Results

In the top panel of Table 5 , we show how kindergarten teachers’ views about assessment have changed over time. In 1998, more than 95% of teachers indicated that they valued children’s improvements over time, their effort, their classroom behavior, and their ability to follow directions. We observe very little change across these measures over time. We do document changes in the importance teachers placed on two factors: First, the percentage of teachers who indicated they consider an individual child’s achievement relative to local, state, or professional standards to be very important or essential rose from 57% to 79%. Second, we see a similar increase in the importance teachers place on children’s performance relative to their classmates, up from 47% to 67%.

The bottom panel of Table 4 shows how frequently kindergarteners are exposed to PE and recess. Contrary to the hypothesis that kindergarten classrooms in the later period would have fewer opportunities for play or physical activities, we observe no change in the percentage of students who participated in daily PE and document a 9-percentage-point increase in the percentage of students who had recess daily. We do note drops in PE and recess for children attending half-day programs, although these are not statistically significant.

When examining approaches to math instruction (lower panel of Appendix A3 ), we find significant increases in eight of 17 of the instructional approaches mentioned. Here, too, the largest increases are in time spent using textbooks and worksheets as well as time spent completing math problems on the chalkboard. That said, teachers also reported increases in less didactic approaches, such as using music to understand math concepts or explaining how problems are solved. Overall, the results are consistent with an increase in time spent on reading and mathematics instruction broadly, with particularly large gains in time spent on rote, didactic tasks.

It is worthwhile to consider these trends within the context of the complete set of items measuring approaches for teaching literacy and math. These are presented in the lower panels Appendix A2 and Appendix A3 and are sorted by the change in the likelihood that a teacher reported a particular approach was used weekly. For literacy, we observe substantial increases across a diverse set of measures, but the largest increases are in the use of textbooks, writing words from dictation to improve spelling, writing stories and reports, and using workbooks and worksheets. We observe drops for only three (of 20) instructional approaches (e.g., a 3-percentage-point drop in the likelihood children practice writing the letters of the alphabet at least once a week, from 98% to 95%).

The next set of items in Table 4 focuses on the use of worksheets, workbooks, and textbooks in kindergarten classrooms. Daily use of textbooks in kindergarten more than doubled for both reading and math. For instance, only 11% of teachers in 1998 reported using a basal reader daily, compared with 26% of teachers in 2010. We also observe substantial increases in daily use of worksheets, up 17 percentage points for reading and 15 for math. The heightened use of textbooks and worksheets in kindergarten is evident in both half-day and full-day settings.

The first two measures relate to time spent on child-selected activities and time spent on teacher-directed instruction. In 1998, 54% of kindergarten teachers reported that children in their class typically spent about 1 hour or more per day on child-selected activities. By 2010, this figure dropped to 40%. At the same time, the percentage of teachers reporting that their class spends more than 3 hours daily on whole-class activities more than doubled, from 15% in 1998 to 32% in 2010. When looking only at full-day classrooms, we find the drop in child-selected activities is even more pronounced (a 28-percentage-point decrease).

We explore this issue more directly in Table 4 , which presents changes in the use of child-selected activities, more didactic instructional activities, and opportunities for free play and physical movement. We describe these patterns below.

We do find substantial drops in the likelihood classrooms included centers focused on the arts or on science. For example, whereas nearly all kindergarten teachers reported having an art area in 1998 (92%), in 2010 that figure dropped to 71%. The likelihood of offering a dramatic play area, a science or nature area, or a water or sand table each dropped by over 20 percentage points. Taken together, these results echo our earlier findings about drops in exposure to science and the arts. To the extent that the presence of such classroom interest areas or centers corresponds to a more hands-on or exploratory approach to learning, these findings may also suggest changes over this period in instructional approach.

Table 3 presents changes in exposure to particular interest areas. The first four classroom areas shown are the ones most directly linked to literacy and math instruction (e.g., a reading area with books and a math area with manipulatives). All four were very common in 1998, with between 86% and 100% of teachers reporting their classroom included each of these areas. They remained fairly ubiquitous in 2010, although we do observe a 6-percentage-point decrease in the likelihood of offering a listening center.

In stark contrast, when we look at exposure to specific science topics, our results suggest a nearly universal drop in exposure. Figure 2 highlights the percentage of teachers who reported particular science topics are taught in their classroom. For instance, whereas over two thirds of kindergarten teachers in 1998 reported they taught children about dinosaurs at some point in the school year, only a third reported doing so in 2010. Appendix A4 shows similar figures for all science and social studies topics included in the survey. We document significant drops for 13 of 15 science topics, and in the bulk of these, we observe a drop of at least 10 percentage points. For social studies, the patterns are more inconsistent and the drops, when observed, are more modest.

