And a few more articles
May. 3rd, 2009 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
One older one about an adventure-y playground on 116th street
A Playground Challenges Children, and Parents, Too
By SUSAN DOMINUS
Sometimes, the presence of other adults can make a parent more protective, for fear of being judged careless. At the playground, the opposite rules apply: There you find a bunch of adults all reinforcing in one another the absurd assumption that children should be encouraged to climb to dangerous heights and get themselves down from those heights as fast as they possibly can.
Why oh why, the worrying kind of parent can’t help wondering, can’t playgrounds be a little more ... flat? Low-to-the-ground tunnels, balance beams an inch or so off the floor, some not-too-tall animals that children could climb on and pretend to ride (a snake! a crab!) — surely those fancy designers who are always earning community good will by coming up with the next big thing in creative play could work with that kind of low-lying concept?
The much-anticipated, newly renovated $2 million playground at 116th Street in Morningside Park, which had its ribbon-cutting a few weeks ago, could have been envisioned by some of those designers, to judge from the tasteful, creative layout, a vision of bright blues and greens.
The jungle gym itself sprawls over a chunk of a block, with the younger and the older children’s play areas connected by a three-rung ladder toddlers couldn’t climb. The play space has wheels at various heights that children can drive to nowhere, a small climbing wall, and an endless number of stairs to satisfy the urge that small people inevitably have to gain serious height.
In fact, the playground was designed by Alexander Hart, a 33-year-old assistant landscape architect at the Department of Parks and Recreation. “I wasn’t so keen on designing playgrounds until I started doing it,” Mr. Hart, a father of two young children, said on Wednesday morning at the playground. “But once I started, I found the design challenges so interesting.”
Nowhere would that job be more interesting than in New York, where the design challenges include such unusual requirements as making all the equipment bulletproof — which explains why New York playground slides are made of stainless steel, rather than plastic, as is usually the case elsewhere.
Playground designers, Mr. Hart explained, must also make sure to avoid creating what Mr. Hart terms “sleepable surfaces” — places like covered slides where the homeless might seek privacy or a retreat from the weather. Even a small roof that Mr. Hart designed for some of the jungle gym’s platforms had to include holes and slats so that it wouldn’t provide the kind of cover from the rain that would attract people seeking refuge. “It’s a real community concern,” Mr. Hart said.
Mr. Hart filled the playground with the kinds of features that always drew his children at other playgrounds: a concrete racetrack where children can bring their own cars and trains, lots of spinning seats and as many slides as possible.
The blues and greens of the design reflect the natural environment of the park, without hitting any one thematic note too hard. (Mr. Hart is wary of playgrounds with literal structures that demand that “you become a pirate or something,” preferring more open-ended invitations to creative play.)
A friend who lives near the park had warned me that the playground, instantly popular and beloved in the area, had one key drawback, which was terrible sightlines. Within about 45 seconds of arriving there a few weeks back with my twin sons, I figured out what that meant.
One of my 2-year-olds was hovering near me, trying to climb up a slide in plain sight. The other had disappeared — over the bridge? On the other side of the jungle gym, splashing in the fountain? Out of the park gate and into the middle of Morningside Drive? I couldn’t see him. I did the quick scan that usually produces a satisfying result, then ran it again, one more time — no sign of my kid.
Before finally locating him underneath the jungle gym, behind a wall that hid all but his feet, I was reminded that there are few sounds more painful to a mother than the sound of her own voice calling her child’s name, over and over, in increasingly urgent tones.
There are federal regulations that dictate certain safety measures — how much space must surround swings and slides, for example — but one of the perennial challenges for a playground designer, Mr. Hart said, is that “parents should feel like it’s safe, but kids should feel like they can cut loose.”
Being able to lay eyes on one’s child might seem like it would weigh pretty heavily in that balance. But a quick survey of the parents on the playground this Wednesday suggested that most of them managed to negotiate it comfortably, if they stayed alert.
Michael Maxwell, a baby sitter looking after a 20-month-old girl, said that he found that this playground, in particular, kept him on his toes. When his charge made her way to a space on the playground’s jungle gym that opened up onto a sheer drop, with toeholds older children could climb up, “I said, ‘Sweet Jesus,’ ” Mr. Maxwell said. “This is one of the more elaborate playgrounds I’ve seen, in a challenging way. But it’s fun — it’s a workout.”
Playgrounds are supposedly designed to help kids grow and learn, but one like the new fantasia on 116th Street seems to have an old-fashioned ulterior motive: teaching grown-ups how to let them.
Another older one on accessible playgrounds
Playgrounds That Welcome Wheelchairs
By JENNIFER V. HUGHES
THE first time Lisa Vaccino took her children to Hannah’s Dream, a playground in New Haven designed for disabled children, she immediately noticed a difference in her son, Johnny, 5, who has cerebral palsy.
“When we got back into the car that day I didn’t even have to ask him. He said, ‘That was fun!’ ” said Mrs. Vaccino, who also has a daughter, Emma, 2, who is not disabled. “That was a lot coming from him. That was huge.”
But it takes them a half-hour to drive to the park from Milford, Conn., their hometown. After that visit, in October, Mrs. Vaccino formed a nonprofit group and started a fund-raising drive for an accessible playground in Milford.
With the summer in full swing, playgrounds are a daily part of life for most families with small children. But for many disabled children, they remain tantalizingly out of reach. That is starting to change in many towns around the region, where handicapped accessible playgrounds and ball fields are being built or planned.
Mrs. Vaccino said that a location for the park in Milford has not been chosen, but that it will be named Bodie’s Place, for her son’s nickname. It even has a mascot, a spunky-looking firefly flitting out of a jar, and a motto: “Get Out and Play!”
Ms. Vaccino and other Milford parents are working with Boundless Playgrounds, a nonprofit group that has helped create 129 accessible playgrounds in 24 states since 1997. It was founded by Peter and Amy Jaffe Barzach of West Hartford, Conn., whose son Jonathan had spinal muscular atrophy, a degenerative neuromuscular disease, and died at the age of 9 months. There are 11 accessible playgrounds in the metropolitan region, and three more in the works, said Glandina Morris, a spokeswoman for Boundless Playgrounds.
Accessible playgrounds have rubberized surfaces that accommodate wheelchairs and walkers, and a child in a wheelchair can use wide ramps to get to the top of all climbing structures, Ms. Morris said. Many of the playgrounds include “cozy spots,” where children with Down syndrome or autism can go if they are overstimulated.
The playgrounds cost more than traditional ones, Ms. Morris said, because wheelchair-friendly surfacing can cost four times more than that of typical playgrounds. She said most groups and communities pay for them with donations and public funds.
Some accommodations are obvious, like high-back swings and bouncers; others are more subtle, like a sandbox placed at wheelchair height, or picnic tables with cutouts so a child in a wheelchair can sit with his or her family, not off to the side, Ms. Morris said. Many playgrounds include Braille panels on the equipment and gardens with fragrant flowers for blind children.
