Pandemic babies born during the masking and lockdown mandates of the COVID-19 era are entering pre-kindergarten and kindergarten classrooms for the first time this fall. Some will come to school with speech and behavioral skill deficits, social and emotional shortcomings and more concrete skill issues, like not knowing how to use pencils, crayons and scissors.
For many of these children, their first years were spent at home, where they missed out on face-to-face social interaction, a critical component of early childhood development. Experts say this isolation could force them into a years-long game of scholastic catch up.
Through no fault of their own, some of these children are also behind their peers in pre-literacy and pre-math skills and lack some of the non-family socialization of previous generations before the pandemic.
Akron Public Schools and regional early childhood education organizations are focused on addressing pandemic-related shortcomings. Jennifer Douglas, the district’s director of early learning, is confident their combined efforts, coupled with the resiliency of kids, will help these students catch up.
“[If] we provide them with some really strong and positive expectations and supports … they are able to really build their skills pretty quickly,” Douglas said.
Akron Public Schools is opening its first full-day pre-kindergarten classrooms this fall, a long-awaited expansion that administrators say will prepare children for more serious academic pursuits while correcting pandemic-related issues early.
“We know how critical it is to provide the resources we have in our early learning program, and that’s why we believe in an expansion at this point so we can get our scholars back on track to where they need to be successful,” said Tamea Caver, the district’s assistant superintendent.
Early classroom exposure helps correct behavior, improve speech
A primary focus of early childhood education is getting kids socialized outside their family units and learning classroom routines.
Some of the aspects educators are looking for appear simple, such as a child communicating their desires or engaging in group settings. Some of the markers are more tangible, such as a child being able to recognize letters and numbers.
“For several of their early developmental years, they had to stay home,” said Douglas. “[Children] didn’t have as many opportunities to have that face-to-face social interaction, which is really critical to early childhood development.”
Douglas said this classroom interaction is critical to building a sense of community among students and making sure they know how to properly interact outside of their family.
Her concerns are echoed by regional early childhood education experts. Danielle Bunner, the director for the Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids (SPARK) program at the Early Childhood Resource Center, said her peers have witnessed speech delays in pandemic-era children.
“Their speech hasn’t developed at that typical rate that they should be saying words,” Bunner said. “Maybe they weren’t hearing as many words because they weren’t out in other environments.”
Loss of structured learning environments, masks cause developmental issues in young children
Bunner and Kelley Moffett, the supervisor of the SPARK program in Summit County, said masks were a significant contributing factor to speech issues in young students. They said children learn early speech by watching adults enunciate and form words, and the masks kept them from picking up on those visual cues.
Exposure to structured learning and a classroom environment is a substantial benefit to early childhood education and programs such as SPARK. This exposure, according to experts, corrects much of the social and behavioral issues educators are seeing in children born during the pandemic.
Kindergarten readiness assessment statistics for Akron Public Schools
| Academic school year | Number of students surveyed | Percentage of students demonstrating readiness for kindergarten | Percentage of students approaching readiness | Percentage of students emerging, or not ready for kindergarten | Overall percentage of students not on track with language and literacy skills |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-2022 | 1,598 | 21 | 35.8 | 43.2 | 65.3 |
| 2022-2023 | 1,396 | 15.4 | 30.7 | 53.9 | 75.7 |
| 2023-2024 | 1,422 | 14.9 | 32.5 | 52.6 | 75.7 |
Data from the Ohio Department of Education shows a declining trend in kindergarten readiness for Akron Public Schools’ students over the past three school years. As the district has gotten further from the pandemic, its children have been less prepared for kindergarten – a trend Akron educators hope reverses with the expansion of the district’s new full-day pre-kindergarten program. Source: Ohio Department of Workforce and Education Kindergarten Readiness Assessments
“They’re not used to structure,” Moffett said. “Being in that classroom and learning, you know, the structure. So you have kiddos that are quick to anger, you know, quick temper, because they’re frustrated.”
