Fixated by Screens, but Seemingly Nothing Else, by Perry Klass

May 10, 2011

This article appeared in the New York Times on May 10, 2011. If you’d like to read the piece at the New York Times website, CLICK HERE.

The mother had brought in a note from her son’s elementary school teacher: Dear doctor, I think this child needs to be tested for attention deficit disorder.

“She’s worried about how he can’t sit still in school and do his work,” the mother said. “He’s always getting into trouble.”

But then she brightened. “But he can’t have attention deficit, I know that.”

Why? Her son could sit for hours concentrating on video games, it turned out, so she was certain there was nothing wrong with his attention span.

It’s an assertion I’ve heard many times when a child has attention problems. Sometimes parents make the same point about television: My child can sit and watch for hours — he can’t have A.D.H.D.

In fact, a child’s ability to stay focused on a screen, though not anywhere else, is actually characteristic of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There are complex behavioral and neurological connections linking screens and attention, and many experts believe that these children do spend more time playing video games and watching television than their peers.

But is a child’s fascination with the screen a cause or an effect of attention problems — or both? It’s a complicated question that researchers are still struggling to tease out.

The kind of concentration that children bring to video games and television is not the kind they need to thrive in school or elsewhere in real life, according to Dr. Christopher Lucas, associate professor of child psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. “It’s not sustained attention in the absence of rewards,” he said. “It’s sustained attention with frequent intermittent rewards.”

The child may be playing for points accumulated, or levels achieved, but the brain’s reward may be the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Children with A.D.H.D. may find video games even more gratifying than other children do because their dopamine reward circuitry may be otherwise deficient.

Indeed, at least one study has found that when children with A.D.H.D. were treated with methylphenidate (Ritalin), which increases dopamine activity in the brain, they played video games less. The authors suggested that video games might serve as a kind of self-medication for these children.

So increased screen time may be a consequence of A.D.H.D., but some researchers fear it may be a cause, as well. Some studies have found that children who spend more time in front of the screen are more likely to develop attention problems later on.

In a 2010 study in the journal Pediatrics, viewing more television and playing more video games were associated with subsequent attention problems in both schoolchildren and college undergraduates.

The stimulation that video games provide “is really about the pacing, how fast the scene changes per minute,” said Dr. Dimitri Christakis , a pediatrician at the University of Washington School of Medicine who studies children and media. If a child’s brain gets habituated to that pace and to the extreme alertness needed to keep responding and winning, he said, the child ultimately may “find the realities of the world underwhelming, understimulating.”

But a 2007 study in the journal Media Psychology compared television watching in a group of children diagnosed with A.D.H.D. and a group without. The researchers concluded that most differences were accounted for by family factors and environment, including whether the children had televisions in their bedrooms. A.D.H.D. by itself didn’t seem to make the difference. The connections between A.D.H.D. and screens, the authors concluded, were complex.

Elizabeth Lorch, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky and one of the authors of that study, also studied children’s ability to comprehend televised stories. While children with A.D.H.D. were able to recall facts from the stories they watched just as well as other children, there was a difference in their ability to understand the narrative and to separate out what was important.

“Why did an event happen, why did a character do this — that’s where the comprehension and recall of children with A.D.H.D. tends to fall down,” she said.

Her co-author Richard Milich, also a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, suggested that besides the primary implications of this problem for academic performance, this finding may also shed light on social difficulties.

“This inability to see causal relations may affect this social problem we’ve known for 30 years,” he said. “These kids have dramatic social problems. They’re highly rejected by their peers.”

It may be a self-perpetuating loop, experts say: Children who have trouble with their social skills may be thrown back even more to the screen for electronic companionship.

Children whose brains need neurochemical rewards seek out an activity that provides it. Children with social problems spend more time alone, facing a screen. Children struggling in the classroom develop mastery in a virtual world. I talk to parents of children with A.D.H.D. about basic dos and don’ts: No screens in the child’s bedroom. Pay attention to the content of the games, especially to violence. Set limits on screen time, and look for other ways to manage family interactions.

If I can’t tell parents what they hope to hear, at least I can argue that these children’s fascination with the glowing screen may teach us something about their brains, the neurobiology, the rewards, and even the yearning and learning.

Lost in the School Choice Maze, by Liz Robbins

May 8, 2011

This article, by Liz Robbins, appeared in the NY Times on May 8, 2011. If you would like to read it at the NY Times website, here is the link: In the School Choice Maze, Some Eighth Graders are Lost.

ON the last day in March, when most eighth graders in New York City learned where they would be going to high school in the fall, Radcliffe Saddler watched the majority of his classmates rip open thin envelopes and celebrate.

Some students opened thick envelopes just as he did and started crying. Radcliffe, an honors student at Isaac Bildersee Middle School in Canarsie, Brooklyn, was determined to hold in his emotions until he got home.

His trip involved the usual two city buses and took 45 minutes. When he walked into his family’s small apartment in East Flatbush, he showed his mother the letter saying he had not gotten into any of the nine schools he had applied to. Then he ducked into his room and cried.

“I felt like I never worked hard enough,” Radcliffe, 14, said softly a few days later. “To see other people get in, I feel like I did something wrong.”

He may have felt like it, but he was not alone. The Department of Education’s dizzying, byzantine system for students to select a public high school left a total of 8,239 — about 10 percent of the city’s eighth graders — shut out of all their choices, and their parents feeling inadequate, frustrated and angry.

They were told to ponder “What next?” — with just two weeks to research and apply to a new set of schools — even as the bitter question “Why?” still lingered.

The answer is more complicated than the toughest word problem in any high school math class.

In 2004, in an attempt to create more choices for parents beyond the large neighborhood high schools that were seen as dumping grounds, and while trying to make the process more equitable, the Education Department instituted an elaborate process to match students and schools.

Eighth graders are asked to apply to up to 12 schools in order of preference; high schools then rank applicants without seeing where the students ranked them. (This does not include the nine specialized high schools that require separate entrance exams or auditions.)

In some cases, the borough or the district where a student lives gives residents priority. Thirty percent of the city’s schools — usually the most coveted and, therefore, the most competitive to get in — use a screening process with their own criteria: seventh-grade standardized test scores, grades and attendance, plus open-house visits, essays or exams.

A computer then compares the two rankings, using the same algorithm developed to match medical residents with hospitals.

This year, of the 78,747 students who applied, the computer matched 83 percent to one of their top five choices. An additional 7 percent were matched to schools lower on their lists. The rest, like Radcliffe, were unmatched. Over the past three years, officials said, there has been a slight but steady increase in the number of unmatched students, up from 8 percent last year and 7 percent in 2009.

One new variable this year was the department’s publishing of graduation rates in school descriptions, which caused a surge in applications to the best schools, said Robert Sanft, the chief executive of the Office of Student Enrollment. The competition at many of those top schools meant long-to-impossible odds. Baruch College Campus High School, with a 100 percent graduation rate, received the most applications from across the city: 7,606 for 120 seats, giving it an acceptance rate of about 1.6 percent (Harvard, by contrast, accepted 6.2 percent of its applicants.)

But geography was a significant factor for Baruch, especially for those who, like Radcliffe, applied from outside Manhattan. According to Baruch’s principal, Alicia Perez-Katz, the school, created for Manhattan’s District 2, has not accepted out-of-district students in many years, a fact not mentioned in the Education Department’s school profile.

Mr. Sanft said there was no one answer to why so many of the city’s children were unmatched. “It could be a combination of factors,” he said, “listing too few choices, overconfidence at reaching the choices for which they might not have qualified, the information available based on their record.”

Despite hosting admissions fairs and offering application guidelines in the encyclopedic 534-page high school directory, which includes 647 programs at 394 schools, plus the nine specialized schools, the department has acknowledged it needs to make its information more accessible to parents. Claudette Saddler, Radcliffe’s mother, said she had been overwhelmed by the process.

“This is like a big maze and you are the little creatures just walking around,” Ms. Saddler said. “It’s like, ‘Somebody please help me.’ I thought it would be simpler for the parents”

Aiming High to Succeed

The Saddlers stand in the middle of the socioeconomic divide in New York City, between the obsessive upper-middle-class parents who fill out spreadsheets to chart their children’s admissions and the uninvolved parents who leave it to guidance counselors to complete the forms.

Radcliffe is the oldest of three boys. Ms. Saddler and her husband, also named Radcliffe Saddler, immigrated to the United States from Jamaica within the past 10 years in part because they wanted to provide a better (and less expensive) education for their children.

