The Impact of Rigorous Curriculum in Transitional Kindergarten and Kindergarten

Educators across the world are being asked to teach increasingly younger students academic skills. The purpose of this action research project was to examine the impact that using rigorous curriculum has on transitional kindergarten and kindergarten educators as well as how rigorous curriculum affects students self esteem as a student. A shortcoming in the literature is the lack of research discussing rigorous curriculum used in early elementary classrooms that contain mostly English language learners and how that affects the teachers and students. This project used a mixed methods approach in order to attain qualitative data from detailed interviews using open-ended questions and close-ended quantitative data from survey questions. The findings from the research show that the rigorous curriculum is having a negative effect on English language learners due to the curriculum being chosen without insufficient regard to English language learners educational needs as well as teacher’s input