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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 June 2025
This paper compares concerted efforts to unify early instructional practice in the US in the early twentieth century and in the twenty-first century. The first effort began with the founding of the National Council for Primary Education in 1915; the second began in 2005 with calls for pre-K-3 alignment. Analysis of relevant sources indicates that today’s unifiers are attempting to achieve three of the same goals that their predecessors pursued in 1915: increased child activity, teacher autonomy, and use of early instructional practices up through grade 3. During the early twentieth century, kindergarten served as both the model for the upward extension of activity-based early instructional practice into the early primary grades and the locus of efforts to defend against the downward extension of skill-based elementary practice from the primary to the lower levels. During the second round of unification in the twenty-first century, however, preschool has become the model for extending and the locus of defending early instructional methodology.
1 Susan Friedman, Brian L. Wright, Marie L. Masterson, Barbara Willer, and Sue Bredekamp, eds., Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth Through Age 8, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2022).
2 Kristen Dombkowski Nawrotzki, “The Anglo-American Kindergarten Movements and Early Education in England and United States of America, 1850–1965” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2005).
3 Arnold Gesell, “The Downward Extension of the Kindergarten: A Unified Policy for Early Education,” Childhood Education 2, no .2 (1925), 55.
4 Nawrotzki, “Anglo-American Kindergarten Movements.”
5 US Commissioner of Education, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Education to the Secretary of the Interior for Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1926 (Washington, DC: US Department of the Interior, 1926).
6 Kimber Bogard and Ruby Takanishi, “PK-3: An Aligned and Coordinated Approach to Education for Children 3 to 8 Years Old,” Social Policy Report 19, no. 3 (2005), 3–23.
7 Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2015).
8 Power to the Profession Task Force, Unifying Framework for the Early Childhood Education Profession, March 2020, http://powertotheprofession.org/unifying-framework.
9 Bruce A. Ronda, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: A Reformer on Her Own Terms (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
10 Nina C. Vandewalker, The Kindergarten in American Education (New York: Macmillan, 1908).
11 Ann Taylor Allen, The Transatlantic Kindergarten: Education and Women’s Movements in Germany and the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
12 V. Celia Lascarides and Blythe F. Hinitz, History of Early Childhood Education (New York: Routledge, 2013), 235.
13 Henry Barnard, “Note by the Editor,” in Froebel’s Kindergarten, with Suggestions on Principles and Methods of Child Culture in Different Countries, ed. Henry Barnard (Hartford, CT: Office of Barnard’s American Journal of Education, 1881), 536.
14 Felix Adler, “Free Kindergarten and Workingman’s School,” in Barnard, Froebel’s Kindergarten, 687.
15 Barbara Beatty, “‘The Letter Killeth’: Americanization and Multicultural Education in Kindergartens in the United States, 1856–1920,” in Kindergartens and Cultures: The Global Diffusion of an Idea, ed. Roberta Lynn Wollons (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 42–58; Anna Bryan, “The Letter Killeth,” in National Education Association, Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the Year 29 (1890), 573–81.
16 G. Stanley Hall, “Address of Dr. Hall,” Kindergarten Review 12 (Sept. 1901), 46.
17 Jerry Aldridge et al., “Matriarchs of Experimental and Progressive Education: Ten Women Who Influenced John Dewey,” International Journal of Case Studies 3, no. 5 (2014), 1–7.
18 National Society for the Study of Education, preface to The Seventh Yearbook of the National Society for the Scientific Study of Education, Part II, The Co-ordination of the Kindergarten and the Elementary School, ed. Benjamin Gregory et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1908), 7–8.
19 Julia Wade Abbot, Kindergartens Past and Present (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1923).
20 International Kindergarten Union, The Kindergarten: Reports of the Committee of Nineteen on the Theory and Practice of the Kindergarten (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913).
21 Agnes Snyder, Dauntless Women in Childhood Education, 1856–1931 (Washington, DC: Association for Childhood Education International, 1972).
22 National Council of Primary Education, Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the National Council of Primary Education (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919), 5.
23 National Council of Primary Education, Fourth Annual Meeting, 5.
24 Samuel Chester Parker and Alice Temple, Unified Kindergarten and First Grade Teaching (Boston: Ginn, 1925); Nina C. Vandewalker, Progress in Kindergarten Education (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1925).
25 Barbara Beatty, Preschool Education in America: The Culture of Young Children from the Colonial Era to the Present (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995).
26 Emily D. Cahan, Past Caring: A History of US Preschool Care and Education for the Poor, 1820–1965 (New York: National Center for Children in Poverty, 1989).