Mr. Saddler, a house painter and graphics designer, is struggling to find work and is considering returning to school to get his M.B.A. Ms. Saddler is not working while she finishes her bachelor’s degree.

In hindsight, the Saddlers know they made mistakes in the selection process. They said they had trouble arranging open-house visits around their schedules, but thought Radcliffe’s excellent grades at Isaac Bildersee — he had a 94.18 average in seventh grade — would suffice. But while Radcliffe scored 3.56 out of a possible 4.5 on his state math exam, he scored 2.94 in English; many of the schools he applied to wanted 3s or 4s.

Radcliffe’s first choice was Millennium High School in Manhattan, where 5,266 students applied for 150 spots. His ninth and last choice was the program for science and math at Midwood High School in Brooklyn.

His guidance counselor, Watson Mareus, was overloaded by working with more than 350 students. Radcliffe acknowledged that Mr. Mareus originally advised him to consider a broad range of schools, but it felt to him as if he were saying, “Don’t aim too high.”

“If we all didn’t aim high,” Radcliffe said, shrugging his shoulders, “where would we be?”

Mr. Mareus said in an interview that once Radcliffe submitted his list, signed by his parents, in December, it was not his place to change it.

Still, he said he was shocked when Radcliffe was shut out while students with below-average grades got into Midwood. “There was nothing I could tell the parents,” Mr. Mareus said. “I was baffled.”

Radcliffe was thrown into the so-called supplemental round, in which unmatched students had to select from a list of schools that still had spaces available. Some were new schools without track records, others were large neighborhood schools, and still others were on the city’s “schools in need of improvement” list. Families had until April 15 to return their new lists of choices to guidance counselors. Schools are now going through a second round of ranking, using the same criteria as in the first.

Students will hear on May 27 where they matched in the supplemental round. (Their assigned schools can be up to 90 minutes from home.) Anyone displeased with a match has until June 3 to appeal. It could take until the end of June for that process to be completed.

Starting the Next Round

With little time last month to dwell on the initial rejection, parents and students got to work. At 6 p.m. on April 5, thousands stormed through the doors of Martin Luther King Jr. Educational Campus in Manhattan like shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving. The schools were grouped by borough on three floors, and the hallways were jampacked.

As the tenacious rushed past the dazed, a man strummed an out-of-tune guitar at the Brooklyn School for Global Studies table, lending a plaintive tone to the already anxious night.

The Saddlers, with Radcliffe’s 7-year-old brother, Anthony, in tow, wandered from table to table on the third floor, which had Brooklyn schools.

They passed Norkhila Sherpa of Flatbush, who came from India and entered the seventh grade in the middle of the school year. She finished with an 80 average — though she now has a 90 — and that hurt her chances at her seven choices, including Manhattan/Hunter Science High School and Midwood.

The table for the new Brooklyn outpost of Millennium High School was the busiest among the Brooklyn group. With about 40 spots left to fill for the new class of 108 students, the incoming principal, Lisa Gioe, 39, a Brooklyn native and currently the principal at the Math and Science Exploratory Middle School, acted as recruiter and therapist.

She took down names and consoled parents who cried, distraught over their children’s being unmatched.

“Brooklyn families are tough and they’re trying to figure out what to do,” Ms. Gioe said. “They are resilient and they don’t take no too often. I love that.”

Steve Jacobson of Ditmas Park, accompanied by his wife, Miriam, and their 13-year-old daughter, Julia, went straight to Ms. Gioe. “I asked her, ‘Are you the decision maker?’ ” Mr. Jacobson, 65 and an architect in Manhattan, recalled. “She said, ‘Yes I am.’ ”

Julia attends a specialized Manhattan school, Ballet Tech, but had decided to forgo dance in high school. She originally applied to six schools, including some of the most competitive in Manhattan, and Midwood. She had an 88 average in seventh grade, but also 40 tardy days, which may have hurt her.

“The difference between an 87 and 88 to a parent may not be consequential,” Mr. Sanft said at the fair that night, after he addressed parents’ concerns. “But it may be to a principal deciding between 98 and 99.”

“We can’t emphasize enough for parents to maximize their choices,” he added. “We can’t tell you how often they apply to one or two schools. Ultimately, you are competing with several thousands of candidates, and your child may be a bubble candidate.”

Some schools will eliminate a candidate based on poor attendance or on a record of more than 10 late days. Radcliffe had five absences and was late 19 times in seventh grade. He said he took the city bus alongside commuters who routinely pushed him aside in line and left him waiting for the next one. But neither he nor his parents realized they could explain his circumstances as an unofficial part of his application.

Even though a computer sorts the information, the process also involves a high degree of diligence and strategy from students, parents and guidance counselors, going beyond submitting raw data and showing raw potential.

Ivie Bien-Aime, the parent coordinator at Radcliffe’s school, said parents had to be aggressive early in the process, choosing appropriate schools and visiting them. “There’s a grooming phase,” Ms. Bien-Aime said. “I tell parents to go to meetings, to open houses, call the principal, let them know you are interested. If they don’t see your face, you’ll be just another number.”

Information drives any choice system in the marketplace, said Henry M. Levin, a professor of economics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. In the high school admissions process, information really is power.

“The upper-middle-class families have more of it; they can look at mavens who have gone through the process and can tell others how to game the system,” Dr. Levin said.

Sean P. Corcoran of New York University and Dr. Levin conducted a study, “School Choice and Competition in the New York City Schools,” that showed black and Hispanic students in the city in 2008 tended to rank better-performing schools outside their neighborhood as their first choice, but more often ended up being accepted at local schools more like their middle schools.

It was impossible, Dr. Corcoran said in presenting the findings last month at a New School panel, for every student to go to a school better than his or her middle school, since there were only a small number of competitive high schools.

Still, Dr. Levin said they found the department’s system far more equitable than it had been. “We’re never going to make it more level,” he said. “What we have to do is make it more nearly level.”

Clara Hemphill, founding editor of Insideschools.org and a longtime observer of school choice, says the problem is a fundamental one: There are not enough good schools. “The big gap is in good schools for the average student,” Ms. Hemphill said. “I spoke to kids this year who had a 92 average and all 4s who didn’t get matched anywhere, even though their choices were reasonable,” she added. “School choice by itself doesn’t fix schools. Even if we gave everybody perfect information, it wouldn’t solve the problem.”

New Lists of School Choices

At the supplemental-round fair, Radcliffe and his parents met Rashid Davis, the dynamic 40-year-old principal at P-Tech — Pathways in Technology — a new school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, backed by a $500,000 commitment from I.B.M. and an agreement with City College to offer an associate’s degree at the end of six years.

P-Tech gives priority to Brooklyn students and those who attend an information session. The day after the fair, the Saddlers attended a session for the school, which had 46 of 108 spaces open.

P-Tech is a prime example of the city’s recent investment in small schools that focus on career-oriented education while it closes larger, struggling schools. P-Tech and the Academy for Health Careers will be at Paul Robeson High School, which is being phased out because of poor performance (it had a 50 percent graduation rate last year).

In the new school, Radcliffe and his parents saw opportunity, and he made it his first choice. “It’s like the new baby coming around,” Radcliffe said of the city’s support. “They’re going to look after it.”

Two days after he submitted six new choices, Radcliffe was told by a teacher that he was in the running to be Isaac Bildersee’s valedictorian. “I felt that my work is paying off,” he said.

Julia Jacobson, meanwhile, was called in for an interview at Brooklyn Millennium, her first choice in the supplemental round, the day after applications were due.

Her father had carefully managed the process; he worked with Julia on her essay. He asked a friend who is a principal in Brooklyn to write an e-mail on Julia’s behalf. He sent Ms. Gioe a note about his being president of the PTA. (Ms. Gioe said in an e-mail that anything extra that parents sent made no difference and that she was looking only at the data to rank students: test scores, grades and attendance.)

Norkhila Sherpa, 14, said she made Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn her top choice because it had a special honors program. “If it isn’t good, then we’ll look to transfer,” she said, not knowing that process was even more complicated.

For the next three weeks, all any of these students, and the thousands like them across the city, can do is wait nervously for the computer to run its algorithms. They have completed the hard part — twice.

For Mr. and Ms. Saddler, however, the process has just begun. Their middle son, Theodore, is now a seventh grader.

“It’s going to be easier next year for my brother,” Radcliffe said, shaking his head. “This was an experience that I will never forget.”

For Some Youngsters, a Second Chance at an Exclusive School, By SARAH MASLIN NIR

Parents of preschoolers who are applying to New York’s top private schools are now coming face to face with the test universally known as the E.R.B., a nerve-racking intelligence exam made more so because there is no do-over if the child has a bad day.