An accessible playground under construction in Teaneck, N.J., will eventually have many of those features and more, said Cindy Balsam-Martz, who led the effort to build it. Mrs. Balsam-Martz was inspired by her struggle to find a place to play with all of her children, the twins Eric and Noah, 10; Elaine, 7; and Nettie Faith, 6, who is partially blind and deaf and uses a wheelchair.
When they visit most parks, Mrs. Balsam-Martz said, her older children play while she practices walking with Nettie Faith.
“It feels like punishment,” she said. “All it does is further isolate her and outline her disability, which is not who Nettie is.”
Construction on the playground in the township’s Votee Park is expected to be completed by early fall.
Nationally, the drive for accessible playgrounds began in response to the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, said Antonio Malkusak, who has designed spaces for Boundless Playgrounds for a decade. Although the act did not cover playgrounds, “it got people thinking,” Mr. Malkusak said. More playgrounds were also built after companies started offering more adaptive equipment, prompted by the act, he added.
When Boundless Playgrounds began, Mr. Malkusak said, he would often hear, “ ‘We don’t see those kids coming out, so we don’t need to consider them.’ ”
“What was really happening was the reason why those kids didn’t come out was because there was nothing for them to do,” he said.
Since 2004, the Bush administration has been considering whether to require specific guidelines for handicapped access at new and existing playgrounds. A public hearing on the issue was set for July 15 in Washington.
The Town of Huntington, on Long Island, will include a Boundless Playground as part of a renovation and expansion of Veterans Park. Officials hope to open the playground, which is being named for a teacher with Lou Gehrig’s disease, by 2010.
In Montclair, N.J., work was to begin in a few weeks on the Edgemont Park All Children’s Playground. The project will cost about $200,000, about $40,000 of which was raised in bake sales and coin drives, as well as by a group of local musicians, Parents Who Rock. They held fund-raising concerts and released a CD that was sold in local shops.
Alma Schneider, Parents Who Rock’s founder, said accessible playgrounds are fun for all children. “This playground is for everyone,” she said. “There is no playground where typical kids and special-needs kids can play together.”
At a groundbreaking ceremony last week, Dave Fucio, a member of Montclair’s People With Disabilities committee, said accessible playgrounds were also important for parents and grandparents who use wheelchairs.
As part of the renovation of the Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, Morris County, N.J., is building Miracle Field, a baseball field for disabled players and spectators. It is being paved with a rubberized surface to accommodate wheelchairs and walkers. Officials hoped to hold the first ballgame this month.
The field was built with the help of an organization called the Miracle League, which provides communities with architectural designs and consulting support for the fields. The first Miracle Field was built in Georgia in 2000; now, there are 130 of them nationwide and another 100 under construction, said Diane Alford, founder of the league.
There are four Miracle Fields in the New York region and another 10 are planned, Ms. Alford said. The Westchester County Miracle Field, at Ridge Road Park in Hartsdale, has been hosting games since 2006.
At Miracle Field games, able-bodied siblings often act as buddies, pushing a player in a wheelchair to first base or helping one with a walker hit the ball, Phyllis Lombardi of Dobbs Ferry said. Her 10-year-old son, Joey, who is autistic, is a player and her 13-year-old son, Nicholas, is a buddy.
“What has happened is the most extraordinary thing, because he’s started to be so engaged in it,” Ms. Lombardi said of Joey. “We couldn’t get him to run to first base in the beginning, but now he does it. Now he says the word ‘ball.’ When you only have 11 words, it’s a big deal in a mother’s heart.”
A depressing one on modern kindergarten
Kindergarten Cram
By PEGGY ORENSTEIN
About a year ago, I made the circuit of kindergartens in my town. At each stop, after the pitch by the principal and the obligatory exhibit of art projects only a mother (the student’s own) could love, I asked the same question: “What is your policy on homework?”
And always, whether from the apple-cheeked teacher in the public school or the earnest administrator of the “child centered” private one, I was met with an eager nod. Oh, yes, each would explain: kindergartners are assigned homework every day.
Bzzzzzzt. Wrong answer.
When I was a child, in the increasingly olden days, kindergarten was a place to play. We danced the hokeypokey, swooned in suspense over Duck, Duck, Gray Duck (that’s what Minnesotans stubbornly call Duck, Duck, Goose) and napped on our mats until the Wake-Up Fairy set us free.
No more. Instead of digging in sandboxes, today’s kindergartners prepare for a life of multiple-choice boxes by plowing through standardized tests with cuddly names like Dibels (pronounced “dibbles”), a series of early-literacy measures administered to millions of kids; or toiling over reading curricula like Open Court — which features assessments every six weeks.
According to “Crisis in the Kindergarten,” a report recently released by the Alliance for Childhood, a nonprofit research and advocacy group, all that testing is wasted: it neither predicts nor improves young children’s educational outcomes. More disturbing, along with other academic demands, like assigning homework to 5-year-olds, it is crowding out the one thing that truly is vital to their future success: play.
A survey of 254 teachers in New York and Los Angeles the group commissioned found that kindergartners spent two to three hours a day being instructed and tested in reading and math. They spent less than 30 minutes playing. “Play at age 5 is of great importance not just to intellectual but emotional, psychological social and spiritual development,” says Edward Miller, the report’s co-author. Play — especially the let’s-pretend, dramatic sort — is how kids develop higher-level thinking, hone their language and social skills, cultivate empathy. It also reduces stress, and that’s a word that should not have to be used in the same sentence as “kindergartner” in the first place.
I came late to motherhood, so I had plenty of time to ponder friends’ mania for souped-up childhood learning. How was it that the same couples who piously proclaimed that 3½-year-old Junior was not “developmentally ready” to use the potty were drilling him on flashcards? What was the rush? Did that better prepare kids to learn? How did 5 become the new 7, anyway?
There’s no single reason. The No Child Left Behind Act, with its insistence that what cannot be quantified cannot be improved, plays a role. But so do parents who want to build a better child. There is also what marketers refer to as KGOY — Kids Getting Older Younger — their explanation for why 3-year-olds now play with toys that were initially intended for middle-schoolers. (Since adults are staying younger older — 50 is the new 30! — our children may soon surpass us in age.)
Regardless of the cause, Miller says, accelerating kindergarten is unnecessary: any early advantage fades by fourth grade. “It makes a parent proud to see a child learn to read at age 4, but in terms of what’s really best for the kid, it makes no difference.” For at-risk kids, pushing too soon may backfire. The longitudinal High/Scope Preschool Curriculum Comparison Study followed 68 such children, who were divided between instruction- and play-based classrooms. While everyone’s I.Q. scores initially rose, by age 15, the former group’s academic achievement plummeted. They were more likely to exhibit emotional problems and spent more time in special education. “Drill and kill,” indeed.
