Learning from Preschools

This week’s article summary is What Every School Can Learn from Preschools which was recently broadcast on NPR.

The information below—the need for developing social-emotional skills in kids in addition to academic, cognitive ones—is hardly novel at Trinity: after all, we are an elementary school (hence, we focus as much on process as product and most of us have a constructivist-leaning educational philosophy) and an independent school (we are not measured by our students’ standardized test scores).

Yet it does seem that the national educational pendulum is beginning to swing back a little from high-stakes testing to a more progressive, whole child, holistic emphasis.

Joe  

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Listening. Sharing. Following directions. Making friends. Managing big emotions. Planning for the future.

A high-quality preschool program helps children develop in all these ways.

Such matters of the heart shouldn't be left behind just as students are learning to tie their shoes.

Schools need to focus on these same skills, habits, attitudes, and mindsets with older kids as research shows they're just as important as academics.

Though public schools are currently held accountable for students' scores in math and reading proficiency alone, evidence from both psychology and economics shows that a wide range of non-academic skills play a big role in determining success later in life.

Additionally, these attributes aren't coded into DNA. They can be taught, or at least cultivated.
Sometimes this means curricula that explicitly cover social and emotional topics. Tools for Getting Along, from the University of Florida, has elementary school students doing lessons on how to solve social problems with classmates.

The Brainology curriculum teaches middle schoolers the basics of neuroscience, like the idea that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with practice. Carol Dweck’s work shows that learning these facts can increase students' motivation to work hard in class.

There is also evidence supporting whole-school approaches, like Responsive Classroom, which changes how teachers and administrators do discipline.

Educators should be paying more attention to how schools are building these skills at all ages, and even holding them accountable for it.

This doesn't mean more high-stakes tests. When it comes to assessing individual students on attributes like grit, for example, we're not there yet. The best tack is to hold entire schools accountable for creating atmospheres that instill or support these qualities. This can be done using tools like school climate surveys and sharing the information publicly.

It's a good time to have this conversation. Most states, and the federal government, have expanded access to preschool in the last year. To evaluate those programs, they use a wide palette: classroom observation, self-reporting, and more.

This report suggests importing some of that more holistic approach to accountability into the higher grades.

This doesn't mean replacing an emphasis on academic rigor with something fuzzy and hard to quantify--a false choice. Schools can and should be doing both.