Changes in Instructional Practices in Kindergarten During the Era of No Child Left Behind

• In Event: 072 - Regular Session. Effects of Accountability on Students, Classrooms, and Public Discourse

Abstract

No Child Left Behind and Standards Based Reform aimed to increase student learning by holding schools accountable for teaching students particular performance standards. Critics have argued that these policies created incentives for teachers to narrow the content of instruction, use more teacher-directed activity, and emphasize procedural rather than conceptual learning. In this paper, we test whether these predicted shifts occurred for all students, and, specifically, for traditionally underperforming students, in an untested grade, kindergarten. We use nationally representative data from the two kindergarten cohorts of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLSK: 1998 and ECLSK: 2011) to do so. Our findings show that, consistent with the goal of the policies, children are covering more rigorous content in reading and math. Though achievement gaps in reading and math have not declined, student proficiency on a narrow set of reading and math content strands at the end of kindergarten has increased. However, these gains come at an expense: children are spending less time on art, pretend play, and child-led exploration and more time on teacher-directed instruction and worksheets.

Authors

• Jill Bowdon, University of Pennsylvania

• Laura M. Desimone, University of Pennsylvania