But for a select few students who do not score well, there is something of a second chance. Admissions consultants, preschools and some private schools acknowledge that a small number of children every year are permitted to undergo another round of intelligence testing to supplement their results on the E.R.B., which stands for the Educational Records Bureau, the organization that administers the test.

The practice is not publicized on schools’ Web sites, and the psychologists who offer the service do not openly advertise it. Nor is it entirely clear what qualifies a child for another test, although those who are children of alumni or have a sibling already at a school are most frequently granted the option, according to consultants and schools.

“It is a suggestion that we sometimes make to those whom are part of our community and are looking for advice,” said Margaret Metz, the director of admissions at theNightingale-Bamford School on the Upper East Side. Those families are not getting preferential treatment, she said, but simply have access to the school staff that other families do not.

“We would be out of line to extend that kind of advice to a family we don’t know,” she said.

Private schools have always been able to admit anyone they want. But the practice of allowing a second test has nonetheless raised concerns about fairness in an admissions process that remains as competitive as ever, with three- and even four-child families showing up regularly at some schools’ doorsteps.

It is also provoking more questions about the relevance of the E.R.B., a mandatory $510 examination that is among the most nail-biting experiences in a parent’s life, and whose reliability is being attacked because of widely available preparation materials.

“It’s unfair for one child to have more pieces in the puzzle than others,” said Martha Hirschman, an assistant head at the Hewitt School. She said the school does not ask for additional scores. “It’s creating an uneven playing field if you’re allowing students to have other pieces that other students do not have the advantage of having.”

But Amanda Uhry, a private school admissions adviser, said it was just part of the game.

“These are private schools; it’s their rules,” Ms. Uhry said.

She said 2 percent to 5 percent of her clients each year were offered the option.

“Usually the people who get a retest are in some way connected to the school, or seriously a very, very excellent candidate,” she said, like a celebrity’s child or one with very wealthy parents willing to contribute to the school’s endowment.

It is an observation made by other consultants, too.

“This is how schools take care of their own,” Ms. Uhry said.

(Nightingale, for one, said parents who were boldface names or wealthy and who were not already tied to the school would not be granted the option. “We wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, because you’re a big donor that we would recommend X, Y or Z,’ ” Ms. Metz said.)

Although the E.R.B. carries great weight in admissions decisions, schools also rely on interviews, preschool reports and, in some cases, recommendation letters, all considered important criteria at top schools that are overrun with high E.R.B. scorers.

The hourlong test is administered one on one by a psychological professional and includes exercises to judge the development of a child’s verbal skills, reasoning and other abilities. The Educational Records Bureau’s rules permit students to take the test only once each admissions season, which runs from April to January. Preschool directors say that in rare cases, the bureau will grant permission for a second test if the child is demonstrably ill.

Asked about the practice of supplementing the E.R.B. results with a second intelligence test, Antoinette DeLuca, the executive director of the early childhood admissions assessment program at the Educational Records Bureau, said in an e-mail: “It is subject to each school or consortium of schools’ policy as to what information is required in order to make an application complete. However, the schools we serve acknowledge the E.R.B. report as their official admission assessment.”

The second test is usually given in an expensive private session — some cost well over $1,000. It is not the same as the E.R.B. test, but in some cases may resemble it by using measures of aptitude similar to those on the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, a test from which the E.R.B. is derived.

Among those offering the service is Sharon Spotnitz, the former executive director of the New York City independent school testing program at the Educational Records Bureau. She now has a private practice evaluating students across a variety of ages.

Dr. Spotnitz said services like hers were not tantamount to retesting. “I will do a developmental assessment on a child, if there is a reason to do one,” she said.

“There is a world of difference,” she said, between the E.R.B. and “understanding a child to help them grow and develop and figure out what the problem is. I am not doing a substitute E.R.B.”

She said her referrals came from parents, preschools and the private schools that parents applied to. Preschool directors, parents and consultants named several private schools they said allowed or encouraged the use of a second test, but some of those schools either denied doing so or declined to comment.

The Brearley School said it proposed that some children, primarily siblings or children of alumni, have another examination if they did not fare well on the E.R.B.

The school does not automatically admit siblings or children of alumni, but may give them a second look, in some cases by suggesting the additional test, Winifred M. Mabley, the director of Brearley’s lower school admissions, said in an e-mail.

“We try to be as thoughtful as possible in these evaluations, and in rare circumstances will recommend retesting in consultation with” the child’s preschool, she wrote.

On unusual occasions, she said, the preschool will take the initiative and call to say that an applicant’s E.R.B. results “may not be representative of her overall qualifications as a potential student.”

“In such cases,” she continued, “we will consider a formal recommendation for retesting from the nursery or preschool director.”

Those familiar with the process said that more often than not, children fared better on the second test, not necessarily because the proctor was biased in their favor, but because the children had been exposed to an intelligence test, the same criticism that has been leveled against companies that offer test preparations for the E.R.B..

Robin Aronow, an admissions consultant, said that if a private school “wants to give siblings an advantage and they are saying, ‘The score isn’t good enough, go test again,’ how is there any reliability in this test?”

Dr. Spotnitz said a better performance was not a foregone conclusion, particularly if the child had a learning difficulty that the second test might uncover. “The second visit will help the parents and the school understand: Was it an off day for the child? Or is this something that should be addressed?” she said.

Defenders of the practice warn against drawing too many conclusions about its significance. Ms. Metz, of Nightingale, said that if a preschool offered results of a second test for those who were not the children of alumni, the school might entertain those, too.

The school’s associate head, Kitty Gordan, said that while the additional information was helpful, “I don’t think students have been accepted that shouldn’t have been accepted.”

And Victoria Goldman, an educational consultant and author of “The Manhattan Family Guide to Private Schools” and other books, said a second test was nothing to be proud of. “It means you had a problem with the first one,” she said. “It’s not a privilege; it’s a problem.

“The brass ring on the carousel this is not.”

Nevertheless, at an event this month at an Upper East Side yoga studio where experts discussed the private school application process, Ms. Goldman explained to a group of mothers that the second evaluation might be an option available to them.

One of the mothers, Claudia Singleton, whose daughter is 4, said it was the first she had heard about taking another test after the E.R.B.

“Kids do have a bad day, and that could be the day of the test,” she said. But if the admitting school is offering the retest to a well-connected child, it is another story, she said. “Why bend it to select families and not every child?”

“If a child is not able to pass it on the first go round,” she said, “maybe that child is not equipped to take the test. Then what? Are they given the third? The fourth?”

Kids Haven’t Changed; Kindergarten Has: New data support a return to “balance” in kindergarten, By LAURA PAPPANO

This article is from the Harvard Education Letter.  To read it at their site, CLICK HERE.

In the ongoing battle over kindergarten—has exploratory play been shunted aside for first-grade-style pencil-and-paper work?—one of the nation’s oldest voices in child development is weighing in with historic data.

The Gesell Institute for Human Development, named for pioneering founder of the Yale Child Study Center, Arnold Gesell, and known worldwide for its popular parenting seriesYour One-Year-Old through Your Ten- to Fourteen-Year-Old, will share the results of an 18-month study at a conference in New Haven, Conn. on October 15.

The national study, undertaken to determine how child development in 2010 relates to Gesell’s historic observations, used key assessment items identical to those Gesell created as the basis for his developmental “schedules” which were published in 1925, 1940, and after his death by colleagues Louise Bates Ames and Frances Ilg in 1964 and 1979.

Given the current generation of children that—to many adults at least—appear eerily wise, worldly, and technologically savvy, these new data allowed Gesell researchers to ask some provocative questions: Have kids gotten smarter? Can they learn things sooner? What effect has modern culture had on child development?

The surprising answers—no, no, and none. Marcy Guddemi, executive director of the Gesell Institute, says despite ramped-up expectations, including overtly academic work in kindergarten, study results reveal remarkable stability around ages at which most children reach cognitive milestones such as being able to count four pennies or draw a circle. For the study, 92 examiners conducted 40-minute one-on-one assessments with 1,287 children ages 3–6 at 56 public and private schools in 23 states.

“People think children are smarter and they are able to do these things earlier than they used to be able to—and they can’t,” says Guddemi. While all children in the study were asked to complete 19 tasks, results echoed previous Gesell findings showing, for example, that a square is in the 4 1/2-year-old repertoire, but a child cannot draw a triangle until 5 1/2. These developmental milestones, Guddemi says, relate directly to what can be expected of children in kindergarten.