Thinkers like Daniel Pink have proposed that this country’s continued viability hinges on what is known as the “imagination economy”: qualities like versatility, creativity, vision — and playfulness — that cannot be outsourced. It’s a compelling argument to apply here, though a bit disheartening too: must we append the word “economy” to everything to legitimize it? Isn’t cultivating imagination an inherent good? I would hate to see children’s creativity subject to the same parental anxiety that has stoked the sales of Baby Einstein DVDs.
Jean Piaget famously referred to “the American question,” which arose when he lectured in this country: how, his audiences wanted to know, could a child’s development be sped up? The better question may be: Why are we so hellbent on doing so?
Maybe the current economic retrenchment will trigger a new perspective on early education, something similar to the movement toward local, sustainable, organic food. Call it Slow Schools. After all, part of what got us into this mess was valuing achievement, speed and results over ethics, thoughtfulness and responsibility. Then again, parents may glean the opposite lesson, believing their kids need to be pushed even harder in order to stay competitive in a shrinking job market.
I wonder how far I’m willing to go in my commitment to the cause: would I embrace the example of Finland — whose students consistently come out on top in international assessments — and delay formal reading instruction until age 7? Could I stick with that position when other second graders were gobbling up “War and Peace” — or at least the third Harry Potter book?
In the end, the school I found for my daughter holds off on homework until fourth grade. (Though a flotilla of research shows homework confers no benefit — enhancing neither retention nor study habits — until middle school.) It’s a start. A few days ago, though, I caught her concocting a pretend math worksheet. “All the other kids have homework,” she complained with a sigh. “I wish I could have some, too.”
One on increased class size in NYC
Class Size in New York City Schools Rises, but the Impact Is Debated
By JENNIFER MEDINA
In many circles, class size is considered as fundamental to education as the three R’s, with numbers watched so carefully that even a tiny increase can provoke outrage among parents, teachers and political leaders. Alarms went off in New York and California last week, as officials on both coasts warned that yawning budget gaps could soon mean more children in each classroom.
But while state legislatures for decades have passed laws — and provided millions of dollars — to cap the size of classes, some academic researchers and education leaders say that small reductions in the number of students in a room often have little effect on their performance.
At recent legislative hearings on whether to renew mayoral control of the New York City schools, lawmakers and parents alike have asked, again and again, why Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein have not done more to reduce class size. On Tuesday, the Education Department issued a report that found the average number of children per class increased in nearly every grade this school year.
“If you’re going to spend an extra dollar, personally, I would always rather spend it on the people that deliver the service,” Mr. Bloomberg said when asked about the report on Thursday, calling class size “an interesting number.”
“It’s the teacher looking a child in the eye, and teachers can look lots of children in the eye,” he added. “If you have to have smaller class size or better teachers, go with the better teachers every time.”
But Assemblywoman Catherine T. Nolan, a Queens Democrat who is chairwoman of the Education Committee, said that she routinely hears from middle-class parents who say they are leaving the city in search of intimate classroom environments where teachers can pay more attention to each student. The teachers’ union estimates that New York City’s classes have 10 percent to 60 percent more students than those in neighboring suburbs, and the highest average size of any school district in the state.
“I always thought more money and the mayor controlling the schools would give us smaller classes,” said Ms. Nolan, who has a son in public school. “I just don’t understand it, but they seem to be nostalgic for a time of larger classes.”
The debate has continued for decades, with some consensus forming that class size matters most in the youngest grades, and that the effects are most profound when there are fewer than 20 students in a class.
Dan Goldhaber, an education professor at the University of Washington, said the obsession with class size stemmed from a desire for “something that people can grasp easily — you walk into a class and you see exactly how many kids are there.”
“Whether or not it translates into an additional advantage doesn’t necessarily matter,” Professor Goldhaber said. “We know that teachers are the most important thing, but teacher quality is not stamped on someone’s forehead.”
A Tennessee study in the late 1980s, widely regarded as the most influential study on class size, found that in kindergarten through third grade, students in classes of 13 to 17, particularly poor and minority students, performed better than those in classes of 22 to 25. In some cases, the benefits extended through high school.
But since then, as many states and school districts have rushed to reduce class sizes, usually to the low 20s, student achievement has not consistently improved markedly.
In California, a 1996 law provided schools with an extra $1,000 in state money for every student in the earliest grades whose classes had 20 or fewer students. The state quickly hired 28,000 new teachers, but many of them lacked experience or education credentials; a 2002 study by the Public Policy Institute of California found that the best-qualified teachers fled poorer urban schools as the extra funds created jobs in wealthier areas, and that children who were in smaller third-grade classes did not have higher scores on fifth-grade tests.
In New York City, an Education Department comparison over the last two years between school report-card grades and average class size has found little correlation; in many cases, schools with better grades have bigger classes.
Still, some researchers argue that reducing class size is a concrete and worthy goal.
“We can say we just want more good teachers, which would be great, but that’s a policy that we just don’t know how to do yet,” said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, an education policy professor at the University of Chicago. “The nice thing about reducing class size is that it makes teachers happy in their own right and it’s the one thing that we know how to do.”
In New York, class sizes increased despite an infusion of $150 million in state funds last year earmarked specifically to reduce the numbers of children in each room. Chancellor Klein initially bristled at the restrictions state officials put on the money, but Albany would not release the funds until the city submitted a plan to bring class sizes down further. Last week, the city said it might have to adjust that plan to “reflect the worsening economic climate.”
Christopher Cerf, the deputy chancellor in charge of human resources, said the increase in class sizes this school year could be attributed to principals who determined that their money was better spent elsewhere and that the focus on class size was wrongheaded. “People think that this is the keys to the education reform kingdom here, but that is simply not the case,” he said.
Garth Harries, who oversees class size for the city, said that better schools often end up with larger classes as more and more parents want to send their children to places with successful track records. “It’s a complicated trade-off,” he said. “Would you end up giving fewer families access to those schools?”
But Leonie Haimson, the executive director of an advocacy group, Class Size Matters, and a frequent critic of the administration, scoffed at the suggestion that parents were happy with larger classes, saying, “The department is just trying to escape accountability.”
“Most of our elementary schools are zoned for a neighborhood, and to blame it on parents is absurd,” she noted. “You have more than 40 percent of students attending schools that are overcrowded. That’s not something they choose.”
One on waiting lists for kindergarten. This isn't, despite the article, just limited to Manhattan - and remember that when time comes to go to first grade, the seats *first* go to those who are already in kindergarten in the same school.
School Waiting Lists Raise Manhattan Parents’ Ire
By ELISSA GOOTMAN
As a growing collection of Manhattan’s most celebrated public elementary schools notify neighborhood parents that their children have been placed on waiting lists for kindergarten slots, middle-class vitriol against the school system — and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — is mounting.
