One in eight children now spend two years in kindergarten before first grade – the first year in a developmental kindergarten class like Shannon Murton has taught in Haslett for 17 years. (Courtesy photo)

By Ron French (Bridge)

One in eight Michigan kindergarteners now take two years of kindergarten. That’s a financial boon to families with young children and schools, but a $127 million bill to the state for an extra year of schooling with unknown academic impact.

In essence, families and schools are stepping in where Lansing hasn’t — adding a 14th year to students’ traditional 13-year school career by enrolling children in “developmental kindergarten” that leads into traditional kindergarten, or by taking two years of regular kindergarten classes.

The surge in two-year kindergarten programs in the state is startling both because of its speed, and because it is happening without any official state policy change.

The two-year kindergarten programs are popular among families, with officials in several districts telling Bridge they have waiting lists.

Still, discrepancies in the growth of the programs are criticized by some early childhood leaders, who question whether the classes — overwhelmingly enrolling white, non-poor students — risk widening the state achievement gap. Skeptics say they also wonder whether school districts’ motives in marketing these untested programs are more about collecting an extra year of state money for each student, than about education.

“We have a 14th year of school now. I’ve been waiting for years for someone [in Lansing] to notice,” said Sean LaRosa, executive director of early childhood services at Livingston Educational Service Agency in Livingston County. “It’s like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” – no one wants to say he’s buck naked.”

Unproven but popular

The number of kindergartners spending two years in public school before first grade (categorized by the state as kindergarten retentions) increased by 21 percent in the past four years. Over this same period, retention in grades one through 12 dropped by 14 percent across Michigan.

The majority of kids being retained this year appear to be among the 15,768 children who turned 5 between the Sept. 1 cutoff for traditional kindergarten and Dec. 1. Most are enrolled in what is generically called developmental kindergarten, a typically full-day program that follows the same school schedule as higher elementary grades.

The state considers developmental kindergarten and regular kindergarten to be the same, and pays school districts the same $8,111 per student foundation allowance.

Referred to by different names in different districts, such as “young 5s” or “transitional kindergarten,” the classes usually follow a similar curriculum to traditional kindergarten, but at a slower pace.

Shannon Murton, developmental kindergarten teacher in Haslett, a suburban community near Lansing, told Bridge her goal is to get her class of young 5-year-olds through about half the academic curriculum as the district covers in traditional kindergarten classes.

“The rigor of kindergarten has increased so much, a lot of parents feel their children are not ready yet,” Murton said. “When you’re lucky enough to have a child that lands in the right age-range, it’s a nice transition.”

Rather than being among the youngest children in traditional kindergarten, developmental kindergarten gives kids with fall birthdays the chance to mature emotionally, and be among the oldest in their classes when they advance the following year into traditional kindergarten.

Murton said the two developmental kindergarten classes in Haslett, a community with about half the percentage of low-income students as the state average, are filled to capacity months in advance of the school year.

Spurred by third-grade reading law

Several state education leaders date the growth in two-year kindergarten programs to the passage of Michigan’s third-grade reading law in 2016 that recommends third-graders be held back if they are more than a year behind in reading. The Legislature delayed implementation of the law until the current 2019-20 school year to give schools time to beef up early reading efforts.

Getting kids in school a year earlier could give schools more time to help them become good readers, said Richard Lower, director of the Preschool and Out-of-School Time Learning Office of Great Start in the Michigan Department of Education.

“Because we don’t have universal preschool in the state, schools were opening ‘early 5’ classes as a strategy for additional schooling, to better prep kids for readiness,” Lower said.

Privately, some school leaders — many of whom oppose the third-grade read-or-flunk law — said they saw an additional benefit of two-year kindergarten: Because the state considers developmental kindergarten and kindergarten to be the same, moving from the first to the second year of kindergarten is considered a retention. Children who have already been retained in a grade before third grade can’t be held back at the end of third grade because of low reading scores.

Thus, one in eight students who were in kindergarten last year will be exempt from the third-grade law.

Indeed, the strategy of deploying two-year kindergarten programs to get around the read-or-flunk law was discussed enough that MDE published a statement on its website discouraging it for that purpose.

Among a list of frequently asked questions aimed at school officials, was a question about whether schools could use developmental kindergarten as a means to avoid third-grade retentions. The department stated: “MDE is not in support of creating ‘young fives’ or ‘developmental kindergarten,’ or extra-year placement programs at any grade level with the intent of affording students ‘previously retained’ status as described in the Read by Grade Three law (MCL 380.1280f). Districts shall always appropriately place each student based on the strengths and needs of the Whole Child.”

Money plays a role

While the third-grade reading law may have sparked interest in the classes, the biggest driver of the trend, say education leaders who spoke to Bridge, is economics – both for schools and families.

Cost was one of several factors Amanda Spicuzzi considered when she enrolled her daughter in a developmental kindergarten class in Ferndale last year. Spicuzzi said she was happy with her daughter’s developmental kindergarten class, and her daughter is doing well in traditional kindergarten this year. Saving child-care costs was nice, too.

She estimates her family saved $5,400 by having their daughter in developmental kindergarten rather than fee-based preschool in suburban Detroit.

“We were in a position where we could make that choice [between child care and early kindergarten], when some families would have to enroll because they couldn’t afford another year of preschool,” Spicuzzi said.

School leaders say cost savings are a common theme.

“I’m not sure all our parents in any of our communities make the decision on whether to enroll their children [in a two-year kindergarten program] based on the developmental value,” said Peter Haines, superintendent of Ottawa Intermediate School District, where 25 percent of students take two years of kindergarten.

“Sometimes mom and dad make a decision because it allows them to not hire child care.”