“The Gesell findings to me are very comforting,” says Lisa Fiore, program director for Early Childhood at Lesley University School of Education in Cambridge, Mass. She sees the data as a stroke in favor of those who find the focus on test scores—and not exploratory learning—troublesome. “I hope someone will pick up a hard copy of this study and say, ‘Listen, we should all relax.’”

Although the study shows children have the same developmental schedule they always have, Jerlean E. Daniel, executive director of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, says findings in recent years about the value of one-on-one conversations to early literacy, and music and patterns to math concepts, have added to the understanding of how children develop cognitively. Nonetheless, says Daniel, kindergarten has become more rigid and pressured. “Above all, young children need time—time to manipulate objects and ideas, time to make the information their own,” says Daniel. The Gesell study, she says, “is a resource to people who want to find greater balance in kindergarten.”

Learning vs. Training
For teachers, the study provides some concrete guidance for understanding how child development meshes with student learning. For example, says Guddemi, children must be able to see and understand the oblique line in a triangle to recognize some letters in the alphabet. Until children can draw a triangle they cannot perceive angled lines in, say, the letter “K,” nor can they write it, or recognize it when printed in different fonts, she says.

Similarly, Gesell’s study results show 4-year-olds can count four pennies, making a one-to-one correspondence. But only half at age 4 1/2 respond “four” when asked how many they have all together. This skill, called “conserving” because they must hold the number in their heads, is needed to do addition. By 5 1/2, children can conserve 13 pennies and can count 20 pennies. But they cannot conserve 20 pennies until age 6. If they cannot conserve, says Guddemi, a child memorizes 2 + 3 = 5, but doesn’t realize that 3 + 2 = 5.

What’s tricky, says Guddemi, is that children can be trained to perform tasks (called “splinter skills”), such as writing names or counting. But just because “April” can pen her name doesn’t mean she can perceive letters with oblique angles. “You can train them, but the knowledge and understanding—the true learning—has not happened,” she says. “Our country has this hang up that if the child can perform, that they know.”

Guddemi worries that many kindergarteners are facing work inappropriate to their developmental abilities. For example, Gesell study results, compiled by the non-profit Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) in Denver, CO, show that children at age 4 1/2 know and recognize 12 letters (no letter is more popular than another). For a child on the younger side in kindergarten, Guddemi says, the mismatch is jarring: “Day One they are going to be hit with the [entire] alphabet.” Drilling students on the alphabet is a much different strategy for increasing literacy skills than exposing students to vocabulary-rich conversations, she says. (See “Small Kids, Big Words ,” Harvard Education Letter, May/June 2008.)

The perception that “more input is always better,” may be misguided, agrees David Daniel, psychology professor at James Madison University and managing editor of the journalMind, Brain, and Education. “The four-year-old has a four-year-old brain and a six-year-old has a six-year-old brain. There are certain things connecting in a six-year-old brain that are still being worked on in the four-year-old brain,” he says. Serious academics in kindergarten? “They can be teaching it,” says Daniel, “but the question is: Is the child learning it?”

The New Kindergarten
Elise Goodhue’s kindergarten classroom at the Fair Haven School in New Haven, Conn., does not have lofts or pillows. Children sit at tables; print is everywhere. A fourth year teacher, Goodhue says her classroom is different from the one she attended as a student in 1988. “When I was in kindergarten, I had the drama center and the sand table,” she says. “Now it’s a lot more instruction.”

While Goodhue says some are not ready—one child a few years ago regularly slept through the afternoons—she doesn’t see a choice. “To meet the expectations for first grade, kindergarten has to be like this,” she says, explaining that, among other skills, students entering first grade must be able to speak and write in complete sentences, read independently, and be able to retell and comprehend what they read. There is much to accomplish, but Goodhue includes physical breaks, at one point gathering students on the rug for the “Months-of-the-Year Macarena.”

After dancing, children have a writer’s workshop assignment: Write a one-sentence story about yourself and a special person. Briana, age 6, forms petite letters in upper and lower case, marching them across the top of the page. Her invented spelling needs translation, but she nails the assignment, writing: “I played with my sister and my cousin.”

It is, however, a tall task for Abdula, age 4 and newly arrived from Iraq. With a pencil in his fist-like grasp, he makes broad geometric marks on the page. He may be on target developmentally, but certainly isn’t ready to use upper- and lower-case letters or a period—concepts Goodhue discussed when presenting the assignment.

Abdula doesn’t seem to mind the gap between his work and others, but some children may. This is why Guddemi advocates play-based curriculums in kindergarten that smooth over developmental ranges, allowing children to work on skills without feeling judged. At the private Greenhill School in Addison, Texas, which participated in the Gesell study, kindergarten classrooms still have gardens and adjoining outdoor spaces. But perceptions have changed enough that Kim Barnes, head of early childhood, must explain it to parents.

“I tell them, when you walk through our classrooms, you will not see kids practicing letters,” she says. “You will see kids painting and reciting stories; you will see them with manipulatives across the floor.”

In many districts, worries about benchmarks and test scores have made kindergarten less play-centered and developmental gaps more pronounced. When some children couldn’t handle expectations and were disrupting class, the William H. Frazier Elementary School in Fallbrook, Calif. began “Preppie Kindergarten” to separate those children who are ready for today’s kindergarten from those who are not. These children spend two years in kindergarten rather than one.

“All these kids were struggling and we wanted to give them a better start,” says Preppie Kindergarten teacher Kim Kinsman, who requires children to sit 15 minutes—not 30—at a stretch. “You cannot make a baby walk before they are ready to walk,” she says. “You cannot push a child. If they are not ready, they’re not ready.”

Not everyone, however, believes that expectations and child development are out of sync. Trisha D’Amore, supervisor for K–12 literacy for New Haven Public Schools, says it’s time to recognize that children’s lives today are different. Second graders care for kindergarteners at home and children are exposed to more life challenges and responsibilities in general, she says.

“This is not the 1950s,” says D’Amore, who sees nothing wrong with pencil-and-paper work in kindergarten. “The thing with the costumes and the playing was the interaction and oral language. You can walk around; they are talking to each other. The whole point is that it just looks different.”

Laura Pappano is a writer-in-residence at Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College and a frequent contributor to the Harvard Education Letter.  She is the author ofInside School Turnarounds; Urgent Hopes, Unfolding Stories, to be published in November 2010 by Harvard Education Press.

Author Aims to Help Kindergarteners Get Off To a Great Start In School, By ANA VECIANA-SUAREZ

October 19, 2010

This article is from the Miami Herald. To read it on their site, CLICK HERE.

If Karen Quinn had known then what she knows now, she’s certain her children’s early educational experience would have been been better. That’s why the Sunny Isles Beach resident wrote a book about the essential skills a child needs when entering school.

Testing for Kindergarten, released this summer by Simon & Schuster, is much more than its lengthy subtitle implies: Simple Strategies to Help Your Child Ace the Tests for Public School Placement, Private School Admissions, Gifted Program Qualifications. It is, in fact, a practical primer for parents who want to turn on their kids to learning and guarantee them a good start in school.

Quinn, a lawyer by training, a marketer by experience and a researcher of all things educational, isn’t a get-the-flashcards-out preacher. Nor does she suggest you become one of those helicopter parents who drills her children while driving them to a $200-an-hour tutor.

“I want people to have the information to do the right thing for their children, but not to go nuts about it,” says Quinn, 54. “I’m hoping this book calms them down.”

In the current high-stakes educational environment, it is likely that every child is tested by the time he reaches kindergarten. In local public schools, kindergartners take the Florida Kindergarten Readiness Screener (FLKRS) within 30 days of starting school.

Quinn deciphers what such assessments measure and provides information and activities parents can use to reinforce the skills necessary to score well. Her message, first and foremost, is this: It is possible for every family, even those who cannot afford expensive tutors or enrichment activities, to provide their children with a good academic start.

She shares her own experiences in the hope that adults recognize their insecurities. When her daughter, Schuyler, was tested for admission into a top New York private school, Quinn found out “my little genius” was average. “I was crushed,” she admits, shaking her head.

Though Schuyler struggled through elementary school, Quinn also discovered that her daughter, now a student at a New York college conservatory, was a talented actress. She admonishes parents to be realistic — and to celebrate a child’s individual talents.

“There are a lot of traits that affect a person’s success,” she says, adding that not all of them can be quantified in a test. “I know that if I was tested, I would be very average. But I’m a very hard worker and that has made me successful. It’s not just native intelligence.”