Parents are venting their frustrations in e-mail messages and phone calls to the mayor, local politicians and the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein (“You have unleashed the fury of parents throughout this city with your complete lack of preparedness,” read one father’s recent missive, which he shared with The New York Times). Some plan a rally on the steps of City Hall for next Wednesday afternoon (“Kindergartners Are Not Refugees!” proclaims a flier), and some are taking it upon themselves to scour the city for potential classroom space.
The outpouring of anger comes as state lawmakers consider whether to renew mayoral control of the city school system, which expires in two months, and Mr. Bloomberg is seeking a third term in part on his education record.
“I got a call from Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign about yadda yadda yadda was I going to vote for him,” said Beth Levison, a documentary filmmaker whose son is No. 79 of 90 on a combined waiting list for Public School 41 and Public School 3, both in Greenwich Village. “As a parent who has a child with no place to go next year, no indication of where he’s going to go next year as a result of the mayor taking control of education, I said absolutely not.
“You would think that Bloomberg, who is a businessman, knows how to manage inventory like this,” Ms. Levison continued. “My kid isn’t just a bottle of vodka, but this is about inventory.”
Assemblywoman Deborah J. Glick, whose district includes Greenwich Village, said it would not help the mayor’s cause to have the debate take place amid this “very tense circumstance.”
“If people believe that the core mission is to have a seat in a local school where there is a reasonable class size,” she said, “people are going to say, regardless of the P.R. campaign, there need to be changes.”
The Department of Education would not say how many schools had waiting lists or how many children were on them, explaining that officials were still reviewing the information that principals in Manhattan were required to submit earlier this week (principals in other boroughs must do so by Friday). But parent advocates and public officials in pockets throughout the city said that they had heard more complaints this year from panicked parents told that there may not be seats for their 5-year-olds at their neighborhood schools.
The notion of a waiting list for students living within a school’s zone is not unprecedented; last fall, 34 schools outside Manhattan capped their enrollment, turning away neighborhood children. But this year, after a change in city policy to standardize kindergarten admissions and encourage registration earlier in the year, the waiting lists seem to have proliferated, making their way into Manhattan neighborhoods where parents often make expensive real estate decisions with a specific public school in mind. And parents fear that the lists reflect not just the new policy but also a surge in demand, fueled by an increase in young families and an economic downturn that makes private schools less appealing.
David Cantor, the chancellor’s press secretary, said that schools previously had grappled with supply and demand in an ad-hoc way, and that the Bloomberg administration’s approach was fairer. Children still on waiting lists at the end of June will be offered slots at other schools in their district (there are 32 across the city). Their names can stay on the lists through the summer in hopes that spots open up. City officials expect lists to shrink as some students choose gifted and talented programs or other options.
Before, Mr. Cantor said, “students remained on wait lists without a school unless a parent knew how to navigate the system.”
“This administration’s position is that equity of access and transparency for every parent is essential,” he added. “This year, for the first time, we stepped in to quantify wait lists, assist schools in managing their wait lists, and will ensure that children have a placement offer by the end of June.”
In some lower-income areas, public officials are concerned about a city budget cut that is sending some 3,000 children from day care centers funded by the Administration for Children’s Services to public kindergartens.
But the epicenter of the outrage is Manhattan’s District 2, particularly the Upper East Side and the Village, where new condominiums have lured young families. The district’s Community Education Council estimates 400 children are on waiting lists at a dozen schools.
“We feel desperate,” said Ben Allison, a bassist and composer whose daughter, Ruby, is on the P.S. 41 waiting list. “We’re calling up N.Y.U. to say, ‘Can you provide a space for us? Maybe you can clear out some classrooms and create an annex.’ ”
Then there are the parents of children zoned for Public School 151. That school, on East 91st Street, has been closed for nearly a decade. The Education Department promised to reopen it this year because of the space crunch, but has yet to secure a space.
Jacalyn Filler, whose son is supposed to be in P.S. 151’s kindergarten this fall, wrote to Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Klein and the federal education secretary, Arne Duncan, criticizing what she called “bureaucratic foot-dragging, lack of focus and high-handed attitude displayed by D.O.E. officials.”
“Mr. Mayor, you are spending a good chunk of money on TV ads where you tout New York as ‘a great place to raise a family,’ ” she wrote in the letter, which she shared with The Times. “How can you make this claim with a straight face, given the current crisis?”
Rebecca Daniels, president of the District 2 council, said parents were frustrated because they had warned the Education Department that this could happen, and were skeptical as to whether slots were handed out fairly by lottery as the city required.
“These parents are questioning everything and everybody, and it’s putting them in a position that they don’t want to be in,” she said. “Parents shouldn’t be sitting here pitted against one another when their biggest concern is telling their 4- or 5-year-old why they’re not in kindergarten.”
City Councilwoman Jessica S. Lappin, who represents the Upper East Side, said she had heard from distraught parents, including some whose children have spots in neighborhood schools but worry about overcrowding.
“The mayor has said repeatedly, the buck stops with me, and so has the chancellor,” she said. “These parents should hold them accountable.”
A Playground Challenges Children, and Parents, Too
By SUSAN DOMINUS
Sometimes, the presence of other adults can make a parent more protective, for fear of being judged careless. At the playground, the opposite rules apply: There you find a bunch of adults all reinforcing in one another the absurd assumption that children should be encouraged to climb to dangerous heights and get themselves down from those heights as fast as they possibly can.
Why oh why, the worrying kind of parent can’t help wondering, can’t playgrounds be a little more ... flat? Low-to-the-ground tunnels, balance beams an inch or so off the floor, some not-too-tall animals that children could climb on and pretend to ride (a snake! a crab!) — surely those fancy designers who are always earning community good will by coming up with the next big thing in creative play could work with that kind of low-lying concept?
The much-anticipated, newly renovated $2 million playground at 116th Street in Morningside Park, which had its ribbon-cutting a few weeks ago, could have been envisioned by some of those designers, to judge from the tasteful, creative layout, a vision of bright blues and greens.
The jungle gym itself sprawls over a chunk of a block, with the younger and the older children’s play areas connected by a three-rung ladder toddlers couldn’t climb. The play space has wheels at various heights that children can drive to nowhere, a small climbing wall, and an endless number of stairs to satisfy the urge that small people inevitably have to gain serious height.
In fact, the playground was designed by Alexander Hart, a 33-year-old assistant landscape architect at the Department of Parks and Recreation. “I wasn’t so keen on designing playgrounds until I started doing it,” Mr. Hart, a father of two young children, said on Wednesday morning at the playground. “But once I started, I found the design challenges so interesting.”
Nowhere would that job be more interesting than in New York, where the design challenges include such unusual requirements as making all the equipment bulletproof — which explains why New York playground slides are made of stainless steel, rather than plastic, as is usually the case elsewhere.
