Good Schools For All By Voice Of San Diego

The move from play-based preschools to increasingly rigorous kindergarten classrooms is rough, for both kids and parents. A Good Schools for All listener, Sally Cox, called in to share her story about a particularly jarring transition from preschool to kindergarten. She said she thought her son was well-prepared, but kids in his kindergarten class were expected to be reading by October, and her son quickly fell behind. “I think the alignment issues between expectations in kindergarten and how children are prepared in preschool really need to be dealt with,” Cox said. Hosts Scott Lewis and Laura Kohn dig into the big transition problem, which is worsening thanks to a ratcheting up of academic expectations for kindergarteners. Transitional kindergarten, or TK, a public-school program offered to kids born between Sept. 2 and Dec. 2 as the first step of a two-year kindergarten class, has been one attempt at closing the early education achievement gap.  TK is great for the small number of kids who happen to be