The foundation of the book is that certain abilities help students succeed. She explains the seven key skills (language, memory, mathematics, knowledge, visual-spatial, cognitive and fine motor skills), how every test measures them and why they’re so important to master for school success.

Other chapters detail the most common IQ tests and the ways they do and don’t define a child. But surely a parent’s favorite section will be the list of milestones every child must achieve by ages 3, 4 and 5 to succeed at school, as well as the everyday activities that can strengthen those skills.

While preschool admission in South Florida isn’t nearly as competitive Quinn’s experience when her family lived in New York City, she points out that every 5-year-old in America will be assessed regardless of where they live or what school they attend.

Florida’s testing of kindergartners measures everything from letter recognition to listening comprehension, vocabulary and interaction with other children and adults.

A teacher uses the results to group her students so she can provide what educators call “differentiated instruction.”

Most kids on the lower end do catch up to basic standards by January, says Marisel Elias-Miranda, administrative director of the early childhood program for Miami-Dade public schools.

Like Quinn, she recommends that parents be active participants in their young children’s at-home education.

“Every moment spent with a child can be a teaching moment, and it doesn’t have to be from a workbook,” adds Elias-Miranda. “All it takes is 5 to 10 minutes a day.”

Private schools also use tests. At Gulliver Schools, preschoolers are given an assessment called the Brigance as part of an admissions screening process. It is similar to FLKRS, measuring many of the same skills.

Mary Kay Bell, principal of Gulliver’s primary school, says she often tells parents to limit TV and computer time, allow for plenty of unstructured play and cut down on the toys a child owns. Reading is essential.

“In addition to reading aloud, parents must realize that they act as role models for their children,” she says. “If they love reading, if their children see them reading, they will do the same.”

Quinn became interested in early childhood assessments when she noticed that her son, Sam, was not as talkative as his older sister. Though his pediatrician assured her that children develop at different rates, she followed her mother’s intuition and took him to a specialist. Sam’s delays, she discovered, were a result of fluid buildup from ear infections, a correctable issue.

But then the doctor delivered news that floored her: Sam had scored in the 34th percentile of an IQ test. When she asked what she could do to improve his scores — he was due to be tested for kindergarten the following year — the doctor told her intelligence was a fixed trait.

Quinn turned to her mother, a professor of early childhood education. Together they worked on a program to strengthen Sam’s abilities. A year later he scored in the 94th percentile.

Laid off from her longtime marketing job with American Express, Quinn co-founded Smart City Kids, a company that helps families get their kids into New York City’s top private kindergartens and public-school gifted programs.

Her experiences with over-the-top parents inspired her to write The Ivy Chronicles, a novel sold in a bidding war that netted her a big enough advance to leave the business. The movie rights to that fictional work and a second one have been optioned to Hollywood, but Quinn felt she had “one more book in me.” Hence, Testing for Kindergarten.

Since finishing the book, Quinn has developed an “IQ Fun Pack,” a Trivial Pursuit-type board game based on the seven abilities kindergartners should master. She has sold several for $300, but hopes to reduce the price by manufacturing it in China.

Parents can also sign up at TestingMom.com, Quinn’s new website, which provides members with free daily test tips, test prep activities, practice test questions and access to experts.

“Of course, not every child is going to be an A student,” she says. “But if a parent can get their arms around these seven skills, it’s going to make for a much more pleasant experience. In the end, that’s what every parent wants.”

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/19/1880832_p2/an-author-aims-to-help-kindergarteners.html#ixzz13Q7HAaD6

Toddlers’ Favorite Toy: The iPhone, By HILARY STOUT

October 15, 2010

This article is from the NY Times. To read the article on their site, CLICK HERE.

THE bedroom door opened and a light went on, signaling an end to nap time. The toddler, tousle-haired and sleepy-eyed, clambered to a wobbly stand in his crib. He smiled, reached out to his father, and uttered what is fast becoming the cry of his generation: “iPhone!”

The iPhone has revolutionized telecommunications. It has also become the most effective tool in human history to mollify a fussy toddler, much to the delight of parents reveling in their newfound freedom to have a conversation in a restaurant or roam the supermarket aisles in peace. But just as adults have a hard time putting down their iPhones, so the device is now the Toy of Choice — akin to a treasured stuffed animal — for many 1-, 2- and 3-year-olds. It’s a phenomenon that is attracting the attention and concern of some childhood development specialists.

Natasha Sykes, a mother of two in Atlanta, remembers the first time her daughter, Kelsey, now 3 1/2 but then barely 2 years old, held her husband’s iPhone. “She pressed the button and it lit up. I just remember her eyes. It was like ‘Whoa!’ ”

The parents were charmed by their daughter’s fascination. But then, said Ms. Sykes (herself a BlackBerry user), “She got serious about the phone.”

Kelsey would ask for it. Then she’d cry for it. “It was like she’d always want the phone,” Ms. Sykes said. After a six-hour search one day, she and her husband found the iPhone tucked away under Kelsey’s bed. They laughed. But they also felt vague concern. Kelsey, and her 2-year-old brother, Chase, have blocks, Legos, bouncing balls, toy cars and books galore. (“They love books,” Ms. Sykes said.) But nothing compares to the iPhone.

“If they know they have the option of the phone or toys, it will be the phone, ” Ms. Sykes said

Brady Hotz, who will be 2 at the end of this month, was having a hard time getting out the door of his family’s home near Chicago the other day. He’d woken up late — 6:45 instead of 6:15. His mother, Kellie Hotz, was in a rush. She got him dressed, gave him milk and cereal, and announced, “We’re ready to go.”

Brady, not budging from his position near the couch, dug in. “Mickey!” he said plaintively. “Mickey!” (Translation: I’m not going anywhere till I get to watch “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” on TV.)

Ms. Hotz, a veteran of such standoffs, switched instantly to what she called her “guaranteed success tool.”

“What about Mickey on the phone?” she suggested.

That’s all it took. Mother swept up the now entirely cooperative toddler, cued up the show (via YouTube) on her little iPhone screen, and strapped him into her car, where he sang happily along with the video for the 15-minute ride to day care.

Then trouble began again. Brady wanted to stay in his seat with the iPhone. Finally he put it in his coat pocket and went inside — where Ms. Hotz was able to surreptitiously reclaim her gizmo and leave for work. But it’s not always that easy. “Sometimes I’ll need it because someone is calling, and he is not at all willing to give it up,” she said.

Apple, the iPhone’s designer and manufacturer, has built its success on machines so simple and intuitive that even technologically befuddled adults can figure out how to work them, so it makes sense that sophisticated children would follow. The most recent model is 4.5 inches tall, 2.31 inches wide and weighs 4.8 ounces: sleek, but not too small for those with developing motor skills. Tap a picture on the screen and something happens. What could be more fun?

The sleepy-eyed toddler who called for the iPhone from his crib is one of hundreds of iPhone-loving tykes starring in videos posted throughout the Internet, usually narrated by parents expressing proud wonderment at their offspring’s ability to slide chubby fingers across the gadget’s screen and pull up photographs and apps of their choice.

Many iPhone apps on the market are aimed directly at preschoolers, many of them labeled “educational,” such as Toddler Teasers: Shapes, which asks the child to tap a circle or square or triangle; and Pocket Zoo, which streams live video of animals at zoos around the world. There are “flash cards” aimed at teaching children to read and spell, and a “Wheels on the Bus” app that sings the popular song in multiple languages. Then there’s the new iGo Potty app (sponsored by Kimberly-Clark, maker of Huggies training pants), with automated phone calls reminding toddlers that it’s time to “go.”

Along with fears about dropping and damage, however, many parents sharing iPhones with their young ones feel nagging guilt. They wonder whether it is indeed an educational tool, or a passive amusement like television. The American Academy of Pediatrics has long advised parents not to let their children watch any TV until they are past their second birthday.

Dr. Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe, a pediatrician who is a member of the academy’s council of communications and media, said the group is continually reassessing its guidelines to address new forms of “screen time.”

“We always try to throw in the latest technology, but the cellphone industry is becoming so complex that we always come back to the table and wonder should we have a specific guideline for cellphones,” she said. But, she added, “At the moment, we seem to feel it’s the same as TV.”

Jill Mikols Etesse, a mother of two daughters, aged 3 and 8, outside of Washington, believes her younger daughter is further along in vocabulary, reading and spelling than her older daughter was at the same age, and she attributes this progress to the iPhone and iPad. The 3-year-old has learned to spell compound words like “starlight and fireworks” through an app called Montessori Crossword, her mother said. “She uses words that I don’t use, so I know it isn’t coming from me,” Ms. Etesse said. “She says ‘That’s peculiar.’ I don’t use the term peculiar.”

