My son, Tommy, is 5 and in kindergarten at Monteith School in the Grosse Pointe School District. This week, I learned that the School Board approved all day kindergarten for all students, beginning in 2010-2011.  That's a good thing - studies show that all day kindergarten improves academic outcomes for students beyond kindergarten.  Grosse Pointe Schools isn't perfect, but it does provide a quality learning experience for children.  Tommy is in a class with 22 other children.  His teacher, Mrs. DiVirgil has an aide, Mrs. Farnsworth, who supports the classroom throughout most of the day.  The children follow high curriculum standards (Tommy can count to 100 by 2!), time for play, specials (library, art, gym, music) and access to high quality learning materials.

Contrast that with the Detroit Public Schools.  In the same week that I learned about GPS, I also heard from several DPS kindergarten teachers about the status of kindergarten in Detroit:

• "I have 30 students in my classroom"
• "We have no aides/staff support"
• "Children are coming to class without the knowledge how to hold a pencil or a book"
• "Parents are uninvolved"
• "I had a student show up one day, then not show up again until 60+ days later"
• "One child the other day hit another child in the head with a chair"
• "I can tell the difference between a child that went to preschool and a child that didn't"
• "All we can do is crowd control, forget about actually supporting children's learning"

My purpose in sharing is not to say that DPS is awful, Detroit parents are bad, or that Detroit is bad.  Grosse Pointe and Detroit share a common boundary, but they might as well be on different planets.  What also struck me is that for those of us on the mission of improving educational outcomes for chlidren, we must understand the reality.  We must also shift our priorities.  Early childhood education is the foundation.  We are wasting time and money on high school graduation if we are ignoring the learning environment that our young children are in.  I applaud the focus on improving reading outcomes, but volunteers reading to students a couple of hours a week will not have a long term impact, so long as we have ill prepared teachers, overcrowded classrooms and low quality environments.  We invest significant financial and management resources to address graduation rates.  Kindergarten and early education need the same sort of substantive solutions.  It's the only way to achieve what we all want - children to become successful adults contributing to a vibrant and healthy society.