Wanda Lash, the director of Akron schools’ Student and Family Services, said she’s seen these issues in the half-day pre-kindergarten programs offered in prior years by the district.
“It was almost like having to do a reset and a reteach of expectations,” Lash said. “I don’t want to say aggression, but just those social and emotional skills that needed to be kind of dealt with, addressed, retaught. Kids being able to resolve conflict and, again, just socially, be with one another.”
Akron Schools’ full-day pre-kindergarten will help with reading, writing and arithmetic
Among the most important lessons in early childhood education are letter recognition and early writing skills. The pandemic wrinkled the routines of families who were contending with at-home learning, social isolation and, in many cases, increased screen time for children.
Additionally, Caver said phonetic awareness and phonics are “the foundational skills they need for word recognition.”
These skills, Caver said, will be a major focus of the district’s new full-day pre-kindergarten program. The district follows state guidelines on early childhood academic achievement and getting students up to par with language and literacy standards is the goal.
Melissa Gilchrist, an in-home educator with SPARK, said she regularly works with students and parents to try and introduce consistency in their reading habits. Regular practice, even just ten minutes a day, pays dividends for the kids over the course of the program.
“All these things can fit into your everyday life,” Gilchrist said. “It doesn’t have to be sit here for an hour, and beat them over the head with a book, like, just work it into your everyday life.”
Educators and parents typically understand the importance of reading with children, and experts said it was easier for families to maintain reading routines through the pandemic than, for example, early math learning.
“We don’t always know how to talk about math with little children, and so there are definitely a lot of opportunities for us there to start teaching some of those basic pre-numeracy skills and concepts,” Douglas said. “So that was kind of surprising to us as educators that we hadn’t really, I guess, considered that as thoroughly as we had thought about the effects on reading.”
Educators aren’t looking for pre-kindergarten students to comprehend long division or fractions. They do expect young students to be able to recognize numbers.
The focus on building this skill waned during pandemic years, causing some of the youngest students in the district to fall behind.
Experts said there are many ways parents can engage children early with math. It can be as simple and affordable as counting the number of same-color shapes on advertisements that come in the mail or learning to read an analog clock.
“They could get the ad for Giant Eagle or something and look at it, and then show me all the red items on here,” Bunner said. “Let’s count this, there’s so many things around them. [Another way is] cooking, that could be measuring out things. OK, I want you to put one scoop in here.”
Douglas said the issue with early math skills is part of a broader lack of independence and willingness for children to find solutions on their own.
Math, she added, took a big hit.
“What I have noticed is kind of some learned helplessness,” Douglas said. “ … Understanding how to solve a problem without immediately going to an adult first.”
Expanding pre-K to full day ‘definitely helps’ with students’ development
Another deficiency: children’s lack of familiarity with classroom tools such as pencils, markers and scissors. Like the other shortcomings, fine motor skills can be built through exposure and consistency, both at home and in the classroom.
Douglas said many of the children who weren’t able to access pre-kindergarten and kindergarten classrooms during the pandemic are now in third and fourth grade.
Still, deficiencies persist, but educators hope they have at least part of a solution.
“I kind of think this is one thing — expanding access to full-day pre-K definitely helps,” Douglas said. “We’re trying to be really intentional with our work with the teaching staff to help make sure that they’re well prepared to think about, ‘What are the goals that we have for kids learning? Where are the kids right now?’”
The experts at SPARK focus on reinforcing these skills at home, while educators in Akron Public Schools work to identify the gaps in students’ skills and build a baseline of competency with these tools in the classroom.
“I know that Play-Doh can be messy, but it is the biggest thing that builds our muscles in our hand and our pincer muscles for holding the pencil and cutting,” Moffett said.
Recovery efforts are ongoing, and the work of early childhood education is always changing.
“I think we’re just trying to build our way back up,” Bunner said. “It is hard right now, because we’re starting to see [in classrooms] those babies that were born during that time, or that were infants … And that’s where these deficits are starting to pop up now for us.”
