.

The California Section of Education'due south extensive Preschool Learning Foundations publications describe, among other things, what 4-yr-olds and 5-twelvemonth-olds should be able to practice mathematically if provided a high-quality preschool experience.

In addition, the state has developed cess tools, the Desired Results Developmental Contour, that tin help educators at a pre-schoolhouse level observe and document each child'due south growing mastery of various early math skills.

(Notation: EdSource'south Matt Rosin was an guest to final calendar week's Stanford gathering.)

For more groundwork, see the following resources:

Success Begins Early on, an EdSource cursory, July 2011.

Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood, by the National Research Council, 2009.

School Readiness and Later Achievement, in Developmental Psychology, by Greg Duncan et al., 2007.

Prepared to Learn, RAND Corporation, 2008.

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