ABCs of Excellence : New Programs Prime Youngsters for Success

Peter Solorio wanted to take his 5-year-old son, Peter Jr., to Disneyland one day last week as a reward for being so good in school.

But little Peter started crying. He wanted to go to school instead.

For the Solorio family, that’s the measure of how well a new kindergarten program at Escondido’s Lincoln School has done for their son. So, not only did Peter Jr. end up going to class, Peter Sr. went as well for another stint as a parent aide to read with the students and solve jigsaw puzzles.

Thirty miles away down Interstate 15, Janice Webb speaks with equal enthusiasm about her daughter’s enjoyment of another experimental program for tykes. After a typical day at a new community-based primary school in San Diego’s Golden Hill district, 3-year-old Janessa steps off the bus singing songs and eager to quiz her mother on the colors of the rainbow.

Janessa’s mother knows the program firsthand, too. At least once a week, Janice Webb comes to the San Diego School of Success, or SOS, and helps toss up the salads that go with the student lunches.

Although miles apart, and even though one is public and the other private, both the GROW classes at Lincoln and the SOS effort have much in common.

Their teachers are on the cutting edge in fleshing out years of research that pinpoints early childhood education as key to future academic success-in particular for children from lower-income families where an emphasis on schooling isn’t always part of the home environment.

While many school districts throughout the county and nation are talking about the issue, the Escondido and SOS experiments stand out as classroom pilots.

The staff at Lincoln, as part of an ongoing reform throughout the Escondido elementary district, is restructuring its early grades to bring more joy to learning and to reduce the initial stress of academics for students not always mature enough for five or more hours of sitting still.

By including extra enrichment weekly parent volunteering and bimonthly workshops, the school hopes to improve the chances of its students being able to tackle schoolwork for years beyond the third grade, when future dropouts often show their first signs.

The SOS reformers believe an even stronger jump-start is needed for children from low-income minority families. Using almost $2 million in private grants, the private school has selected 60 3-year-olds from four Barrio Logan and Southeast San Diego neighborhoods for a special three-year program built on the ideas of short-term Head Start classes. Head Start is one of the few social programs left from the 1960s in which low-income children are given up to a year of federally funded preschool instruction.

SOS wants to show that a nurturing, multicultural preschool curriculum will make a difference farther down the educational road. Led by the Rev. George Walker Smith, a former San Diego city schools board member, and William McGill, UC San Diego psychology professor and former UCSD chancellor, the school intends to prove that urban minority children are not doomed in large numbers to become teen-age dropout statistics.

Both programs emphasize smaller class sizes, required parent participation and a curriculum that blends academic skills with a child’s wonder of play and discovery, building on the view of Cornell Prof. Irving Lazar who says that “the yardstick of kindergarten success should be ‘smiles per hour.’ ”

‘We’re talking about good developmental education here, where we begin to teach children at whatever academic level they (come to us) at. And we don’t say that they have to be at a certain level by kindergarten, or first or second grade,” Judy Adams, principal at Lincoln, said.

“Kids don’t walk and talk at the same time, but at the end (of the developmental years) a great majority know how to walk and talk, and it’s the same thing with learning,” Adams said. “But the earlier we can begin to work with our children, the better off all of us are going to be.”

Her teachers have begun to work with those theories, especially in the GROW kindergarten, where 60 youngsters share an extra three hours of kindergarten four days a week. With the help of a private $150,000 grant from the Shea Foundation, the pupil-teacher ratio is below 20 to 1, with three teachers and an aide.

The emphasis is on “fun learning,” teacher Jill Hairabedian said.

So, when Rodrigo picks out “The Wolf’s Chicken Stew” from the new book bin for teacher Jane McCoy to read, the students become an active part of the reading hour.

“What’s stew?” McCoy asks.

“Sort of like lunch,” Eddie answers. And when the story’s plot grows clear to the students--that the wolf wants to fatten up his chicken neighbor to make a stew out of her--several smile broadly at having anticipated the line.

Then they learn the words to a square-dance song, “Round and round and round I say, I ain’t got long to stay!” by choosing partners and swinging round and round with McCoy and aide Aaron Garcia.