The top panel of Appendix A3 shows analogous results for math skills. The same overall pattern holds. For two thirds of the skills included (16 of 25), we find significant increases in the likelihood the skill was covered at least once a week. We see no significant change in the remaining nine skills. Taken together, these findings suggest a heightened focus on literacy and math skills in kindergarten, with particularly pronounced increases in more advanced tasks.

The top panel of Appendix A2 presents similar figures for all literacy skills included in the survey. Overall, we find sizable increases in nearly all the literacy items included, particularly those that were classified as challenging in the 1998 data (e.g., identifying the main idea and parts of a story, using context clues for comprehension). The only skills for which we observe (modest) declines are relatively basic skills (e.g., alphabet and letter recognition, conventions of print).

Figure 1 presents changes in time spent on six specific literacy and math topics. We highlight these particular items from among the 14 literacy and 25 math skills included in the survey because they were seen as particularly advanced, where advanced skill is determined based on the percentage of kindergarten teachers in 1998 who reported that the skill was never taught in their classroom because it was covered in a later grade. For instance, in 1998, 44% of teachers reported that they never taught “conventional spelling.” This figure plummeted to 17% in 2010. Relatedly, the percentage of teachers who reported teaching conventional spelling on a daily basis rose sharply from 45% to 76%. The same general patterns hold for the other topics highlighted in the figure, which include composing and writing complete sentences; composing stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end; place value; writing math equations; and probability.

Because in 1998 nearly all teachers already reported regular exposure to all academic topics, and particularly to literacy and math, our crude measures of overall exposure fail to accurately capture changes in exposure to these subject areas over time. For that reason, it is also useful to examine more disaggregated data about the frequency with which teachers cover specific topics within each broader curricular category.

Where we do find substantial changes is in time spent on nonacademic subjects, including music, art, dance, theater, and foreign language instruction. In 1998, just over a third of kindergarten teachers reported daily music instruction. This figure dropped by 18 percentage points in 2010, and a similar pattern is evident for art instruction, where the percentage of teachers reporting daily instruction dropped from 27% to 11%. We also document a substantial increase in the likelihood that dance, theater, and foreign language are not taught at all during the kindergarten year. For example, whereas 18% of teachers reported never doing theater activities with their kindergarteners in 1998, in 2010 that figure rose to 50%. Similarly, in 1998 only 11% of teachers reported never teaching dance to their students compared with 37% in 2010. In additional analyses, available upon request, we find that these patterns are quite similar for half-day and full-day kindergarten classrooms.

We do observe an increase in the percentage of teachers reporting daily math instruction (from 83% to 91%). We also find that in both periods, teachers report much less frequent instruction in social studies and science than in literacy and math. Approximately a quarter of teachers report daily social studies lessons, and a fifth report that much exposure to science. We do not observe substantial changes in these figures across waves.

The upper panel of Table 2 presents measures of overall subject matter exposure, showing the percentage of teachers who report daily, weekly, and no exposure to particular subject areas. The top row indicates, for example, that in 1998, nearly all kindergarten teachers (96%) reported teaching reading and language arts daily. Given the ubiquity of literacy instruction in both waves, we are unable to use these particular time use measures to assess whether, on average, literacy instruction has increased over the time period considered, a point we return to in the next section. 4

It is also worth noting that in both periods, the academic skill items were among the skills rated as least important overall. In other words, although beliefs about the importance of academics have increased more than beliefs in other areas, teachers in both periods report other skills, such as self-regulation and social interaction, as most important at school entry. Overall, then, our results suggest a heightened emphasis on academic skills among kindergarten teachers in the later period but fail to show that teachers now value these skills over and above other school readiness skills.

The bottom panel of the table shows the percentage of teachers who believe various school readiness skills are very important or essential for kindergarten. The first thing to note is that in 2010 teachers rated all 13 characteristics as more important than did kindergarten teachers in 1998. However, we document especially pronounced increases in the percentage of teachers who rated academic skills as important for school readiness. For example, the percentage of teachers who reported that knowing the letters of the alphabet was very important or essential more than doubled from 19% in 1998 to 48% in 2010. The percentage of teachers who indicated color and shape identification and counting skills were important rose by 28 and 22 percentage points, respectively. We see smaller increases in the percentage of teachers who rated self-regulation and social skills as very important (approximately 10 to 16 percentage points). The 33-percentage-point increase in the number of teachers who believed it was important to know how to use a pencil or paintbrush stands out. Although this item does not involve specific familiarity with preliteracy or math academic content, it might be considered academic in that using a pencil is prerequisite for more complex writing skills.