Playground designers, Mr. Hart explained, must also make sure to avoid creating what Mr. Hart terms “sleepable surfaces” — places like covered slides where the homeless might seek privacy or a retreat from the weather. Even a small roof that Mr. Hart designed for some of the jungle gym’s platforms had to include holes and slats so that it wouldn’t provide the kind of cover from the rain that would attract people seeking refuge. “It’s a real community concern,” Mr. Hart said.
Mr. Hart filled the playground with the kinds of features that always drew his children at other playgrounds: a concrete racetrack where children can bring their own cars and trains, lots of spinning seats and as many slides as possible.
The blues and greens of the design reflect the natural environment of the park, without hitting any one thematic note too hard. (Mr. Hart is wary of playgrounds with literal structures that demand that “you become a pirate or something,” preferring more open-ended invitations to creative play.)
A friend who lives near the park had warned me that the playground, instantly popular and beloved in the area, had one key drawback, which was terrible sightlines. Within about 45 seconds of arriving there a few weeks back with my twin sons, I figured out what that meant.
One of my 2-year-olds was hovering near me, trying to climb up a slide in plain sight. The other had disappeared — over the bridge? On the other side of the jungle gym, splashing in the fountain? Out of the park gate and into the middle of Morningside Drive? I couldn’t see him. I did the quick scan that usually produces a satisfying result, then ran it again, one more time — no sign of my kid.
Before finally locating him underneath the jungle gym, behind a wall that hid all but his feet, I was reminded that there are few sounds more painful to a mother than the sound of her own voice calling her child’s name, over and over, in increasingly urgent tones.
There are federal regulations that dictate certain safety measures — how much space must surround swings and slides, for example — but one of the perennial challenges for a playground designer, Mr. Hart said, is that “parents should feel like it’s safe, but kids should feel like they can cut loose.”
Being able to lay eyes on one’s child might seem like it would weigh pretty heavily in that balance. But a quick survey of the parents on the playground this Wednesday suggested that most of them managed to negotiate it comfortably, if they stayed alert.
Michael Maxwell, a baby sitter looking after a 20-month-old girl, said that he found that this playground, in particular, kept him on his toes. When his charge made her way to a space on the playground’s jungle gym that opened up onto a sheer drop, with toeholds older children could climb up, “I said, ‘Sweet Jesus,’ ” Mr. Maxwell said. “This is one of the more elaborate playgrounds I’ve seen, in a challenging way. But it’s fun — it’s a workout.”
Playgrounds are supposedly designed to help kids grow and learn, but one like the new fantasia on 116th Street seems to have an old-fashioned ulterior motive: teaching grown-ups how to let them.
Another older one on accessible playgrounds
Playgrounds That Welcome Wheelchairs
By JENNIFER V. HUGHES
THE first time Lisa Vaccino took her children to Hannah’s Dream, a playground in New Haven designed for disabled children, she immediately noticed a difference in her son, Johnny, 5, who has cerebral palsy.
“When we got back into the car that day I didn’t even have to ask him. He said, ‘That was fun!’ ” said Mrs. Vaccino, who also has a daughter, Emma, 2, who is not disabled. “That was a lot coming from him. That was huge.”
But it takes them a half-hour to drive to the park from Milford, Conn., their hometown. After that visit, in October, Mrs. Vaccino formed a nonprofit group and started a fund-raising drive for an accessible playground in Milford.
With the summer in full swing, playgrounds are a daily part of life for most families with small children. But for many disabled children, they remain tantalizingly out of reach. That is starting to change in many towns around the region, where handicapped accessible playgrounds and ball fields are being built or planned.
Mrs. Vaccino said that a location for the park in Milford has not been chosen, but that it will be named Bodie’s Place, for her son’s nickname. It even has a mascot, a spunky-looking firefly flitting out of a jar, and a motto: “Get Out and Play!”
Ms. Vaccino and other Milford parents are working with Boundless Playgrounds, a nonprofit group that has helped create 129 accessible playgrounds in 24 states since 1997. It was founded by Peter and Amy Jaffe Barzach of West Hartford, Conn., whose son Jonathan had spinal muscular atrophy, a degenerative neuromuscular disease, and died at the age of 9 months. There are 11 accessible playgrounds in the metropolitan region, and three more in the works, said Glandina Morris, a spokeswoman for Boundless Playgrounds.
Accessible playgrounds have rubberized surfaces that accommodate wheelchairs and walkers, and a child in a wheelchair can use wide ramps to get to the top of all climbing structures, Ms. Morris said. Many of the playgrounds include “cozy spots,” where children with Down syndrome or autism can go if they are overstimulated.
The playgrounds cost more than traditional ones, Ms. Morris said, because wheelchair-friendly surfacing can cost four times more than that of typical playgrounds. She said most groups and communities pay for them with donations and public funds.
Some accommodations are obvious, like high-back swings and bouncers; others are more subtle, like a sandbox placed at wheelchair height, or picnic tables with cutouts so a child in a wheelchair can sit with his or her family, not off to the side, Ms. Morris said. Many playgrounds include Braille panels on the equipment and gardens with fragrant flowers for blind children.
An accessible playground under construction in Teaneck, N.J., will eventually have many of those features and more, said Cindy Balsam-Martz, who led the effort to build it. Mrs. Balsam-Martz was inspired by her struggle to find a place to play with all of her children, the twins Eric and Noah, 10; Elaine, 7; and Nettie Faith, 6, who is partially blind and deaf and uses a wheelchair.
When they visit most parks, Mrs. Balsam-Martz said, her older children play while she practices walking with Nettie Faith.
“It feels like punishment,” she said. “All it does is further isolate her and outline her disability, which is not who Nettie is.”
Construction on the playground in the township’s Votee Park is expected to be completed by early fall.
Nationally, the drive for accessible playgrounds began in response to the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, said Antonio Malkusak, who has designed spaces for Boundless Playgrounds for a decade. Although the act did not cover playgrounds, “it got people thinking,” Mr. Malkusak said. More playgrounds were also built after companies started offering more adaptive equipment, prompted by the act, he added.
When Boundless Playgrounds began, Mr. Malkusak said, he would often hear, “ ‘We don’t see those kids coming out, so we don’t need to consider them.’ ”
“What was really happening was the reason why those kids didn’t come out was because there was nothing for them to do,” he said.
Since 2004, the Bush administration has been considering whether to require specific guidelines for handicapped access at new and existing playgrounds. A public hearing on the issue was set for July 15 in Washington.
The Town of Huntington, on Long Island, will include a Boundless Playground as part of a renovation and expansion of Veterans Park. Officials hope to open the playground, which is being named for a teacher with Lou Gehrig’s disease, by 2010.
In Montclair, N.J., work was to begin in a few weeks on the Edgemont Park All Children’s Playground. The project will cost about $200,000, about $40,000 of which was raised in bake sales and coin drives, as well as by a group of local musicians, Parents Who Rock. They held fund-raising concerts and released a CD that was sold in local shops.