27 Arnold Gesell, The Pre-school Child from the Standpoint of Public Hygiene and Education (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1923), xi.
28 Mary Dabney Davis, Nursery Schools: Their Development and Current Practices in the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1933).
29 Patty Smith Hill, “Future Possibilities for Continuity without Standardization in Curricula for Nursery School, Kindergarten and First Grade,” Childhood Education 7, no. 10 (1931), 530–31.
30 Gesell, “Downward Extension,” 55.
31 Gesell, “Downward Extension,” 58.
32 Nina C. Vandewalker, “An Evaluation of Kindergarten Primary Courses in Teacher Training Institutions,” US Bureau of Education Bulletin 23 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1924).
33 Edna Baker et al., “Report of Conferring Committee on Reorganization, International Kindergarten Union,” Childhood Education 6, no. 10 (1930), 459–60.
34 Patty Smith Hill, introduction to The Beginnings of the Social Sciences, ed. Mary Reed (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932), v–xxiii; Bernard Spodek, “The Kindergarten: A Retrospective and Contemporary View,” in Current Topics in Early Childhood Education, vol. 4, ed. Lilian Katz (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1982), 173–91.
35 Gesell, “Downward Extension,” 54.
36 National Society for the Study of Education, The Twenty-Eighth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education: Preschool and Parental Education, ed. Guy Whipple (Bloomington: Public School Publishing Company, 1929).
37 Hill, introduction to Beginnings, v–xxviii.
38 Ella Victoria Dobbs, “Our Next Ten Years,” Childhood Education 1, no. 9 (1925), 426–29; Allie Hines, “Worth While Work in a Play Situation,” Childhood Education 1, no. 9 (1925), 418.
39 Larry Cuban, How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1890–1990 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993).
40 Gesell, “Downward Extension,” 53–59; Hill, introduction to Beginnings, v–xxiii; Grace Langdon, A Study of Similarities and Differences in Teaching in Nursery School, Kindergarten, and First Grade (New York: John Day Company, 1933).
41 Some proponents of ECE were, however, still meeting with resistance: in 1934, the National Education Association did not allow Bessie Locke to even mention “kindergarten” in proposed federal legislation. See Barbara Beatty, “‘Politics Are Quite Perplexing’: Bessie Locke and the National Kindergarten Association Campaign, 1909-60,” in The Educational Work of Women’s Organizations, 1890–1960, ed. Anne Meis Knupfer and Christine Woyshner (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 195–213.
42 Marvin Lazerson, review of The Kindergarten: Its Encounter with Educational Thought in America, by Evelyn Weber, History of Education Quarterly 11, no.1 (1971), 95.
43 Beatty, Preschool Education.
44 Kindergarten may have been subject to less of this criticism because it had adopted primary practices (e.g., ability grouping and testing). See David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
45 Lawrence Arthur Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957 (New York: Vintage Books, 1961).
46 H. G. Rickover, Education and Freedom (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, 1959).
47 William J. Wilson and Robert Aponte, “Urban Poverty,” Annual Review of Sociology 11, no. 1 (1985), 231–58.
48 James L. Hymes Jr., “Emerging Patterns in Early Childhood Education,” Young Children 22, no. 3 (1967), 158–63.
49 Benjamin S. Bloom, Stability and Change in Human Characteristics (New York: Wiley, 1964); J. McVicker Hunt, Intelligence and Experience (New York: Ronald Press Company, 1961).
50 Martin Deutsch quoted in Fred M. Hechinger, “Passport to Equality,” in Pre-school Education Today: New Approaches to Teaching Three-, Four-, and Five-Year-Olds, ed. Fred M. Hechinger (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday and Company, 1966), 11.
51 Barbara Beatty, “Transitory Connections: The Reception and Rejection of Jean Piaget’s Psychology in the Nursery School Movement in the 1920s and 1930s,” History of Education Quarterly 49, no. 4 (2009), 442–64.
52 David Elkind, foreword to Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School, ed. Edward Miller and Joan Almon (College Park, MD: Alliance for Childhood, 2009), 9.
53 Hymes, “Emerging Patterns in Early Childhood Education,” 158-63; Bernard Spodek, introduction to Open Education: The Legacy of the Progressive Movement, ed. Georgianna Engstrom (Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1970), 5–9.
54 Richard Ripple and Verne Rockcastle, preface to Piaget Rediscovered: A Report of the Conference on Cognitive Studies and Curriculum Development, ed. Richard E. Ripple and Verne N. Rockcastle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1964), iii–iv.
