Commentary by Alice Seagren

Minnesota parents and educators do a good job of seeing our youngest students enter kindergarten prepared to succeed. Of course, we can and should do more for those young children who do not enter kindergarten with the skills they need.

Recently, an advertising campaign was launched overstating that half of our young learners are "not fully prepared" for kindergarten. The radio and TV spots go on to say that these children will be doomed to a life of economic hardship and even prison. The ads ask parents to call legislators to say they are "scared for our children."

The advocates sponsoring these ads base their claims on some early learning studies done by the Minnesota Education Department. But those studies did not draw dividing lines between children at different levels of development. They did not brand some students ready or not ready for kindergarten.

The Education Department studies do show that between 2 percent and 11 percent of children do not yet demonstrate some skills or behaviors they need for success in school. Another group, about half, are in the process of acquiring those skills.

They should succeed in schools that offer solid academic programs. The rest show full proficiency.

If the claims of the advertising campaign were true, it would certainly show up three years later in the third-grade Minnesota Comprehensive assessment results for reading and math ability. In fact, in 2004, 74 percent of Minnesota third-graders achieved proficient scores in the reading assessment; 71 percent were proficient or better in math. Some of those successful students must have been in the group "not fully prepared" for kindergarten.

The advocates also make another claim: that most brain development takes place before age 5. Thus, if these children miss a critical window of learning, they are doomed to a life of failure. In the May 1999 Phi Delta Kappan, the journal of the college fraternity for teachers, the highly regarded cognitive researcher John T. Brurer questions that notion.

He concluded, "We have a lot more research to do ... despite what you read in the papers ... neuroscience has not established that there is a sensitive period between the ages of 4 and 10 during which children learn more quickly, easily, and meaningfully ... educators have uncritically embraced neuroscientific speculation." In fact, as any of us can testify, valuable learning takes place throughout a lifetime, not just before the age of 5 or 10.

School readiness is a serious issue for some of our children in Minnesota, one that needs careful attention. Indeed, the Minnesota Education Department has developed educational readiness indicators for preschoolers that can identify how to help our most at-risk children become prepared for school.

Should we spend additional money to target these at-risk children? Perhaps. But first we need to examine how we are using the $700 million being spent now on child care and preschool programs. We need to be strategic and focused, getting results from the providers who receive these funds to serve our children before we talk of new money for new programs.

Spending money on advertising that attempts to scare the public and brand children as failures before the age of 5 does a disservice to families and to the good work of those in the field of school readiness.

Seagren of Bloomington is Minnesota education commissioner. This commentary originally appeared on February 6, 2005 in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press.