Alma Schneider, Parents Who Rock’s founder, said accessible playgrounds are fun for all children. “This playground is for everyone,” she said. “There is no playground where typical kids and special-needs kids can play together.”
At a groundbreaking ceremony last week, Dave Fucio, a member of Montclair’s People With Disabilities committee, said accessible playgrounds were also important for parents and grandparents who use wheelchairs.
As part of the renovation of the Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, Morris County, N.J., is building Miracle Field, a baseball field for disabled players and spectators. It is being paved with a rubberized surface to accommodate wheelchairs and walkers. Officials hoped to hold the first ballgame this month.
The field was built with the help of an organization called the Miracle League, which provides communities with architectural designs and consulting support for the fields. The first Miracle Field was built in Georgia in 2000; now, there are 130 of them nationwide and another 100 under construction, said Diane Alford, founder of the league.
There are four Miracle Fields in the New York region and another 10 are planned, Ms. Alford said. The Westchester County Miracle Field, at Ridge Road Park in Hartsdale, has been hosting games since 2006.
At Miracle Field games, able-bodied siblings often act as buddies, pushing a player in a wheelchair to first base or helping one with a walker hit the ball, Phyllis Lombardi of Dobbs Ferry said. Her 10-year-old son, Joey, who is autistic, is a player and her 13-year-old son, Nicholas, is a buddy.
“What has happened is the most extraordinary thing, because he’s started to be so engaged in it,” Ms. Lombardi said of Joey. “We couldn’t get him to run to first base in the beginning, but now he does it. Now he says the word ‘ball.’ When you only have 11 words, it’s a big deal in a mother’s heart.”
A depressing one on modern kindergarten
Kindergarten Cram
By PEGGY ORENSTEIN
About a year ago, I made the circuit of kindergartens in my town. At each stop, after the pitch by the principal and the obligatory exhibit of art projects only a mother (the student’s own) could love, I asked the same question: “What is your policy on homework?”
And always, whether from the apple-cheeked teacher in the public school or the earnest administrator of the “child centered” private one, I was met with an eager nod. Oh, yes, each would explain: kindergartners are assigned homework every day.
Bzzzzzzt. Wrong answer.
When I was a child, in the increasingly olden days, kindergarten was a place to play. We danced the hokeypokey, swooned in suspense over Duck, Duck, Gray Duck (that’s what Minnesotans stubbornly call Duck, Duck, Goose) and napped on our mats until the Wake-Up Fairy set us free.
No more. Instead of digging in sandboxes, today’s kindergartners prepare for a life of multiple-choice boxes by plowing through standardized tests with cuddly names like Dibels (pronounced “dibbles”), a series of early-literacy measures administered to millions of kids; or toiling over reading curricula like Open Court — which features assessments every six weeks.
According to “Crisis in the Kindergarten,” a report recently released by the Alliance for Childhood, a nonprofit research and advocacy group, all that testing is wasted: it neither predicts nor improves young children’s educational outcomes. More disturbing, along with other academic demands, like assigning homework to 5-year-olds, it is crowding out the one thing that truly is vital to their future success: play.
A survey of 254 teachers in New York and Los Angeles the group commissioned found that kindergartners spent two to three hours a day being instructed and tested in reading and math. They spent less than 30 minutes playing. “Play at age 5 is of great importance not just to intellectual but emotional, psychological social and spiritual development,” says Edward Miller, the report’s co-author. Play — especially the let’s-pretend, dramatic sort — is how kids develop higher-level thinking, hone their language and social skills, cultivate empathy. It also reduces stress, and that’s a word that should not have to be used in the same sentence as “kindergartner” in the first place.
I came late to motherhood, so I had plenty of time to ponder friends’ mania for souped-up childhood learning. How was it that the same couples who piously proclaimed that 3½-year-old Junior was not “developmentally ready” to use the potty were drilling him on flashcards? What was the rush? Did that better prepare kids to learn? How did 5 become the new 7, anyway?
There’s no single reason. The No Child Left Behind Act, with its insistence that what cannot be quantified cannot be improved, plays a role. But so do parents who want to build a better child. There is also what marketers refer to as KGOY — Kids Getting Older Younger — their explanation for why 3-year-olds now play with toys that were initially intended for middle-schoolers. (Since adults are staying younger older — 50 is the new 30! — our children may soon surpass us in age.)
Regardless of the cause, Miller says, accelerating kindergarten is unnecessary: any early advantage fades by fourth grade. “It makes a parent proud to see a child learn to read at age 4, but in terms of what’s really best for the kid, it makes no difference.” For at-risk kids, pushing too soon may backfire. The longitudinal High/Scope Preschool Curriculum Comparison Study followed 68 such children, who were divided between instruction- and play-based classrooms. While everyone’s I.Q. scores initially rose, by age 15, the former group’s academic achievement plummeted. They were more likely to exhibit emotional problems and spent more time in special education. “Drill and kill,” indeed.
Thinkers like Daniel Pink have proposed that this country’s continued viability hinges on what is known as the “imagination economy”: qualities like versatility, creativity, vision — and playfulness — that cannot be outsourced. It’s a compelling argument to apply here, though a bit disheartening too: must we append the word “economy” to everything to legitimize it? Isn’t cultivating imagination an inherent good? I would hate to see children’s creativity subject to the same parental anxiety that has stoked the sales of Baby Einstein DVDs.
Jean Piaget famously referred to “the American question,” which arose when he lectured in this country: how, his audiences wanted to know, could a child’s development be sped up? The better question may be: Why are we so hellbent on doing so?
Maybe the current economic retrenchment will trigger a new perspective on early education, something similar to the movement toward local, sustainable, organic food. Call it Slow Schools. After all, part of what got us into this mess was valuing achievement, speed and results over ethics, thoughtfulness and responsibility. Then again, parents may glean the opposite lesson, believing their kids need to be pushed even harder in order to stay competitive in a shrinking job market.
I wonder how far I’m willing to go in my commitment to the cause: would I embrace the example of Finland — whose students consistently come out on top in international assessments — and delay formal reading instruction until age 7? Could I stick with that position when other second graders were gobbling up “War and Peace” — or at least the third Harry Potter book?
In the end, the school I found for my daughter holds off on homework until fourth grade. (Though a flotilla of research shows homework confers no benefit — enhancing neither retention nor study habits — until middle school.) It’s a start. A few days ago, though, I caught her concocting a pretend math worksheet. “All the other kids have homework,” she complained with a sigh. “I wish I could have some, too.”
One on increased class size in NYC
Class Size in New York City Schools Rises, but the Impact Is Debated
By JENNIFER MEDINA
In many circles, class size is considered as fundamental to education as the three R’s, with numbers watched so carefully that even a tiny increase can provoke outrage among parents, teachers and political leaders. Alarms went off in New York and California last week, as officials on both coasts warned that yawning budget gaps could soon mean more children in each classroom.
