The article, “All-day kindergarten planned at Bethel – if parents can pay” (TNT, 4-29), suggests that all-day kindergarten is good for children.

School officials and others in Olympia are calling for more institutional care for our very young children, including all-day kindergarten and preschool. Recent social and brain development research indicates, however, that placing very young children in all-day structured institutional settings is not good for their educational development.

This conclusion is supported by recent brain research. The healthy development of very young minds depends on the quality and reliability of a children’s relationships with the important people in their lives, especially parents. Sensitive, responsive parent-child relationships are associated with stronger cognitive skills and enhanced social competence and work skills later in school. The science shows a direct connection between young children’s social and emotional development and their intellectual growth.

Conversely, too much time away from parents and in institutional care can inhibit a small child’s social and emotional development. Social scientists have found that while institutional care provides some benefits for low-income children, for many children 15 to 30 hours a week in center-based care resulted in “no cognitive gains and substantially greater behavioral problems associated with additional hours of attendance.”

A 2007 RAND Corp. study on all-day kindergarten found that by the fifth grade, children who attended all-day kindergarten showed less motivation to learn, had less self-control and demonstrated poorer social skills than children who attended half-day kindergarten. They also felt more anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem and sadness.

Eagerness and natural curiosity are important social attributes of very young children, but that natural excitement can be stifled by an over-structured environment, such as center-based care and all-day kindergarten.

Researcher Bruce Fuller makes an astute observation of what early learning “school” looks like to an energy-packed 4-year-old: “Institutions, no matter how small and warm and fuzzy, start to regulate kids’ behaviors. Once you rigidify and routinize that, then kids start to shut down, and their cognitive growth starts to slow down.”

Fortunately, 77 percent of Washington’s 442,000 children under age 5 are currently cared for in family-based, non-institutional settings. They receive care from a parent at home, a friend, neighbor, relative or paid nanny. Most Washington parents choose individual home-based care, not an institutional setting, for their young children. These children tend to learn self-control and socializing behaviors that prepare them for the classroom, and for later academic success, without dampening their natural curiosity.

Once a child has learned social and behavior skills at home, teachers in school can then tap the child’s excitement to learn to build student success that prepares the child for later grades.

Based on our research, we recommend that state leaders base a strong early learning policy on three core principles:

 • Support parents and young children. Public policy should encourage and support stable, long-term relationships between parents and their children.

 • Encourage voluntary participation. Public assistance to families seeking early learning programs should be individual, portable and voluntary. Decisions about whether a child should participate should be made by parents, not program managers. Programs based on universal or mandatory participation should be avoided.

 • Target public assistance. Programs should help low-income parents foster close, long-lasting relationships with their children. Public subsidies should not be used by wealthier families to shift routine day-care expenses onto taxpayers.

The research indicates that success in early childhood learning depends first and foremost on family support, especially from parents, and not on institutional programs. Any public early education policy that does not build on a supportive home life for children is unlikely to succeed.

In the words of child development psychologist, Urie Bronfenbrenner: “The family seem to be the most effective and economical system for fostering and sustaining the child’s development. Without family involvement, intervention is likely to be unsuccessful, and what few effects are achieved are likely to disappear once the intervention is discontinued.”

Liv Finne is the director of the Center for Education at Washington Policy Center, a nonpartisan public policy research organization in Seattle and Olympia. For more information, contact WPC at 206-937-9691 or online at washingtonpolicy.org.