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Kindergarten: struggle at the starting line

Some kids begin far ahead, others far behind. The teachers' daunting task: Balance out the inequity.

ST. PETERSBURG - The boy in the button-down shirt flicked the metal clip on his clipboard three times, the snaps echoing sharply in Alison Burnett's kindergarten class.

He was trying to write the word "fish." But he needed help with the f.

And the i.

And the s.

And the h.

Just two weeks left of kindergarten, and he knows only half of his letters.

Burnett, 29, knelt beside him. But then another boy wanted help with the word "swimming." A 7-year-old raced by with the stuffed bear she was supposed to keep in her cubby. A girl complained that someone had broken her crayon box.

By the time the teacher turned back to the boy in the button-down shirt, he still hadn't written anything. So she traced the letter f with her finger, and he produced the f. Then the classroom tornado pulled her away again. And the boy sat there, not knowing what to do, his dark eyes pensive.

At Campbell Park Elementary and in schools across Florida, teachers are tugging 5- and 6-year-olds through a learning process that is more reading and writing boot camp than the finger painting and housekeeping play of years gone by.

The academic demands on kindergarten children are increasing dramatically, even as the gap in their skill levels grows wider.

Kindergarten teachers in Pinellas County say they have kids who don't know any of their letters sitting next to children who can read at a second-grade level. Students who are too immature have no time to grow up. They will be left behind.

Most of those who struggle are from low-income families, and a disproportionate number are African-American. Many of these children arrive in kindergarten with one-quarter of the vocabulary of their peers, according to the Education Trust, a nonprofit organization in Washington D.C.

Educators say this disparity is the first manifestation of the achievement gap - the academic divide that separates black and white students in most Florida classrooms.

Burnett's job is to bridge the differences - a task that often seems impossible.

Administrators at Campbell Park Elementary acknowledge they are struggling with the academic gap between black and white students.

Sixty-seven percent of the school's white students who took the FCAT last year were reading at or above grade level. Only 17 percent of the black students who took the test met that standard.

Burnett is aware of the numbers and the way they are filtering into her kindergarten classroom. The gap is one reason she is expected to accomplish more with every student regardless of the differences in their ability levels.

Burnett says she sets goals and tries to achieve them, but things get in the way, including high turnover. She started in August with 23 students. As the school year wore on, she lost nine kids and gained seven new ones. The 21 students left at the end were a diverse bunch - 10 whites, six blacks, one Hispanic, one Indian and three biracial students.

Burnett, an intense woman with blond hair, pale blue eyes and a patrician nose, is in her first year as a kindergarten teacher. But she spent seven years teaching prekindergarten, where she worked with many low-income children.

She remembers the first time she formally assessed this year's class.

Some could write their name. Others couldn't. Some had been in prekindergarten programs. Others had stayed at home. One lived with four siblings in a single-parent home. Another was adopted because his mother was a drug addict.

In the early months, Burnett focused much of her energy on the students who knew the least. She worked on individual letters in class and broke the struggling kids into smaller groups. An aide -- available because Campbell Park is a Title 1 school serving a large percentage of poor families -- came 45 minutes a day and spent much of it with the students in the middle.

In December, Burnett began compiling a list of kids who were in danger of failing kindergarten. At that point, three children - one black, one biracial, one white - were on the list. Two more - one black, one white - were borderline.

The district expects kindergarteners to know all of their letters and more than half of their letter sounds by the end of the year. They have to be able to write a sentence, come up with rhymes, identify shapes and do simple addition and subtraction.

Camille Rentz, a Pinellas County corrections deputy and single mother of five, was surprised to learn from Burnett that her daughter, Christina, was struggling. Christina, who is African-American, knew half of her upper- and lowercase letters, but her progress was slow.

Rentz, 33, already had put four children through kindergarten.

"I was like, "you're joking right?' ' she said. "We'd been working with her at home on her letters. Are you sure she didn't freeze up?"

