From: Roy Hanson — Family Protection Ministries and Mike Smith — HSLDA
Bill: AB 1444 (as amended 4/22/14)
Mandatory Kindergarten
Author: State Assemblymember Joan Buchanan
Position: Strongly OPPOSE
Status: Hearing set for this Wednesday (April 30, 2014) in the California State Assembly Education Committee.
Our parental rights and home school freedoms in California are under attack this year. Your help is key to the defense of our freedoms; so it is critical that you read every alert and take the suggested action in each one ASAP. Quickly pass this and future alerts on to others who might respond.
Summary of Concern:
Under current law, parents can choose to have their child skip kindergarten and begin at the 1st grade. If AB 1444 were to pass, it would eliminate this current parental choice by mandating that every child attend kindergarten for one school year before they could be admitted to the first grade. This would go into effect at the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year.
Under AB 1444, parents who would have chosen to delay their child’s entrance into formal education and skip kindergarten, would be forced to choose between either:
(a) starting their child’s formal education one year earlier, before they feel it is best for their child, or (b) graduating their child a year later than they would under current law.
This is because 13 years of schooling would be required under AB 1444 rather than the current 12 years of schooling.
The requirements of AB 1444 would apply to all pupils in both public schools and in private schools, including homeschools.
Advocates of extending government control of all children from birth will be able to use passage of AB 1444 as an incremental step toward establishing seamless, cradle-to-grave government-controlled education and development programs.
Passage of AB 1444 would be followed by the next incremental legislative step — making institutionalized preschool (pre-kindergarten) for every 3 and 4 year-old child universally available to all children and then the next step – making it universally mandatory for every 3 and 4 year-old child.
Information Included In This E-mail:
A. Action Items
B. Opposition Points
C. Summary
A. Action Item:
1) CALL IMMEDIATELY (No later than 3:00 pm – this Tuesday, April 29th) the member of the Assembly Education Committee according to the first letter of your Last Name as indicated in the alphabetized list below.
TELL THEM:
“Please vote no on AB 1444 as recently amended. I oppose mandatory Kindergarten. Please keep Kindergarten voluntary.”
Notes:
- Call as a parent and citizen. This bill directly affects all families with young children.
- Emails are a waste of time as they are rarely read in Legislative offices.
- Do not disclose the source of this Alert. All bills are available on the Internet.
- Calls are most effective in this time-limited situation.
• Pass this on to your friends, church, school, and group.
• Pray for a proper outcome. - For Action Item above, please call the member of the Assembly Education Committee according to the first letter of your last name as indicated in the following list:
A-B
Joan Buchanan
Phone: 916-319-2016
C-E
Kristin Olsen
Phone: 916-319-2012
F-H
Rocky Chavez
Phone: 916-319-2076
I-L
Lorena Gonzalez
Phone: 916-319-2080
M-Q
Adrin Nazarian
Phone: 916-319-2046
R-S
Shirley Weber
Phone: 916-319-2079
T-Z
Das Williams
Phone: 916-319-2037
B. Opposition Points:
AB 1444 would damage children. Beginning formal education at age 5 or younger causes unintended harm to children, some of which can last a lifetime. Research* indicates that early formal childhood education not only causes both physical and behavioral long-term problems but that it also does not improve the child’s potential for being a better student later on.
Research* demonstrates that:
Gains experienced by children who began their formal education at age 5 (or younger) disappear in just a few years.
These same children, however, experience long-lasting adverse effects on their physical, behavioral and educational development, including life-long vision impairment, and for many, detriments to mathematics and nonacademic readiness skills.
Boys are especially damaged by early entrance (age 5 and younger) into formal education. Boys’ cognitive and verbal skill development significantly lags behind that of girls at this age and do not do as well in the early years, where many experience failures leading to frustration, and for some, substance abuse and later criminal behavior.
For the sake of your own children, every parent should read “Early Childhood Education: Research Summaries of the Effects of Universal Kindergarten” Updated 2014 at http://www.childandfamilyprotection.org/Early-Childhood-Education-Research-Summaries.html
AB 1444 would diminish the parental rights of all parents. Under AB 1444, parents who choose to delay their child’s entrance into kindergarten, will be forced to undergo a time and financial penalty of adding a year of required schooling before graduation. Enrollment into kindergarten prior to the first grade must remain optional for parents.
AB 1444 would decrease beneficial parental contact with their children. An extra year of development outside of school can be critical for a child at this early age. Carl Zinsmeister, Adjunct Research Associate at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, says, “Declining parental attachment is an extremely serious risk to children today. The verdict of enormous psychological literature is that time spent with the parent is the very clearest correlate of healthy child development.” Parents should continue to have the authority to decide what is best for their children.
C. SUMMARY:
- Rushing children into formal education by effectively lowering the age at which children begin formal education by mandating Kindergarten will exact a heavy toll on the development of many children and will weaken the role of parents in their lives. This is diametrically opposed to the message parents are routinely given, that parents need to be more involved in their children’s lives. However, parents cannot be more involved when the state either encourages or requires children to be with their parents for less time. Research supports later rather than earlier entry of children into institutionalized settings for educational development to be the most beneficial.
- AB 1444 encroaches on the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children. It ignores the long-standing presumption that parents act in the best interest of their children, by requiring parents to enroll their children in Kindergarten rather than allowing them the choice specified in current law. It disregards the parent’s understanding of what would be the best course of action for his own child’s education and development. It is a detrimental one size fits all that would be forced upon all children by the government.