55 Georgianna Engstrom, preface to Engstrom, Open Education, 4.
56 Roland S. Barth, Open Education and the American School (New York: Agathon Press, 1972); Bernard Spodek and Herbert J. Walberg, eds., Studies in Open Education (New York: Agathon Press, 1975).
57 Janice Weiss, “Back to Basics through the Years,” Chicago Reporter, July 22, 2005, https://www.chicagoreporter.com/back-basics-through-years.
58 National Commission on Excellence in Education, “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform,” Elementary School Journal 84, no. 2 (1983), 113-30.
59 Spodek, “The Kindergarten,” 179.
60 Evelyn Weber, Ideas Influencing Early Childhood Education: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Teachers College Press, 1984).
61 Sue Bredekamp, ed., Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age Eight (Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1987).
62 Bogard and Takanishi, “PK-3,” 3–23.
63 Bogard and Takanishi, “PK-3,” 10.
64 Bruce Atchison, Louisa Diffey, and Emily Workman, K-3 Policymakers’ Guide to Action: Making the Early Years Count (Denver: Education Commission of the States, 2016); NAESP Foundation Task Force on Early Learning, Building and Supporting an Aligned System: A Vision for Transforming Education across the Pre-K-Grade Three Years (Washington, DC: National Association of Elementary School Principals, 2011); National Governors Association, Leading for Early Success: Building School Principals’ Capacity to Lead High-Quality Early Education (Washington, DC: National Governors Association, 2013).
65 Sharon Ritchie and Laura Gutmann, eds., FirstSchool: Transforming PreK-3rd Grade for African American, Latino, and Low-Income Children (New York: Teachers College Press, 2014).
66 Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, Transforming the Workforce.
67 Power to the Profession Task Force, Unifying Framework, 1.
68 Power to the Profession Task Force, Unifying Framework, 7–8.
69 Ella Victoria Dobbs quoted in Langdon, Study of Similarities and Differences, 11.
70 Patty Smith Hill, A Conduct Curriculum for the Kindergarten and First Grade (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1923); Patty Smith Hill, “Changes in Curricula and Method in Kindergarten Education,” Childhood Education 2, no. 3 (1925), 99–106.
71 Parker and Temple, Unified Kindergarten and First Grade Teaching (Chicago: Department of Education, University of Chicago, 1924), 18.
72 Friedman, Developmentally Appropriate Practice
73 Sue Bredekamp and Carol Copple, eds., Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1997).
74 Sue Bredekamp, Susan Friedman, Marie L. Masterson, Barbara A. Willer, and Brian L. Wright, eds., Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth Through Age 8, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2021).
75 Marcy Whitebook, Claudia Alvarenga, and Barbara Zheutlin, The Kindergarten Lessons We Never Learned (Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, 2022).
76 Kristen Dombkowski, “Will the Real Kindergarten Please Stand Up? Defining and Redefining the Twentieth-Century US Kindergarten,” History of Education 30, no. 6 (2001), 527-45.
77 Langdon, Study of Similarities and Differences.
78 National Center for Educational Statistics, Digest of Educational Statistics, Table 202.10, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_202.10.asp.
79 National Council of Primary Education, National Council of Primary Education: Report of the Second Annual Meeting at Kansas City, Mo., February 27, 1917, and of the Third Annual Meeting at Atlantic City, N.J. February 26, 1918 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), 13; Parker and Temple, Unified Teaching, 3; Stella Woods, “The Unity in Aims and Principles of the Kindergarten and Early Grades,” Addresses and Proceedings of the 59th Annual Meeting Held at Des Moines, Iowa, July 3-8, 1921 (Washington, DC: National Education Association, 1921), 464.
80 Marcy Whitebrook et al., Teacher Preparation and Professional Development in Grades K-12 and in Early Care and Education: Differences and Similarities, and Implications for Research (Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, 2009); Lisa A. McCabe and John W. Sipple, “Colliding Worlds: Practical and Political Tensions of Prekindergarten Implementation in Public Schools,” Educational Policy 25, no. 1 (2011), 1-26; and Ruby Takanishi, First Things First! Creating the New American Primary School (New York: Teachers College Press, 2016).
81 NCPE, “Use of Activities.”
82 Takanishi, First Things First!, 65; Gisele Crawford et al., “The Groundswell for Transforming Prekindergarten through 3rd Grade, in Ritchie and Gutman, FirstSchool, 9-28; Friedman, Developmentally Appropriate Practice, xxxv.