Burnett's reply: Christina would have to show her that she knew the letters to pass.

Dakota Houle, who is white, had been in a day care setting before entering kindergarten. She arrived in Burnett's classroom knowing only six letters. By December, she knew half of her lowercase and uppercase letters. But as with Christina, Burnett was concerned that Dakota was not catching on fast enough.

"She wasn't prepared and I think that's why she was behind at first," said Dakota's mother, Joyce Houle, 36, who is studying to be a medical assistant. "When she told me she was having a hard time, I was like, "I don't know what to do.' "

Burnett suggested Houle purchase magnetic letters to place on the fridge. Put four up and ask Dakota to identify them. Then add four more.

Rentz also felt the pressure. She said it was hard to find time to work with Christina with five kids at different schools and a full-time job.

"It's like they're a little adult now," she said. "They're taking away the chance to be a child anymore. They're teaching them to pass a test."

Educators say there is a good reason why more is expected from today's kindergarten students: Those who fall behind early rarely catch up. That is especially true for reading, which affects all other subjects.

"It's called being behind the eight-ball," said Robert Pianta, a University of Virginia education professor who has studied kindergarteners. "It just snowballs from there on for these kids."

Against this backdrop, teachers such as Burnett perform a difficult balancing act. They must find a way - and the time - to get students from every kind of background to the finish line by the end of the year.

Research shows that low-income students - who are disproportionately African-American - are less likely to be read to at home and more likely to watch large amounts of television. They have a greater chance of being raised by a single parent and less exposure to high-quality day care.

All of those factors contribute to the extreme academic diversity in many kindergarten classrooms.

Margaret Garcia, a kindergarten teacher at Lakewood Elementary School, taught a class in which only one of her 21 children came to school with a lunch box. The rest received a free or reduced price lunch. She predicted that maybe three would meet the district's expectation of being able to write a sentence or more by the end of the year.

Maria Schemel, a kindergarten teacher at Perkins Elementary, said the abilities of her students were so diverse that she broke the class into eight small groups -- from a child still working on letter sounds to a child reading at a second-grade level.

"Middle-income families always think, "Oh, that's too bad about those low-income children, that they come in unprepared,' but it's a drain on resources," said Amy Wilkins, a partner at the Education Trust, which is working to close the achievement gap. "Teachers are forced to help these kids who aren't ready to catch up, so they can't help their classmates who are in the middle excel. Everyone's affected."

One afternoon, Burnett turned the lights off for nap time and grabbed a book about a kindergartener who visits a farm. She told the children to take a seat in front of her rocking chair.

An African-American boy sat at his table ignoring her, his back to the class as he colored Power Rangers. Red ones. Blue ones. Yellow ones.

Day after day, the child colored Power Rangers in class. He sometimes paid attention to her instruction, but more often he sat off to the side.

He threw numerous tantrums -- loud, crying scenes -- when he didn't get his way, but not as many as he did in the beginning of the year. He also could be endearing, opening his arms wide for a hug or asking questions about love bugs.

Burnett sometimes let him wander the class while other children sat in front of her or at their tables. But now she expected him to stop coloring. He wailed loudly, setting his head down on the table.

"You need to make a good choice," she said. "You can color later."

"Come on, look at me," she said, turning his face to meet hers. She tugged on his wrist, trying to lift him out of his seat. But he is a large child and stood his ground, his wails turning to screams as if he had lost everything in the world.

His face turned wet, the tears hitting dry lips over missing front teeth. She pulled, he resisted. She pulled some more, he held onto the table. Then, just like that, his resistance turned into acquiescence and he let her lead him across the room.

"Thank you," she said, handing him a tissue. "Do you want your blanket? Here, wipe your face."

Burnett spent more time easing him through tantrums than in one-on-one time learning his letters. Earlier in the day, she had passed him holding a book with a V on it and he had been unable to identify the letter for her.