The top panel of Table 1 shows responses to a number of questions about academic skills and school readiness. We find increases on all of these. Most strikingly, the percentage of kindergarten teachers who report that they agree or strongly agree that children should learn to read in kindergarten increased sharply from 31% to 80%. We also see substantial increases in the percentage of teachers who think parents should teach their children the alphabet before they start kindergarten as well as the percentage who think children should begin formal reading and math instruction before kindergarten (33- and 30-percentage-point increases, respectively).

The bottom panel of Table 5 compares the frequency of standardized testing reported by kindergarten teachers in 2010 to that of first-grade teachers in 1999. Recall that in 1998, kindergarten teachers were not asked this question. We find that in 2010, just under 30% of kindergarten teachers report using standardized tests at least once per month. By comparison, only 11% of first-grade teachers in 1999 reported using standardized tests this frequently. On the dimension of standardized test use, our results suggest that kindergarten classrooms in the later period devote considerably more time to standardized tests than first-grade teachers did 11 years earlier.

Although kindergarten classrooms did become more similar to first-grade classrooms, kindergarten teachers were still somewhat more likely to have daily social studies instruction and substantially more likely to have daily art and music instruction.

Taken together, these findings suggest that in the late ’90s, kindergarten and first-grade classrooms differed in their focus and time use. Since then, both grade levels experienced reductions in time spent on the arts and potentially science as well.

Similarly, in the bottom panel of Table 3 , we show that first-grade teachers reported large drops in the frequency with which their students use materials related to nonacademic instruction. For example, the likelihood a first-grade teacher reported using art materials in his or her classroom on a weekly basis dropped from 80% to 58%, and the likelihood of using science materials weekly dropped from 42% to 29%. Similarly, the likelihood that first-grade teachers reported their students never use musical instruments or cooking materials each increased by 19 percentage points.

Turning to changes in first-grade teachers’ reports of subject instruction between 1999 and 2011, we find patterns that mirror those observed among kindergarten teachers. In other words, we see smaller (but still significant) drops over time in first-grade teachers reporting daily music or art instruction and increases in teachers reporting they never teach dance, theater, or foreign language.

The bottom panel of Table 2 shows the frequency of subject instruction reported by first-grade teachers across the two cohorts. We begin by comparing kindergarten with first grade only in the 1998 wave. We find large differences between these two grades, especially with respect to time spent on nonacademic subjects. For instance, in 1998, 34% of kindergarten teachers reported daily exposure to music, and 27% reported daily exposure to art. In contrast, among first-grade teachers in 1999, those figures were 7% and 4%, respectively. This suggests that in the late ’90s, kindergarteners were 5 times more likely to experience daily music lessons and nearly 7 times more likely to experience daily art than first graders. Roughly 60% of kindergarten teachers reported teaching dance/creative movement on a weekly basis in 1998, and about 40% reported doing a weekly theater/drama activity. Among first-grade teachers, the rates were far lower (25% and 11%, respectively). Although the differences we describe could, in theory, reflect changes between the 1998 and 1999 school years that applied to both kindergarten and first-grade classrooms, we assume that we are measuring differences in children’s typical learning experiences as they progressed one school year from kindergarten to first grade.

Our second research question aims to directly address the question posed in the paper’s title. The recent release of first-grade data for the most recent wave of the ECLS data allows us to examine the extent to which the first-grade experience has changed, comparing responses from first-grade teachers in the 1999-2000 school year and the 2011-2012 school year. We are also able to compare how much kindergarten in 2010 mirrors first grade in 1999.

Differences in Patterns Across Schools

The preceding analyses highlighted substantial changes across nearly all measures examined. To assess whether these patterns of change differed across schools based on their demographic composition, we ran a set of exploratory logistic regressions. Table 6 presents results from these analyses, in which we consider 15 measures that have changed meaningfully between 1998 and 2010 (e.g., beliefs about reading in kindergarten, use of textbooks, time spent on art) and assess whether changes were more pronounced in schools serving higher proportions of children eligible for FRPL or children who are non-White. Results from similar logistic regressions for all measures presented in Tables 1 through 5 are presented in supplementary online appendices. The pattern of those results is largely similar to the pattern described here.

Table 6 Logit Models Predicting Changes in Teachers’ Beliefs and Assessment Practices 1998 to 2010, by School Demographic Composition Measures

We present the odds of each kindergarten outcome for each school type in each period. For instance, the first column examines the likelihood that teachers agree or strongly agree that incoming kindergarteners need to know the alphabet. We see that in 1998, the odds of a teacher holding this belief was .51 among teachers working in schools in the highest quartile with respect to children eligible for FRPL. In schools serving relatively fewer eligible children, the odds are only .34. The statistically significant difference indicates that teachers serving more school lunch-eligible children were more likely to hold this belief.