There’s an economic incentive for schools, too.

Michigan school districts collected $128 million in state funding last year in per-student foundation allowance just for the children taking their second year of kindergarten before first grade, the majority of whom were still 4-year-olds  when the school year began.

Ann Arbor Public Schools, for example, had 17 percent of its students take a second year of kindergarten last year, with student foundation allowance for those children totaling slightly more than $2 million.

Craig Thiel, research director at Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a nonprofit public research organization, said there is a “big incentive” for schools to pursue an extra year of student foundation allowance by “growing my enrollment and getting my money for these young 5s.”

Haines played down the financial incentives of two-year kindergarten programs in West Michigan’s Ottawa County school districts, saying “they’re not the money-makers you’d think.” Livingston’s LaRosa disagreed, calling the classes a “cash cow” for school districts.

Competition for students

Individual school districts decide whether to encourage two years of kindergarten. That can lead to massive variations across the state, from 50 percent  of kindergartners taking a second year in tiny North Central Area Schools in Hermansville in the Upper Peninsula, to more than 500 school districts and charters that didn’t report any kindergarten retention to the Michigan Department of Education last year.

On the west side of the state, one in four kindergarten children in Ottawa County school districts were in their second year of kindergarten in 2018-19. Meanwhile, in the Detroit Public Schools Community District, where 82  percent of students are African American and 86 percent are economically disadvantaged, the rate of kindergarteners in their second year was only 2.8 percent.

Livingston’s LaRosa said the growth in developmental kindergarten classes was a topic of frustration at a recent meeting of early childhood leaders in Lansing, where school officials voiced concerns that two-year kindergarten programs were springing up disproportionately in suburban districts.

Statewide, white students (14 percent) were twice as likely to have two years of kindergarten before first grade as black students (7 percent) in 2018-19.

That difference may be explained by low- and moderate-income students being eligible for separate, publicly-funded preschool programs including federal Head Start and Michigan’s Great Start Readiness Program. In effect, the trend toward two-year kindergarten may simply reflect middle-class families creating their own state-funded preschool program for 4-year-olds.

When 4-year-old enrollment in Great Start, Head Start and a blend of those income-based preschool programs are added to 4-year-olds in kindergarten, Michigan has 60,000 4-year-olds in publicly-funded education -— that’s 64 percent of the way toward the universal pre-K that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer advocated in her gubernatorial campaign, but which has gained no traction in the Republican-controlled Michigan Legislature.

Still, several education officials told Bridge they were concerned that two-year kindergarten programs were not available equally across the state.

“It’s inequitably distributed,” said Livingston County early childhood official LaRosa. “The higher socioeconomic, well-educated people are advocating for this. So what it creates is (an environment where) districts…don’t philosophically buy into developmental kindergarten but they’re pushed into it because of competition … because you’re kissing money goodbye.”

Does it improve learning? Nobody knows

Despite spending $128 million on two-year kindergarten last year, the state has no idea if it helps, harms or has no impact on academic achievement.

Lower, of MDE, said the state hasn’t compiled data comparing the later test scores of students who had two years of kindergarten versus those with one year.

On the other hand, the state has seen gains from the state-funded preschool Great Start Readiness Program. Students who enrolled in GSRP as 4-year-olds scored higher  when they reached third grade on Michigan’s standardized test, the M-STEP, in both English language arts and math than their demographically-similar classmates who didn’t enroll in GSRP.

GSRP offers free, full-day preschool for 4-year-olds from low- and moderate-income families.

The question that has not been answered yet is whether Michigan’s slightly more expensive two-year kindergarten program has the same positive impact.

The state pays $7,250 per year per student for full-day GSRP. Full-day developmental kindergarten is reimbursed at a minimum rate of $8,111 per year.

A Stanford study found that holding children back for a second year in kindergarten may have a positive impact on academic achievement for a few years, but the impact fades by third grade.

Not all states keep tabs on how many children take two years of kindergarten (Massachusetts, Minnesota and Ohio, for example, do not). In Indiana, the rate is 4 percent — a third of Michigan’s rate.

Steven Barnett, senior co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, said he has doubts about the positive academic impact of two years of kindergarten.

“Everything I know suggests that retention does little good and may harm, at least in the long-run, and delayed entry (having children enter first grade at an older age) is of no value — though there may be some places and times in which this is not the case,” Barnett said.

Barnett suggested Michigan compare the $128 million spent on two-year kindergarten to “spending the same amount or less money on one-to-one tutoring during the school year or summer to help children keep up rather than repeating an entire year. The answer to that is clear — this would be a much more effective and economically efficient policy.”

Not on Lansing’s radar

There’s no state policy defining developmental kindergarten, and no mention of it in the state school aid budget.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office declined comment for this article. Wayne Schmidt, R-Traverse City, chair of the K-12 and Michigan Department of Education committee, did not respond to an email request for comment and Sen. Dayna Polehanki, D-Livonia, minority vice chair of the education and career readiness committee and a former teacher, said developmental kindergarten is not an issue in the legislature.

And the state’s education department?

“It is fair to say MDE is aware of the increase in developmental kindergarten classes in which students are presumed to take two years of schooling before advancing to first grade,” said MDE’s Lower. “But the decision to offer DK is up to individual districts, and MDE doesn’t currently take a position on local district choice.”

Ferndale parent Spicuzzi does take a position: For her daughter, two years of kindergarten “was invaluable. We’d definitely do it again.”

Why should the state pay for an extra year of schooling for children like her daughter, Spicuzzi is asked. “I’d flip that,” Spicuzzi said. “It should be the state’s responsibility to start education younger.

“The younger the better.”

Bridge reporter Mike Wilkinson contributed to this story