All the while, parent Solorio puts the finishing touches on a jigsaw puzzle that spells out, “So much of what we know of love we learn at home.” The GROW program could easily substitute “education” for “love” in the puzzle in spelling out its own additional philosophy.

The class meets only four days a week so that teachers can make home visits regularly. Polaroid pictures of parents with their children, together with letters from the parents writing about their love of their children, adorn one wall of the portable classroom.

“All the research shows that kids who do best are those who come from homes where parents are participants, the parents feel school is important and know how to make that point,” principal Adams said. Because GROW is voluntary for students, the school can require parents to participate in the activities.

Teachers regularly hold nighttime workshops for the parents on topics such as how to read with their children. For unschooled parents, there are tips on how to talk about a book’s pictures, if only to emphasize the value of spending time with their children and to drive home the importance of having books.

There’s even a monthly newsletter for parents, with the latest issue featuring the potluck lunch that teachers held for all the parents with perfect attendance records so far at workshops.

“I really see the growth in Peter, especially since he didn’t have any preschool,” Solorio senior said. “We don’t speak (much) English at home because I want him to be truly bilingual, and his English has skyrocketed here. He now always tries to read the books he brings home by himself first.”

Escondido is looking to revamp its primary-level education as part of multi-year planning. Added McCoy, “We see this as a model kindergarten.”

Next fall, Escondido will set up three lab schools to coordinate new ideas among the various primary grades. Despite budget slashes in the district, trustees last week specifically exempted the program from any cuts.

If anything, the San Diego School of Success program is even more focused on both emphasizing learning through play and trying to turn around the high dropout rates among Latinos and blacks.

“The influence of urban street culture on very young people is such that by the first grade they’re already at a substantial academic disadvantage,” said UCSD’s McGill, who helped arrange more than $1.5 million in funding for the school from the Weingart Foundation. “And by the third grade, the gap is so large that you can predict with considerable amount of accuracy that many of them will eventually drop out.”

Barbara Holley, an educator originally from Virginia, heads the school’s staff of six, which meets at Smith’s Christ United Presbyterian Church. About 90% of the 60 students are nonwhite children who come from low-income families, a demographic mirror of a typical inner-city public school. So, administrators say, if SOS is successful after this three-year pilot, its model could be duplicated in public schools.

With more than $7,000 per student--almost double the per-pupil public school funding level--the student-teacher ratio is as low as 10 to 1. That allows for individual attention that might make a permanent difference over three years in a child’s ability to succeed in public school, Holley said.

It’s not certain that even three years is enough, given new studies of Head Start classes in Chicago that show that anywhere up to seven years of intensive enrichment might be necessary for inner-city children to overcome shortcomings in their home and/or neighborhood environments. At this point, SOS plans to track its graduates through the public school system.

The idea evolved over more than two years of discussions, McGill said, before the school opened in September, 1991.

Smith said his participation came naturally.

“In 16 years on the San Diego Unified board, I never remember having to vote to expel a kid who had three things going for him: academic success; supportive family, whether one or two parents; and someone with a religious foundation, no matter what the foundation is,” he said.

“Today, too many of our youngsters don’t have any of these three things.”

While SOS uses a developmental kindergarten philosophy, it also places a heavy emphasis on multicultural aspects. The life of George Washington Carver is a vehicle for teaching the children about science: how to make peanut butter; about ethnic contributions, he was black; and about reading and writing, the children help the teacher write a poem about Carver.

Maisha Kudumu, a longtime community volunteer in San Diego public schools, works with parents on their mandatory participation in school activities.

“All parents have strong feelings about their kids, even those who haven’t completed high school themselves,” Kudumu said. “That’s why we have them come to the classes here regularly. The children see their parents as role models helping to teach, and the parents see the children as eager and able to learn.”

Parent Janice Webb was a bit suspicious at first of a program offering three free years of private-school education with free daily transportation.

“But I see my child learning and I see how my older kids could have benefited as well,” Webb said. “And I’ve been coming once a week, and every day during my vacation.

“It’s so much more than child care.”