Comments by Chris - August 31, 2010

It is natural in a school that runs from Age 3 to Grade 12 that the older students draw more of the public attention. They are beginning to move out into the world. Their athletic feats and academic achievements are more public, often garnering newspaper headlines and television time. In many ways, these students have begun telling their own life stories.
Yet, tucked away in a recent New York Times article, is a reminder of the roots of such success. And this particular piece – provocatively headlined “The Case for The $320,000 Kindergarten Teacher” -- poked a hole in what had come to be seen as settled science.
For some time, studies had suggested that superior early childhood teaching gave students a leg up over students who had lacked good kindergarten education. However, that advantage, researchers believed, seemed to disappear in tests taken in latter grades.
Now a new study, conducted by a Harvard economist, looks beyond grade school test performance and asks how students fare later in their lives. The result: A big pat on the back for the great work of great kindergarten teachers everywhere.
Among the findings: Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college. They were less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. And they were earning more.
The Times article said:
“All else equal, they were making about an extra $100 a year at age 27 for every percentile they had moved up the test-score distribution over the course of kindergarten. A student who went from average to the 60th percentile — a typical jump for a 5-year-old with a good teacher — could expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than a student who remained at the average. Over time, the effect seems to grow, too.
“The economists don’t pretend to know the exact causes. But it’s not hard to come up with plausible guesses. Good early education can impart skills that last a lifetime — patience, discipline, manners, perseverance. The tests that 5-year-olds take may pick up these skills, even if later multiple-choice tests do not.’’
All this is more evidence of what we have known instinctively and done effectively as we’ve continued to invest in our Early Childhood Center and Kindergarten programs: the seeds for success in our Upper School are sown, more than others might have guessed, in the efforts of our students’ earliest teachers. And one could presume that, beyond the economic advantages imparted by a superior kindergarten education, theirs are lives filled with more art, music, enjoyment.
Go Tiny Torreys!

Related Stories:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/business/economy/28leonhardt.html...
http://torreytimes.ljcds.org/profiles/blogs/lifers-go-back-to-the-f...