But Jane M. Healy, an educational psychologist in Vail, Colo. said: “Any parent who thinks a spelling program is educational for that age is missing the whole idea of how the preschool brain grows. What children need at that age is whole body movement, the manipulation of lots of objects and not some opaque technology. You’re not learning to read by lining up the letters in the word ‘cat.’ You’re learning to read by understanding language, by listening. Here’s the parent busily doing something and the kid is playing with the electronic device. Where is the language? There is none.”

Despite Ms. Etesse’s generally positive experience, she and her husband decided to set limits when their two daughters spent six hours straight staring at the iPhone during a car trip. Now they allow each child no more than one hour a day of screen time. (That means the iPhone and the iPad; neither girl is interested in TV, she said.)

Tovah P. Klein, the director of Columbia University’s Barnard College Center for Toddler Development (where signs forbid the use of cellphones and other wireless devices) worries that fixation on the iPhone screen every time a child is out and about with parents will limit the child’s ability to experience the wider world. “Children at this age are so curious and they’re observing everything,” she said. “If you’re engrossed in this screen you’re not seeing or observing or taking it in.” (Though some, like Renee Giroux-Nix of Cedar Park, Tex., a suburb of Austin, applaud the iPhone’s photo function. She said her 3-year-old, Bella, took a series of photos during a shoe-shopping trip, focusing on her mother’s feet and legs. )

As with TV in earlier generations, the world is increasingly divided into those parents who do allow iPhone use and those who don’t. A recent post on UrbanBaby.com , a popular and often contentious parents’ Web site, asked if anyone had found that their child was more interested in playing with their iPhone than with “real toys.” The Don’t mothers pounced:

“We don’t let our toddler touch our iPhones … it takes away from creative play.”

“Please … just say no. It is not too hard to distract a toddler with, say … a book.”

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a psychology professor at Temple University who specializes in early language development, sides with the Don’ts. Research shows that children learn best through active engagement that helps them adapt, she said, and interacting with a screen doesn’t qualify.

Still, Dr. Hirsh-Pasek, struck on a recent visit to New York City by how many parents were handing over their iPhones to their little children in the subway, said she understands the impulse. “This is a magical phone,” she said. “I must admit I’m addicted to this phone.”

How Handwriting Trains the Brain, By GWENDOLYN BOUNDS

October 5, 2010

From the Wall Street Journal. CLICK HERE to read it there.

Forming Letters Is Key to Learning, Memory, Ideas

Ask preschooler Zane Pike to write his name or the alphabet, then watch this 4-year-old’s stubborn side kick in. He spurns practice at school and tosses aside workbooks at home. But Angie Pike, Zane’s mom, persists, believing that handwriting is a building block to learning.

She’s right. Using advanced tools such as magnetic resonance imaging, researchers are finding that writing by hand is more than just a way to communicate. The practice helps with learning letters and shapes, can improve idea composition and expression, and may aid fine motor-skill development.

It’s not just children who benefit. Adults studying new symbols, such as Chinese characters, might enhance recognition by writing the characters by hand, researchers say. Some physicians say handwriting could be a good cognitive exercise for baby boomers working to keep their minds sharp as they age.

Studies suggest there’s real value in learning and maintaining this ancient skill, even as we increasingly communicate electronically via keyboards big and small. Indeed, technology often gets blamed for handwriting’s demise. But in an interesting twist, new software for touch-screen devices, such as the iPad, is starting to reinvigorate the practice.

Most schools still include conventional handwriting instruction in their primary-grade curriculum, but today that amounts to just over an hour a week, according to Zaner-Bloser Inc., one of the nation’s largest handwriting-curriculum publishers. Even at institutions that make it a strong priority, such as the private Brearley School in New York City, “some parents say, ‘I can’t believe you are wasting a minute on this,’” says Linda Boldt, the school’s head of learning skills.

Recent research illustrates how writing by hand engages the brain in learning. During one study at Indiana University published this year, researchers invited children to man a “spaceship,” actually an MRI machine using a specialized scan called “functional” MRI that spots neural activity in the brain. The kids were shown letters before and after receiving different letter-learning instruction. In children who had practiced printing by hand, the neural activity was far more enhanced and “adult-like” than in those who had simply looked at letters.

“It seems there is something really important about manually manipulating and drawing out two-dimensional things we see all the time,” says Karin Harman James, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Indiana University who led the study.

The Juggle: In Digital Age, Does Handwriting Still Matter?

Adults may benefit similarly when learning a new graphically different language, such as Mandarin, or symbol systems for mathematics, music and chemistry, Dr. James says. For instance, in a 2008 study in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, adults were asked to distinguish between new characters and a mirror image of them after producing the characters using pen-and-paper writing and a computer keyboard. The result: For those writing by hand, there was stronger and longer-lasting recognition of the characters’ proper orientation, suggesting that the specific movements memorized when learning how to write aided the visual identification of graphic shapes.

Other research highlights the hand’s unique relationship with the brain when it comes to composing thoughts and ideas. Virginia Berninger, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, says handwriting differs from typing because it requires executing sequential strokes to form a letter, whereas keyboarding involves selecting a whole letter by touching a key.

She says pictures of the brain have illustrated that sequential finger movements activated massive regions involved in thinking, language and working memory—the system for temporarily storing and managing information.

And one recent study of hers demonstrated that in grades two, four and six, children wrote more words, faster, and expressed more ideas when writing essays by hand versus with a keyboard.

Even in the digital age, people remain enthralled by handwriting for myriad reasons—the intimacy implied by a loved one’s script, or what the slant and shape of letters might reveal about personality. During actress Lindsay Lohan’s probation violation court appearance this summer, a swarm of handwriting experts proffered analysis of her blocky courtroom scribbling. “Projecting a false image” and “crossing boundaries,” concluded two on celebrity news and entertainment site hollywoodlife.com. Beyond identifying personality traits through handwriting, called graphology, some doctors treating neurological disorders say handwriting can be an early diagnostic tool.

“Some patients bring in journals from the years, and you can see dramatic change from when they were 55 and doing fine and now at 70,” says P. Murali Doraiswamy, a neuroscientist at Duke University. “As more people lose writing skills and migrate to the computer, retraining people in handwriting skills could be a useful cognitive exercise.”

In high schools, where laptops are increasingly used, handwriting still matters. In the essay section of SAT college-entrance exams, scorers unable to read a student’s writing can assign that portion an “illegible” score of 0.

Even legible handwriting that’s messy can have its own ramifications, says Steve Graham, professor of education at Vanderbilt University. He cites several studies indicating that good handwriting can take a generic classroom test score from the 50th percentile to the 84th percentile, while bad penmanship could tank it to the 16th. “There is a reader effect that is insidious,” Dr. Graham says. “People judge the quality of your ideas based on your handwriting.”

Handwriting-curriculum creators say they’re seeing renewed interest among parents looking to hone older children’s skills—or even their own penmanship. Nan Barchowsky, who developed the Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting method to ease transition from print-script to joined cursive letters, says she’s sold more than 1,500 copies of “Fix It … Write” in the past year.

Some high-tech allies also are giving the practice an unexpected boost through hand-held gadgets like smartphones and tablets. Dan Feather, a graphic designer and computer consultant in Nashville, Tenn., says he’s “never adapted well to the keypads on little devices.” Instead, he uses a $3.99 application called “WritePad” on his iPhone. It accepts handwriting input with a finger or stylus, then converts it to text for email, documents or Twitter updates.

And apps are helping Zane Pike—the 4-year-old who refused to practice his letters. The Cabot, Ark., boy won’t put down his mom’s iPhone, where she’s downloaded a $1.99 app called “abc PocketPhonics.” The program instructs Zane to draw letters with his finger or a stylus; correct movements earn him cheering pencils.

“He thinks it’s a game,” says Angie Pike.

Similarly, kindergartners at Harford Day School in Bel Air, Md., are taught to write on paper but recently also began tracing letter shapes on the screen of an iPad using a handwriting app.

“Children will be using technology unlike I did, and it’s important for teachers to be familiar with it,” says Kay Crocker, the school’s lead kindergarten teacher. Regardless of the input method, she says, “You still need to be able to write, and someone needs to be able to read it.”

