Long before the first day of school in first grade, some children may be far behind their peers. That was true even before the pandemic, but a heightened awareness of learning loss has added a sense of urgency to the matter of how to close achievement gaps in the early grades.
The vast disparity in skills that students bring with them when they first go to school is one of the key factors that struck Sen. Susan Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, in her 17 years as a public school teacher and principal. She also discovered that the gaps tended to widen over time.
“One of the things that really made me sad was watching a first-grade student not know how to hold a pencil or hold the book upside down,” said Rubio, “while the student next to him is writing in complete sentences, reading at a second-grade level and talking about the science experiments they did over the summer.”
That inequity is one of the key reasons Rubio introduced Senate Bill 70 , which would require all students in California to complete one year of kindergarten before entering the 1st grade, beginning with the 2022–23 school year. Kindergarten is not […]
PHOTO: ANDREW REED/EDSOURCE
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