But while state legislatures for decades have passed laws — and provided millions of dollars — to cap the size of classes, some academic researchers and education leaders say that small reductions in the number of students in a room often have little effect on their performance.
At recent legislative hearings on whether to renew mayoral control of the New York City schools, lawmakers and parents alike have asked, again and again, why Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein have not done more to reduce class size. On Tuesday, the Education Department issued a report that found the average number of children per class increased in nearly every grade this school year.
“If you’re going to spend an extra dollar, personally, I would always rather spend it on the people that deliver the service,” Mr. Bloomberg said when asked about the report on Thursday, calling class size “an interesting number.”
“It’s the teacher looking a child in the eye, and teachers can look lots of children in the eye,” he added. “If you have to have smaller class size or better teachers, go with the better teachers every time.”
But Assemblywoman Catherine T. Nolan, a Queens Democrat who is chairwoman of the Education Committee, said that she routinely hears from middle-class parents who say they are leaving the city in search of intimate classroom environments where teachers can pay more attention to each student. The teachers’ union estimates that New York City’s classes have 10 percent to 60 percent more students than those in neighboring suburbs, and the highest average size of any school district in the state.
“I always thought more money and the mayor controlling the schools would give us smaller classes,” said Ms. Nolan, who has a son in public school. “I just don’t understand it, but they seem to be nostalgic for a time of larger classes.”
The debate has continued for decades, with some consensus forming that class size matters most in the youngest grades, and that the effects are most profound when there are fewer than 20 students in a class.
Dan Goldhaber, an education professor at the University of Washington, said the obsession with class size stemmed from a desire for “something that people can grasp easily — you walk into a class and you see exactly how many kids are there.”
“Whether or not it translates into an additional advantage doesn’t necessarily matter,” Professor Goldhaber said. “We know that teachers are the most important thing, but teacher quality is not stamped on someone’s forehead.”
A Tennessee study in the late 1980s, widely regarded as the most influential study on class size, found that in kindergarten through third grade, students in classes of 13 to 17, particularly poor and minority students, performed better than those in classes of 22 to 25. In some cases, the benefits extended through high school.
But since then, as many states and school districts have rushed to reduce class sizes, usually to the low 20s, student achievement has not consistently improved markedly.
In California, a 1996 law provided schools with an extra $1,000 in state money for every student in the earliest grades whose classes had 20 or fewer students. The state quickly hired 28,000 new teachers, but many of them lacked experience or education credentials; a 2002 study by the Public Policy Institute of California found that the best-qualified teachers fled poorer urban schools as the extra funds created jobs in wealthier areas, and that children who were in smaller third-grade classes did not have higher scores on fifth-grade tests.
In New York City, an Education Department comparison over the last two years between school report-card grades and average class size has found little correlation; in many cases, schools with better grades have bigger classes.
Still, some researchers argue that reducing class size is a concrete and worthy goal.
“We can say we just want more good teachers, which would be great, but that’s a policy that we just don’t know how to do yet,” said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, an education policy professor at the University of Chicago. “The nice thing about reducing class size is that it makes teachers happy in their own right and it’s the one thing that we know how to do.”
In New York, class sizes increased despite an infusion of $150 million in state funds last year earmarked specifically to reduce the numbers of children in each room. Chancellor Klein initially bristled at the restrictions state officials put on the money, but Albany would not release the funds until the city submitted a plan to bring class sizes down further. Last week, the city said it might have to adjust that plan to “reflect the worsening economic climate.”
Christopher Cerf, the deputy chancellor in charge of human resources, said the increase in class sizes this school year could be attributed to principals who determined that their money was better spent elsewhere and that the focus on class size was wrongheaded. “People think that this is the keys to the education reform kingdom here, but that is simply not the case,” he said.
Garth Harries, who oversees class size for the city, said that better schools often end up with larger classes as more and more parents want to send their children to places with successful track records. “It’s a complicated trade-off,” he said. “Would you end up giving fewer families access to those schools?”
But Leonie Haimson, the executive director of an advocacy group, Class Size Matters, and a frequent critic of the administration, scoffed at the suggestion that parents were happy with larger classes, saying, “The department is just trying to escape accountability.”
“Most of our elementary schools are zoned for a neighborhood, and to blame it on parents is absurd,” she noted. “You have more than 40 percent of students attending schools that are overcrowded. That’s not something they choose.”
One on waiting lists for kindergarten. This isn't, despite the article, just limited to Manhattan - and remember that when time comes to go to first grade, the seats *first* go to those who are already in kindergarten in the same school.
School Waiting Lists Raise Manhattan Parents’ Ire
By ELISSA GOOTMAN
As a growing collection of Manhattan’s most celebrated public elementary schools notify neighborhood parents that their children have been placed on waiting lists for kindergarten slots, middle-class vitriol against the school system — and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — is mounting.
Parents are venting their frustrations in e-mail messages and phone calls to the mayor, local politicians and the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein (“You have unleashed the fury of parents throughout this city with your complete lack of preparedness,” read one father’s recent missive, which he shared with The New York Times). Some plan a rally on the steps of City Hall for next Wednesday afternoon (“Kindergartners Are Not Refugees!” proclaims a flier), and some are taking it upon themselves to scour the city for potential classroom space.
The outpouring of anger comes as state lawmakers consider whether to renew mayoral control of the city school system, which expires in two months, and Mr. Bloomberg is seeking a third term in part on his education record.
“I got a call from Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign about yadda yadda yadda was I going to vote for him,” said Beth Levison, a documentary filmmaker whose son is No. 79 of 90 on a combined waiting list for Public School 41 and Public School 3, both in Greenwich Village. “As a parent who has a child with no place to go next year, no indication of where he’s going to go next year as a result of the mayor taking control of education, I said absolutely not.
“You would think that Bloomberg, who is a businessman, knows how to manage inventory like this,” Ms. Levison continued. “My kid isn’t just a bottle of vodka, but this is about inventory.”
Assemblywoman Deborah J. Glick, whose district includes Greenwich Village, said it would not help the mayor’s cause to have the debate take place amid this “very tense circumstance.”
“If people believe that the core mission is to have a seat in a local school where there is a reasonable class size,” she said, “people are going to say, regardless of the P.R. campaign, there need to be changes.”
The Department of Education would not say how many schools had waiting lists or how many children were on them, explaining that officials were still reviewing the information that principals in Manhattan were required to submit earlier this week (principals in other boroughs must do so by Friday). But parent advocates and public officials in pockets throughout the city said that they had heard more complaints this year from panicked parents told that there may not be seats for their 5-year-olds at their neighborhood schools.
