This is a good news story about Ontario's Full-Day Kindergarten Program and I'm happy
to be able to tell it.
I m Dr. Gordon Cleveland, an economist from University of Toronto and I specialize in
studying early childhood education and care. In the fall of 2019, the Elementary Teachers'
Federation of Ontario approached me, they were concerned about a wide range of Kindergarten
reforms that the provincial government, a Conservative government, was discussing. These were reforms
that, if implemented, could be quite negative for children in Kindergarten. The provincial
government was apparently interested in these reforms because they could save money, not
because they were positive for children's education.
The Elementary Teachers' Federation asked me to take a look at these proposals and evaluate
them - evaluate their likely impact on children and families.
As you probably know Full-Day Kindergarten is a non-mandatory publicly-funded educational
program provided through local public schools to children in Ontario. It started, the Full-Day
Kindergarten part of it, in September 2010, and was rolled out across Ontario in 5 years.
It's every child's right to receive this early education and care during the school year
in the two years prior to formal schooling in grade 1. It s accessible, research-based,
of good quality and much loved by parents and children. In addition, it's envied by
many across the country.
Ontario's Full-Day Kindergarten program has a unique design. It is a two-year program.
Typically children have the same teaching team for both years of Kindergarten. This
provides continuity and stability. The educational partnership - the team - is made up of a university-educated
teacher and a college-educated early childhood educator. Kindergarten has a play- and inquiry-based
curriculum recognized as appropriate for learning and child development at this age level.
The average class size in Full-Day Kindergarten is 26 children with the two educators, that
gives you a ratio that allows for small group work and individualized attention to student
needs.
Back in 2019, according to press reports and insider information, the government was considering
a number of changes To Ontario's Full-Day Kindergarten Program:
They were looking at possibly increasing class sizes;
They were looking at reducing the number of, or eliminating university-educated teachers;
They were looking at replacing full-day Kindergarten with a half-day program;
and, they even considered abolishing public-school-based Kindergarten, and replacing it with subsidized
care in child care centres.
What I did was to have a careful look at research on Kindergartens and early childhood education.
There is good quality research that addresses most of these ideas these possible reforms
- and I've briefly summarized the lessons we can draw from a range of the most important
studies in my report back to the Elementary Teachers' Federation.
The report, and the executive summary, concentrate on ten issues ten statements about what we
can learn from this research about Ontario's Full-Day Kindergarten and I summarize the
research that supports each one of these statements.
So, first statement. As many of us know, early childhood is a vital time for investing in
children's development. Children develop quickly and well at this age with the right supports.
Second, Kindergarten is good for children, and it is also good for parents and society.
Third, when Kindergarten is of particularly high quality, its positive effects are even
better and stronger. Fourth, because Kindergarten is the first
time when children from all backgrounds participate in education and care together, Kindergarten
has a big role to play in reducing social and educational inequalities.
Fifth, research evidence shows that Full-Day Kindergarten Programs are better than half-day
Kindergarten programs. Sixth, Ontario's unique well-designed model
of Full-Day Kindergarten is especially positive for children and for parents.
Seventh, Full-Day Kindergarten is often where children's educational needs, special educational
needs, are first discovered and addressed and Full-Day Kindergarten reduces the need
for special educational help in later grades. Eight, increasing class sizes will not improve
Kindergarten experiences for children; instead it will lower kindergarten quality.
Nine, lowering requirements for teachers to have educational qualifications will not improve
Kindergarten instead it will lower Kindergarten quality.
Tenth and finally, the cost of Ontario's Full-Day Kindergarten is stable. When we examine the
cost per full-time-equivalent student, we can see that Ontario s Full-Day Kindergarten
is already delivered in a cost-effective way.
My conclusion is that Ontario's Full-Day Kindergarten program is very good and well-designed. Of
course, there are improvements that can still be made and I do discuss some of them, but
the fundamental model is very good and should be preserved and enhanced. Reforms that attack
Full-Day Kindergarten should be vigorously rebuffed by children, parents, educators and
the general public.
Now, I don t have time to go through and summarize all of the research that is discussed in this
report. In any case, I d rather you had a good look on your own at the executive summary,
and then maybe at the main report.
But, let me give you a taste of a few highlights to encourage you to explore a bit further.
There was a careful random assignment study of kindergartens in Tennessee, a rather famous
study called The Tennessee Star Study, it was analyzed by Professor Raj Chetty, an economist
from Harvard University. He found that a child who attends a high-quality Kindergarten will
have cognitive and social-emotional advantages that are likely to raise that student's lifetime
earnings by as much as $40,000 dollars and that's in U.S. dollars in comparison to a
low-quality program. The point really is that good quality Kindergarten has benefits much
greater than its costs.
Professor Harris Cooper from Duke University summarized a wide range of results on full-day
Kindergarten. He found that children s verbal and math achievement was significantly higher
in full-day Kindergarten programs, compared to half-day programs.
Professor James Elicker and Professor Sangeeta Mathur from the Department of Child Development
and Family Studies at Perdue University did a random assignment study on full-day versus
part-day Kindergarten. They concluded that because of a greater amount of time spent
in small-group and child-initiated activities, full-day Kindergarten programs were found
to be better at easing children s transition to first grade, and less stressful for children
than half-day programs
Professor Elizabeth Dhuey, who is an economist from the University of Toronto has found in
a number of studies that full-day Kindergarten encourages and supports full-time work for
parents.
Professor Janette Pelletier, who is from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
and her colleague James Corter from Columbia University, studied 600 Kindergarten students
in Peel Region, just outside Toronto comparing those in Ontario's new Full-Day program to
those still in the half-day program. They found that Full-Day Kindergarten created strong
positive effects on vocabulary, early reading ability, on early math skills and on social-emotional
abilities up through grade 2 at the end of the study.
My conclusion from analyzing the existing research on Kindergarten, especially Full-Day
Kindergarten and particularly Ontario's unique model of Full-Day Kindergarten is that this
is a very good program. The evidence we have about the impact of Ontario's Full-Day Kindergarten
on children's cognitive and social-emotional development is strongly positive. It s good
for children and it's good for parents too.
Existing research gives no basis for believing that larger class sizes in Kindergarten, or
a teaching team without a certified teacher would improve Ontario's Kindergartens. Quite
the opposite.
The priority for all of us should be to make sure that Ontario's Kindergarten model fulfills
all of its promise, while we celebrate its fundamentally successful design. Let's build
on the success of this very good program.
Thank you.