83 Julia Hahn, “The National Council of Primary Education,” Childhood Education 5, no. 7 (1929), 366.
84 Sam Oertwig and Sharon Ritchie, “Bright and Early: Tools for Providing a Seamless Education for Pre-K-3 Learners,” Principal Magazine (Sept./Oct. 2014), 11.
85 Olive Gray, “The Continuing Growth of Kindergarten-Primary Teachers,” Childhood Education 4, no. 7 (1928), 323.
86 Winifred E. Bain, An Analytical Study of Teaching in Nursery School, Kindergarten, and First Grade (New York: Teachers College, 1928), 15.
87 Crawford et al., “Groundswell for Prekindergarten.”
88 Takanishi, First Things First!
89 Tyack and Cuban, Tinkering toward Utopia.
90 National Society for the Study of Education, Twenty-Eighth Yearbook, 268–69.
91 Daphna Bassok, Scott Latham, and Anna Rorem, “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?,” AERA Open 2, no. 1 (2016), 1–31.
92 Jennifer Lin Russell, “From Child’s Garden to Academic Press: The Role of Shifting Institutional Logics in Redefining Kindergarten Education,” American Educational Research Journal 48, no. 2 (2011), 236–67.
93 Dombkowski, “Will the Real Kindergarten Please Stand Up?”
94 Gessell, “Downward Extension.”
95 This essay has frequently referred to purposeful activity as a characteristic of ECE rather than of elementary pedagogy. There is debate within the ECE community, however, about such activity. From a DAP perspective (Friedman, Developmentally Appropriate), purposeful activity might be teacher-guided and project-based. For some early educators and parents, however, purposeful activity should resemble free play—spontaneous and entirely child-directed. See Peter Gray, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life (New York: Basic Books, 2013).
96 Dombkowski, “Will the Real Kindergarten Please Stand Up?”; Nawrotzki, “Anglo-American Kindergarten.”
97 Rebecca Stephens, “The Power of Pre-K,” Principal Magazine, Sept./Oct. 2013, 21.
98 Curtis Brewer, John W. Gasko, and Derek Miller, “Have We Been Here Before? Lessons Learned from a Microhistory of the Policy Development of Universal Kindergarten,” Educational Policy 25, no. 1 (2011), 9–35; Jolyn Blank, “Early Childhood Teacher Education: Historical Themes and Contemporary Issues,” Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education 31, no. 4 (2010), 391–405.
99 Dale C. Farran, “Federal Preschool Development Grants: Evaluation Needed,” Evidence Speaks Reports 1, no. 22 (2016), 4.
100 Beverly L. Alford et al., “Using Systematic Classroom Observation to Explore Student Engagement as a Function of Teachers’ Developmentally Appropriate Instructional Practices (DAIP) in Ethnically Diverse Pre-kindergarten through Second-Grade Classrooms,” Early Childhood Education Journal 44, no. 6 (2016), 632.
101 Gray, “Continuing Growth of Kindergarten-Primary Teachers,” 323. Michael Little et al., “When School Doesn’t Start at Age 5: Elementary Principal Leadership of Pre-K Programs in Schools,” Elementary School Journal 123, no. 1 (2022), 190.
102 M. Elizabeth Graue et al., “Pulling PreK into a K-12 Orbit: The Evolution of PreK in the Age of Standards,” Early Years 37, no. 1 (2017), 108–22.
103 Hymes, “Emerging Patterns in Early Childhood Education, Young Children 22, no. 3 (1967), 162.
104 Hymes, “Emerging Patterns in Early Childhood Education,” 162.
105 The estimated cost of providing quality early education and care to all children from birth up to kindergarten is $15 billion yearly. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2018).
106 Elizabeth Rose, Promise of Preschool: From Head Start to Universal Pre-kindergarten (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
107 Nawrotzki, “Real Kindergarten.”
108 Lisa S. Goldstein, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place in the Primary Grades: The Challenge of Providing Developmentally Appropriate Early Childhood Education in an Elementary School Setting,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1997), 3–27.
109 Dobbs, “Our Next Ten Years,” 426–29.
110 Larry Cuban, “Whatever Happened to Open Education?” (blog post), National Education Policy Center, Jan. 10, 2022, https://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/open-education.
111 Laura Meckler and Hannah Natanson, “More States Are Paying to Send Children to Private and Religious Schools, Washington Post, Feb. 8, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/02/08/school-choice-vouchers-private-religious-school-huckabee-sanders/.
112 Kim Chandler, “Alabama Education Director Ousted over Book’s Stance on Race,” Associated Press, April 23, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/alabama-education-director-ousted-training-book-402adde81b5308f997880d4f913594fe.