Write to Gwendolyn Bounds at wendy.bounds@wsj.com

Detect learning problems early, studies say, BY JANET STEFFENHAGEN, VANCOUVER SUN

October 5, 2010

Early intervention greatly improves children’s chances for academic success

One, two, buckle my shoe — it’s a simple rhyme but it’s helping educators in Surrey identify children who might be at risk of learning difficulties.

Surrey is one of only a few B.C. school districts where teachers routinely screen students in kindergarten and Grade 1 for phonological awareness — the ability to hear and produce the sounds that make up language. Another district that has also embraced early identification of learning problems is North Vancouver — once the site of a protracted legal battle over whether schools do enough to help their learning disabled students.

In those two districts, students who aren’t able to identify rhyming words and seem unaware of different sounds are flagged for special attention because of concerns that they will also have difficulties learning to read, said Pius Ryan, Surrey’s director of instruction.

Ryan, who is also a psychologist, said the intention is not to classify young children as learning disabled but to identify those in need of extra help in order to avoid future problems. “You need to be careful,” he cautioned. “We don’t want to label kids as being at risk when they are simply developing.”

Studies suggest as many as 40 per cent of students may be at risk of learning difficulties, he added.

Yet despite numerous studies indicating that early intervention for children who are struggling with language greatly improves their chances of academic success, other school districts have not opted for routine screening at an early age. One expert suggests that’s because B.C. is still feeling the effects of the Reading Wars, which for years pitted proponents of the whole-language philosophy for teaching reading against those who favour phonics.

“There are districts and people who are opposed to phonological awareness and phonics as a method of teaching reading,” Linda Siegel, a University of B.C. professor and special-education expert, said in an interview “These are the whole-language people and they believe that you shouldn’t teach these separate skills.

“They really prevent the use of [early-screening] programs.”

Several years ago, Siegel led a study in North Vancouver district that saw teachers use a simple tool to measure the ability of kindergarten children to hear sounds and rhymes in speech before they started reading instruction. They discovered that 25 per cent of children who spoke English at home and 50 per cent of those learning English as a second language were at significant risk for learning difficulties.

After the children were identified, the schools took remedial action and by the end of Grade 6, only 1.5 per cent of kids in both groups were still struggling.

Early screening is critical, Siegel said. When teachers know which children need extra help, they can take simple but effective action. “They might sit them in the front of the room or … call on them when they know the answers. In other words, they pay special attention to those children at the beginning [of their schooling] because it’s so much cheaper and more effective to remediate children when they’re younger than when they’re older.”

Interestingly, North Vancouver was the first district in B.C. to face a legal challenge over its treatment of learning disabled children in a case launched more than a decade ago by Rick Moore, whose son is dyslexic. Moore won before the B.C. human rights tribunal but lost in B.C. Supreme Court and filed an appeal. The B.C. Court of Appeal has not yet issued a ruling.

Diane Sugars, executive director of the Learning Disabilities Association of Vancouver, said schools that do not routinely screen children in kindergarten or Grade 1 may not twig to learning difficulties until Grade 2 or 3, and then students will be referred for a psycho-educational assessment. Given the demand for such services, there are often waiting lists that cause further delays of months, if not years.

“When we remediate really early, these kids can develop and keep up with their peers. Not all of them, but a huge percentage,” Sugars said. “But if they don’t get [help] until Grade 4, it will take four times as long to remediate.”

In 2006, a B.C. legislative committee recommended that all children be screened for learning disabilities before starting school, just as they’re checked for hearing and vision problems. Early detection should be followed by remedial help so public school students won’t face lengthy waits for psycho-educational testing in later years, the committee said in a report intended to help the government reach its goal of making B.C. the most literate jurisdiction in North America by 2010. But the government took no action, apart from postponing the deadline for its goal to 2015. The Education Ministry said it was up to boards of education to decide if they want to take such action.

“I do think many school districts are paying attention to early learning,” Ryan noted, “but the universal screening piece, using a common tool across an entire district? I think you would find that’s rare.”

Although many studies affirm the value of early interventions, a Simon Fraser University professor said there are difficulties with the one-shot approach to screening because children’s language, cognitive and social development “waxes and wanes over time.”

Maureen Hoskyn, director of SFU’s Centre for Research on Early Child Health and Education, said it’s better to track children’s progress over time, but starting early enough so they aren’t left in a position where they are certain to fail but won’t get the attention they need until later grades.

“Children’s ability to increasingly recognize and/or name letters of the alphabet, their phonemic awareness are examples of pre-literacy skills that are taught in all kindergarten classes and can be measured repeatedly over time, in a quick and non-threatening way,” she said.

jsteffenhagen@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

To read this story online, CLICK HERE.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Detect+learning+problems+early+studies/3624348/story.html#ixzz11WDUhc7I

Advanced kindergarten grows in Denver Public Schools, by Katie Kerwin McCrimmon

[Note from Karen: I really love this "advanced kindergarten" concept that Denver Public Schools have put into place. Apparently, it's so popular there that the admissions process is becoming as competitive as that found in cities like NYC or Washington, D.C. Other cities should definitely take note of this popular model and more schools like this should be created.] This article is from Education News Colorado. To read it on their site, CLICK HERE. Parents sometimes flee Denver for suburban school districts. Jennifer Aguilar goes the opposite direction.
She drives 10 miles from her Littleton home to take her 4-year-old kindergartner to Gust Elementary in southwest Denver. It’s not that she dislikes Littleton’s schools. Her fourth-grader attends an elementary school there.

But Aguilar is willing to shop around. Her two older daughters attend Bear Creek High School in Jefferson County. The discerning mom said she hunts for the best programs for each child, even if it means driving four daughters to schools in three districts: Denver, Littleton and Jefferson County.

The draw to Gust is advanced kindergarten, a program now in its seventh year in Denver Public Schools. The program is small but growing, with demand so high this year that Denver officials created two advanced kindergarten classrooms at the Center for Early Education in southeast Denver.

The program draws families who want a faster academic pace for their children and it helps retain some who might otherwise choose private schools or other districts.

Enrollment in advanced kindergarten has nearly doubled since its inception in 2004 when 111 children started in classes at four city schools, and nearly 50 children are on waiting lists.

459 applications, only 200 seats

This year, 200 students are in advanced kindergarten classrooms in eight schools throughout DPS. Another 48 children are on waiting lists, 46 of whom hoped to win spots at the Polaris Program at Ebert, Denver’s sought-after elementary school for gifted students.

Altogether, DPS received 459 applications for the 200 seats in the advanced kindergarten program this school year.
At Gust, gone are the days when kindergartners played and painted for a couple of hours. Many children arrive in Judy Pansini’s advanced kindergarten class already reading. She sends them soaring from there.

“It would be silly to review the alphabet when we already have children who are reading well,’’ Pansini said. “We see where they are and we move them up.”

By the end of the year, Pansini’s students could be reading at second-grade levels, writing their own short chapter books and doing complex addition and subtraction. Pansini remains flexible, seeking ways to stimulate each child’s individual talents. “If I have some who are advanced in math, we can just send them to first grade for math,” she said.

Pansini’s room also boasts a Promethean smart board, a high-tech interactive device unusual in kindergarten. As the children arrive in the morning, they take their own attendance, finding and dragging their names on the large white board to show they’re ready to learn. Later, they use the board to practice letter formation, reading and math skills.

‘The kids are moving right along’

“I think it’s great,’’ said Aguilar, the mom who drives so far. “The kids are moving right along. They should be able to excel. They shouldn’t be held back for kids who don’t get it. Everybody’s different. It’s good they are accommodating these kids.”

Aguilar said her oldest two daughters, now 14 and 16, attended DPS schools when they were little and didn’t have the same option to excel that their sister, Anna, is getting. The older girls were sometimes bored in classes where struggling children demanded the most attention.
The mom raves about Pansini and the other teachers at Gust. She plans to keep driving Anna to Gust as long as she’s “excelling, enjoying herself and the teachers are on the ball.”

“We run all over the place but it’s worth it,’’ Aguilar said.

So far, data shows that children who attended advanced kindergarten scored better on end-of-the-year literacy tests than children who attended other DPS kindergarten programs. Those results applied to both low-income children and those from more affluent families.
This might be expected, since getting into DPS’ advanced kindergarten program is based on a child’s early exposure to reading and math skills.
But district data also shows that, as they progress through elementary school, the advanced kindergarten children seem to retain their advanced abilities. The second-highest achieving group of kindergartners over time were those who attended full-day tuition-based programs, where children from families who can afford to pay for kindergarten are mixed with those who need subsidies.