Above, we already showed that on average, teachers in 2010 were far more likely to hold this belief than their counterparts in 1998. The results here indicate that although these increases were not isolated to those teachers serving the most school lunch-eligible children—we see substantial increases across both groups—they were more pronounced in schools serving the most low-income children. By 2010, the “gap” in this belief for schools serving more low-income children had broadened substantially, from 0.17 to 1.00. Patterns are quite similar when we consider schools based on their racial composition. To summarize, then, the results from this first column indicate that in both periods, teachers working in schools serving more FRPL-eligible or non-White children were significantly more likely to believe alphabet knowledge was critical for incoming kindergarteners. While both groups experienced substantial increases in this belief by 2010, the gap between them had broadened substantially.

It is important to note that our approach to examining interactions is based on the odds ratio metric and that had we used a probability metric, the interaction terms of interest may suggest different patterns (Buis, 2010). As an illustration, the raw probability that a kindergarten teacher indicated that knowing the alphabet was important or very important in 1998 was .33 among teachers working in schools with the most children eligible for FRPL, compared to .27 for schools serving lower percentages of lunch-eligible children. By 2010, the analogous figures were .69 and .60. For this particular outcome, using a probability metric rather than an odds measure still suggests that teachers working in schools serving the most low-income children experienced a larger increase in this outcome over time (.37 versus .33). However, this difference is modest and not statistically significant. Given the potential for a different interpretation depending on metric, we also considered the raw probabilities for all outcomes considered in Table 6 and briefly summarize those trends after presenting the results based on the odds metric.

Turning back to the findings presented in Table 6, we see that the patterns for most variables mirror those described above for alphabet knowledge. In 25 of 30 cases, we find that teachers in schools serving more low-income and more non-White children are more likely to report higher academic expectations, didactic approaches to teaching, and fewer centers for hands-on learning (although these gaps vary in magnitude and are statistically significant for only 16 of 30 cases). By 2010, we observe across-the-board increases in academic beliefs, focus on assessments, classroom structure, and use of didactic instructional approaches. As with the earlier period, teachers in schools serving more low-income and more non-White children are still more likely to hold these beliefs; in all 30 cases, the direction of the difference is consistent with this pattern, and these differences are statistically significant in 21 of 30 cases.

To fully address our research question, we examine whether the changes in the kindergarten experience over this period systematically differed in schools serving high proportions of children eligible for FRPL or children who are non-White. Specifically, we test whether the gaps across schools, which were observed across both periods, broadened or narrowed over time. We do find that gaps broadened substantially with respect to teacher beliefs and textbook use. For instance, the “marginal effect” of being in a school serving a high percentage of FRPL-eligible children with respect to believing most children should learn to read in kindergarten is 0.28 in 1998 but 2.87 in 2010. Marginal effects for daily textbook use for math increased from .04 to .16. In other words, gaps that were already present in 1998 were exacerbated by 2010.

Notably, other gaps, for instance those with respect to having access to particular learning centers (e.g., art area, science area) actually narrowed. For instance, in 1998, kindergarten teachers in schools serving more non-White children were less likely to report their classroom had an art area relative to those teachers serving lower percentages of non-White children. Although this pattern was still present in 2010, the gap had narrowed substantially. The same pattern also emerges for a teacher reporting his or her classroom had a science area. However, even in those cases where we observe narrowing, we still saw across-the-board drops in access to these centers, and we find gaps that suggest schools serving fewer low-income and non-White children are still more likely to offer these types of centers.

Taken together, the results shown in Table 6 show that in 1998, there were significant differences in kindergarten teachers’ beliefs and practices based on schools’ demographic composition, with those schools serving more low-income and non-White children generally reporting a higher focus on academic and didactic instruction. Our findings indicate that the large average changes we document in this paper occurred across the board. In 2010, the differences across school demographics were still present and in many cases were even larger than before, although in a few cases we do also find some narrowing.

As mentioned above, our analysis focuses on the odds ratio metric, which can produce a different pattern of interaction results and indeed does for some of the outcomes considered in Table 6. That said, when we consider changes over time in the raw percentage of teachers reporting each of these beliefs or practices, we still find that teachers in schools serving the most children eligible for FRPL and those serving the most non-White children reported greater increases with respect to textbook use and teacher-directed instruction and also find larger drops in music, art, dramatic play, and so on.

In additional models, available upon request, we also examined whether our findings were sensitive to more flexible regression specifications. These included models in which all covariates were interacted with the indicator for the 2010 cohort, to allow for changes over time in the relationship between school and teacher characteristics and kindergarten classroom characteristics, and models in which we simultaneously considered school poverty and school racial composition. These models all yielded substantively similar results, although larger standard errors led to fewer statistically significant coefficients.