Burnett couldn't talk about him because his mother didn't want his name used in this story, but he clearly represented a challenge for her. She talked of loving him and wanting the best for him, but his emotional outbursts often pulled her away from working with other students.

He had thrown two other tantrums just that day. Once the class aide spent 10 of her 45 minutes in class trying to calm him. Later, he went through the lunch line and took an entree, then another sandwich. He cried when he was told he would have to put the sandwich back.

"I guess I'm not having my lunch," Burnett sighed, as she went over to talk to him. She pulled his face to hers so they looked in each other's eyes again, trying to get him to understand.

Minutes later, she gave up and headed to the teacher's lounge to eat her own lunch, leaving him to work through it on his own.

"Jonah, Fatima, Tanner, go get your book bags," Burnett called.

The three children jumped up from their naps and gathered around Burnett at a table in the dark of nap time. She handed them a first-grade book, Who Lives in this Hole? illuminated by light from the window.

For Burnett, giving each of her kindergarteners individual time means taking time from other activities. She and other teachers have interrupted nap time and cut recess to 10 minutes a day to squeeze in all of the required lessons and assessments.

"There's so much the county wants you to get done in a day. It's hard," Burnett said.

Her focus has changed since the beginning of the year. She has shifted from spending more time with the lowest achievers to targeting the middle-level kids, those on the cusp of meeting the district's expectations.

"At the beginning, the goal is to get them all where they need to be for the (evaluations)," Burnett said one day as she took a lunch break. "But now, the kids who know 20 something letters, there are 17 days of school left. It's not that I stop working with them, but at this point, my goals change. I know they're not going to get to 50 (the district requirement for upper- and lowercase letters). Maybe they'll get to 30."

During the second half of the year, Burnett divided some of the highest achievers into three reading groups. A fourth group, with kids who were not ready to read, targeted letter sounds. Those who weren't ready for the letter sounds, she said, got individual time.

But during several visits to her classroom, she seemed pressed to fit in the individual attention. Even getting to the groups was a struggle.

As three higher-level readers opened their books, a boy with blond hair started kicking Christina. And Tia and Dakota started playing tug-of-war with Tia's leopard-print blanket. And the boy in the button-down shirt began kicking a book bag hanging on Burnett's rocking chair.

Burnett took the blanket away from the girls, pulled the boy with blond hair up from his nap time spot and admonished the boy in the button-down shirt. But the boy with blond hair continued to kick the bottoms of Christina's sneakers.

"Hold on," Burnett said, angrily.

"Can we read it now?" asked Fatima, but Burnett was getting up again.

"I'm sorry guys, but hold on," she said to the trio. She got up and took the boy with blond hair by the arm, leading him to another class across the hall.

"Okay, sorry," she said, returning moments later. "We're on the squirrel."

When they arrived in August, seven of the 14 kindergarteners who stayed with Burnett all year knew zero to 12 letters. By the last day of school, 10 of 14 had learned the alphabet and could write a simple sentence, which means they were ready for first grade.

Four of those children didn't know all of their letters and couldn't write a sentence.

Burnett acknowledged that not everyone succeeded in her class, but she thinks she did the best she could under the circumstances.

The white and Hispanic students performed best in the class. The black students performed mostly in the middle or slightly below expectations.

Of the six black children in the class, one may or may not be retained and five will go on to first grade. But three of the six are still behind district expectations in writing or letter sounds.

Burnett likes to talk about the long-shots, the kids who seemed to be struggling but took the biggest leaps academically. Burnett said those who find a way to catch up and pass many of their peers typically get help at home.

One is Dakota Houle, who struggled with her letters in the beginning. Dakota's mother said she placed magnetic letters on the fridge and bought Dakota a Leap Pad phonics computer after her conference with Burnett. Dakota spent hours on it and is now well above some of her peers.

Christina Rentz also mastered most of her letters, but she remains slightly below the district's expectations in letter sounds and writing.

Christina will go to first grade next year, and Burnett has passed the baton to another teacher.

-- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.