Prekindergarten teachers often blend curriculum materials to meet the needs of their students, but face time constraints similar to their K-12 colleagues, according to a study released April 9 by the RAND Corporation.
Researchers, who surveyed more than 1,300 public school pre-K teachers across the country, noted that it is crucial to understand common practices implemented by strong programs so that they can be replicated as states continue to expand and prioritize early education.
“About 60 percent of children enrolled in publicly-funded pre-K programs are located in public schools, and there’s a growing interest in better understanding how these programs work,” said Anna Shapiro, RAND associate policy researcher and lead author of the report. “As states expand public school-based pre-K programs, researchers and policymakers are looking to understand what makes them effective.”
According to the findings outlined in the report, Instructional Resources in School-Based Pre-K: Findings from the Spring 2024 American Pre–K Teacher Survey, more than 80 percent of public school-based pre-K teachers use multiple curriculum materials in their classrooms, even when they used a comprehensive curriculum.
When combining materials, some survey respondents reported using those that focus on a single domain such as literacy or numeracy, or materials that cover many domains at once, or some combination. However, more than two-thirds of public pre-K teachers said they use materials that they created themselves, often in conjunction with commercially available curricula.
The majority of those surveyed said they believe their instructional materials are high quality, particularly for promoting development in language and literacy, early numeracy and social-emotional domains.
While teachers of part-day and full-day classrooms reported using similar curriculum and assessment materials, part-day teachers had less training on how to use them.
Early education teachers also face several common challenges:
- Less than one-third strongly agreed that they had adequate time during their contracted hours for tasks that support instructional delivery
- Teachers of part-day classrooms were less likely to report having adequate time for typical instructional planning tasks than were teachers of full-day classrooms
- Less than half of pre-K teachers reported having dedicated time to coordinate across grades or dedicated time for kindergarten transition
“Providing adequate planning time, training, and other supports for teachers to use their curricula and assessments to support student learning is critical in states and localities engaged in expanding pre-K,” the report concluded. “Such expansion will require districts to hire, train, and onboard new teachers and make sure that those programs are aligned with early elementary grades. Consideration of how instructional resources might need to be adapted to support the different working conditions in full- and part-day classrooms, and what supports are necessary for teachers to do this well, is critical.”
