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: Passed Both the State Assembly and the State Senate Aug. 20th
STILL On Governor’s Desk For Signature to Become Law or For his Veto.
Quickly pass this alert on to others who might respond and then take the suggested action below.
CALL Governor Brown IMMEDIATELY, even if you have already done so, at (916) 445-2841. It is best to call between 9:00 AM and 4:00 PM.
Ask that the Governor:
“Please VETO AB 1444. I oppose mandatory kindergarten. Please keep kindergarten voluntary.”
Notes:
- Call as a parent and citizen. This bill directly affects all families with young children.
- It is always best to call between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm.
- Emails are a waste of time as they are rarely read in the Governor’s office.
- 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.
Information Included In This E-mail:
A. Summary of Concern
B. Opposition Points
C. Summary
A. 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 AB 1444 would require 13 years of schooling rather than the current 12 years of required 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 over 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. Finally, the last step would be to make institutionalized preschool (pre-kindergarten) universally mandatory for every 3 and 4 year-old child.
B. Opposition Points:
AB 1444 would damage children.
Beginning formal education at age 5 or younger causes unintended harmful consequences, some of which 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 begin their formal education at age 5 (or younger) disappear in just a few years, when compared to those children who begin later.
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. Consequently, boys do not do as well as girls in the early years, at which time many experience failures leading to frustration, chronic misbehavior or withdrawal, and for some, substance abuse and later criminal behavior.
For the sake of their own children, every parent should read “Early Childhood Education: Research Summaries of the Effects of Universal Kindergarten” Updated 2014.
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 program that would be forced upon all children by the government.