The notion of a waiting list for students living within a school’s zone is not unprecedented; last fall, 34 schools outside Manhattan capped their enrollment, turning away neighborhood children. But this year, after a change in city policy to standardize kindergarten admissions and encourage registration earlier in the year, the waiting lists seem to have proliferated, making their way into Manhattan neighborhoods where parents often make expensive real estate decisions with a specific public school in mind. And parents fear that the lists reflect not just the new policy but also a surge in demand, fueled by an increase in young families and an economic downturn that makes private schools less appealing.
David Cantor, the chancellor’s press secretary, said that schools previously had grappled with supply and demand in an ad-hoc way, and that the Bloomberg administration’s approach was fairer. Children still on waiting lists at the end of June will be offered slots at other schools in their district (there are 32 across the city). Their names can stay on the lists through the summer in hopes that spots open up. City officials expect lists to shrink as some students choose gifted and talented programs or other options.
Before, Mr. Cantor said, “students remained on wait lists without a school unless a parent knew how to navigate the system.”
“This administration’s position is that equity of access and transparency for every parent is essential,” he added. “This year, for the first time, we stepped in to quantify wait lists, assist schools in managing their wait lists, and will ensure that children have a placement offer by the end of June.”
In some lower-income areas, public officials are concerned about a city budget cut that is sending some 3,000 children from day care centers funded by the Administration for Children’s Services to public kindergartens.
But the epicenter of the outrage is Manhattan’s District 2, particularly the Upper East Side and the Village, where new condominiums have lured young families. The district’s Community Education Council estimates 400 children are on waiting lists at a dozen schools.
“We feel desperate,” said Ben Allison, a bassist and composer whose daughter, Ruby, is on the P.S. 41 waiting list. “We’re calling up N.Y.U. to say, ‘Can you provide a space for us? Maybe you can clear out some classrooms and create an annex.’ ”
Then there are the parents of children zoned for Public School 151. That school, on East 91st Street, has been closed for nearly a decade. The Education Department promised to reopen it this year because of the space crunch, but has yet to secure a space.
Jacalyn Filler, whose son is supposed to be in P.S. 151’s kindergarten this fall, wrote to Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Klein and the federal education secretary, Arne Duncan, criticizing what she called “bureaucratic foot-dragging, lack of focus and high-handed attitude displayed by D.O.E. officials.”
“Mr. Mayor, you are spending a good chunk of money on TV ads where you tout New York as ‘a great place to raise a family,’ ” she wrote in the letter, which she shared with The Times. “How can you make this claim with a straight face, given the current crisis?”
Rebecca Daniels, president of the District 2 council, said parents were frustrated because they had warned the Education Department that this could happen, and were skeptical as to whether slots were handed out fairly by lottery as the city required.
“These parents are questioning everything and everybody, and it’s putting them in a position that they don’t want to be in,” she said. “Parents shouldn’t be sitting here pitted against one another when their biggest concern is telling their 4- or 5-year-old why they’re not in kindergarten.”
City Councilwoman Jessica S. Lappin, who represents the Upper East Side, said she had heard from distraught parents, including some whose children have spots in neighborhood schools but worry about overcrowding.
“The mayor has said repeatedly, the buck stops with me, and so has the chancellor,” she said. “These parents should hold them accountable.”
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-03 09:11 pm (UTC)However, it was worlds better than kindergarten. I really didn't like kindergarten. There was virtually no point to it. It felt stupid to be taught shapes, colors, letters, and numbers - all of which I knew. And there was countless coloring in, which I assumed was work that was good for me because of how massively unpleasant it was and it was never presented as voluntary.
So, to me, kindergarten was full of unpleasant makework while first grade was full of real work that was harder, but less miserable and more useful. And I could see the point of my first grade work. It made sense. Which made me hate it less, even when I didn't enjoy it.
I know, I'm not typical. But I'd have skipped kindergarten if I could have. The best bit about kindergarten was the friend I made there - and she left after that year. :/
Again, I'm not typical. But kindergarten was very low in play for me. There were tons of mandatory activities like gym and coloring in. And every now and then gym was fun. And the trip to the library was fun too when we had it. But most of kindergarten wasn't play. It was work. Just dull, pointless work. And nap time, which I believe I never napped during ever. I tried, but I wasn't sleepy then. So, it meant lying quietly on a mat for a while being massively bored.
And to rub salt in it, at my school first grade and up had recess, kindergarten had nap time ~instead of recess~. We did have some free play time at times though, and those were nice. But mainly, I really didn't like kindergarten.
So, compared to my kindergarten experience, this isn't actually sounding worse. Just also not good.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 02:23 am (UTC)Kindergarten Cram
Date: 2009-05-04 02:24 am (UTC)I thought right along that the whole thing about homework was a shuck; that the parents really just wanted an excuse to make the kid sit down and shut up for a bit. LOL, having since been a parent, I know how true that is, and have a lot more sympathy for those tired working mommies and daddies slogging in the door with their ravenous offspring demanding food and attention, which can't be provided simultaneously.
I really think that's the reason for most homework: it gives the parents a little peace and quiet, along with comforting reassurance that they're being Good Parents by fostering their childrens' education. And they may be right, because one has to ask what the kids would be doing if they didn't have any homework. The truth is that many of them would be fussing and bickering, racing about underfoot in the kitchen, flicking through TV channels, demanding to watch movies or play video games, or making a mess of some sort.
A 15-minute worksheet every night doesn't do anything to foster study skills or whatever, no. However, it's not doing any harm either. I didn't like having to give them, but oh well. I made it as clear as I could that these were optional, just-for-fun, not something they Had To Do. Any 'homework' a kid brought back to me, I stuck a happy sticker on it, so Mommy could hang it on the refrigerator for Grandma to notice, as evidence that her kid is Keeping Up.
That's what it's all about.
Re: Kindergarten Cram
Date: 2009-05-04 02:41 am (UTC)Ana's teacher, when I brought up the homework issue, said basically the same thing, that the other kids' parents were asking, not just for homework, but for more homework. Because one writing and one math assignment every day, on top of 20 minutes of reading and something you're supposed to do (identify rhyming words, talk about whether the book is fiction or nonfiction, discuss what might happen after the book finishes, there's a bunch of things that they cycle through) just isn't enough for five year olds. (And for her! She checks the homework and returns it the same day it's turned in, for 24 students. What do these people want?)
And then there's the people who try just too hard. Ana's friend Meghan, her teacher talked to her dad because she wasn't doing her own homework, her mother was. WTF? (But I could talk about *that* all day.)
The trouble isn't really the 15 minutes of homework. It's 15 minutes (or 20, or 30, or 45) of homework after 6.5 hours of inappropriately academic pressure with no recess (and in some cases no recess or gym!) and don't forget the bus ride home. That adds up fast.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 06:20 am (UTC)My two oldest are 9 and almost 8, and are at or above state standards, so it seems to be working so far.