DPS data shows:

Of children who started in advanced kindergarten in 2004, 98 percent were reading at or above targeted levels by the end of kindergarten. By the third grade, 94 percent of the advanced kindergarten alums still in DPS tested proficient or advanced on state reading exams.
Among the children in advanced kindergarten in both 2004-05 and 2005-06, 179 stayed in DPS through grade 3. Of those, 25 percent qualified for federal lunch aid, an indicator of poverty. On state reading tests, 89 percent of those in poverty were reading at grade level compared to 96 percent of students from more affluent families.

That 7-point gap by income among advanced kindergarten alums was smaller than the income gap for those attending other kindergarten programs. Among children who attended traditional full-day kindergarten in 2004-05 and 2005-06, 53 percent were reading at grade level in grade 3 compared to 88 percent from more affluent families.

Children in advanced and traditional full-day kindergarten programs tend to stay in DPS. Between 88 and 89 percent of those students stuck with the district for first grade – by grade 5, 66 percent of advanced kindergarten and 65 percent of full-day kindergarten students were still in DPS.

DPS started the advanced kindergarten program because parents asked for it, said Barbara Neyrinck, program manager for DPS’ Gifted and Talented (GT) Department. “Parents needed something more. The district felt that there were enough students to create a program where they didn’t have to repeat material they already knew,” Neyrinck said. “Originally, one was placed in each part of the city. We started with four classrooms and, very soon, expanded.”

Transitioning from advanced K

The program works especially well when children can funnel into advanced elementary school programs after kindergarten, such as International Baccalaureate and GT. Some of the schools with advanced kindergarten also have GT programs, including Archuleta, Edison, Gust and Polaris.

At Gust, Principal Jamie Roybal said the advanced kindergarten stimulates children and draws families to her school. “It’s been phenomenal for us,” Roybal said. “It brings families who otherwise might not look at Gust. They come and visit and I’m always thrilled to see the surprise on their faces. They’re impressed with the programs we have. These are parents we would otherwise lose. We’re nestled up against Jefferson County, Englewood and Sheridan. So families have a lot of choices.”

State education funding follows the student so Roybal can accept children from outside Denver as long as they qualify. Denver residents receive priority. “I’ve been thrilled because so many of our advanced kindergarten families are staying with us,” Roybal said. “They fit into our community and most go on to the GT magnet program.”

Gust has four kindergartens. One caters to Spanish-speaking children, one is advanced and the other two are traditional.
The advanced kindergarten children had homework over the summer and returned to school in August with completed packets. Those high expectations continue throughout the school year.

“It’s faster-paced, more in-depth. The students are able to read and write. They’re more focused. They have a little bit better idea of what it means to be a student. They’re reading and are eager to learn,” Roybal said. “They’re curious and have questions, questions, questions.”
She said her advanced kids start at least a year ahead. She’s tracking them to make sure that boost stays true through grade 5.
‘Advanced’ does not always mean ‘gifted’

For parents, the difference between DPS’ advanced kindergarten and gifted and talented programs can be confusing.
Entrance into advanced kindergarten does not guarantee that a child will qualify for the district’s GT program. The tests for advanced kindergarten measure what a child already knows about vocabulary, reading and math while GT tests assess a child’s potential to learn.

Neyrinck said about 60 percent of advanced kindergarten children qualify for GT each year.
At Polaris, students who qualify for the single advanced kindergarten class get to stay at the school all the way through grade 5, even if they never qualify for GT. Many parents clamor to get their children into the Polaris program since it’s one of the top-rated schools in Denver. That desire has boosted demand for advanced kindergarten testing dramatically.

Some parents choose advanced kindergarten programs at schools without GT programs and find that they’ve run into a dead end at the end of kindergarten. Families at Bill Roberts, Palmer and Stedman sometimes stay at their schools. Others, along with the parents from the Center for Early Education, have to spend their child’s kindergarten year strategizing about first-grade options.

“We always encourage parents to apply to both (regular choice programs and gifted programs),’’ Neyrinck said. “Finding the right school is a big shopping expedition. DPS has always prided itself on having options for students at the top. (Advanced) students need teachers who can challenge them and peers who understand them.”

She said DPS is in the midst of evaluating demand and capacity for various programs and may need to create more advanced offerings in future years.

Advanced kindergarten seems to be generating results at a low cost. The program is no more expensive than traditional kindergarten.
“It all has to do with the district being nimble and adapting to changing needs in the world,” said Cheryl Caldwell, DPS Director of Early Education, who has been studying advanced kindergarten and student outcomes over time. “We’re looking at the exact needs of special populations regardless of whether they are at the high or low end and figuring out if we have programs to meet those needs.”

Phys Ed: Can Exercise Make Kids Smarter? By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

September 15, 2010

This article is from The New York Times. To view it at their site, CLICK HERE.

I wish I had known this when I was writing my book because I definitely would have included it. More important, I wish I had known it when my children were little because I would have pushed harder to involve them in physical activity. Luckily, you can know it now! — Karen

In an experiment published last month, researchers recruited schoolchildren, ages 9 and 10, who lived near the Champaign-Urbana campus of the University of Illinois and asked them to run on a treadmill. The researchers were hoping to learn more about how fitness affects the immature human brain. Animal studies had already established that, when given access to running wheels, baby rodents bulked up their brains, enlarging certain areas and subsequently outperforming sedentary pups on rodent intelligence tests. But studies of the effect of exercise on the actual shape and function of children’s brains had not yet been tried.

So the researchers sorted the children, based on their treadmill runs, into highest-, lowest- and median-fit categories. Only the most- and least-fit groups continued in the study (to provide the greatest contrast). Both groups completed a series of cognitive challenges involving watching directional arrows on a computer screen and pushing certain keys in order to test how well the children filter out unnecessary information and attend to relevant cues. Finally, the children’s brains were scanned, using magnetic resonance imaging technology to measure the volume of specific areas.

Previous studies found that fitter kids generally scored better on such tests. And in this case, too, those children performed better on the tests. But the M.R.I.’s provided a clearer picture of how it might work. They showed that fit children had significantly larger basal ganglia, a key part of the brain that aids in maintaining attention and “executive control,” or the ability to coordinate actions and thoughts crisply. Since both groups of children had similar socioeconomic backgrounds, body mass index and other variables, the researchers concluded that being fit had enlarged that portion of their brains.

Meanwhile, in a separate, newly completed study by many of the same researchers at the University of Illinois, a second group of 9- and 10-year-old children were also categorized by fitness levels and had their brains scanned, but they completed different tests, this time focusing on complex memory. Such thinking is associated with activity in the hippocampus, a structure in the brain’s medial temporal lobes. Sure enough, the M.R.I. scans revealed that the fittest children had heftier hippocampi.

The two studies did not directly overlap, but the researchers, in their separate reports, noted that the hippocampus and basal ganglia regions interact in the human brain, structurally and functionally. Together they allow some of the most intricate thinking. If exercise is responsible for increasing the size of these regions and strengthening the connection between them, being fit may “enhance neurocognition” in young people, the authors concluded.

These findings arrive at an important time. For budgetary and administrative reasons, school boards are curtailing physical education, while on their own, children grow increasingly sluggish. Recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that roughly a quarter of children participate in zero physical activity outside of school.

At the same time, evidence accumulates about the positive impact of even small amounts of aerobic activity. Past studies from the University of Illinois found that “just 20 minutes of walking” before a test raised children’s scores, even if the children were otherwise unfit or overweight, says Charles Hillman, a professor of kinesiology at the university and the senior author of many of the recent studies.

But it’s the neurological impact of sustained aerobic fitness in young people that is especially compelling. A memorable years-long Swedish study published last year found that, among more than a million 18-year-old boys who joined the army, better fitness was correlated with higher I.Q.’s, even among identical twins. The fitter the twin, the higher his I.Q. The fittest of them were also more likely to go on to lucrative careers than the least fit, rendering them less likely, you would hope, to live in their parents’ basements. No correlation was found between muscular strength and I.Q. scores. There’s no evidence that exercise leads to a higher I.Q., but the researchers suspect that aerobic exercise, not strength training, produces specific growth factors and proteins that stimulate the brain, said Georg Kuhn, a professor at the University of Gothenburg and the senior author of the study.

But for now, the takeaway is clear. “More aerobic exercise” for young people, Mr. Kuhn said. Mr. Hillman agreed. So get kids moving, he added, and preferably away from their Wiis. A still-unpublished study from his lab compared the cognitive impact in young people of 20 minutes of running on a treadmill with 20 minutes of playing sports-style video games at a similar intensity. Running improved test scores immediately afterward. Playing video games did not.