Early Ed Watch

Last week Pre-K Now held a briefing on Capitol Hill to address the state of America's pre-k movement, featuring state-level and national pre-k leaders from across the country. If you weren't able to get there in person, you can now view the remarks from Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, Mississippi State Superintendent of Education Dr. Hank Bounds, Montgomery County, Md., Superintendent Jerry Weast, Oklahoma Assistant State Superintendent Dr. Ramona Paul, and others in a video of the event on the Pre-K Now website, available here.

The second debate between presidential candidates Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) takes place tonight at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. Early education has already emerged as a topic in the first presidential debate. Here are some questions Early Ed Watch would like to see the candidates answer tonight or in the final debate later this month:

1.  A generation ago the United State led the world in levels of educational attainment, but rates of high school and college graduation have stagnated, and we are now at risk of losing our leadership position on education. Columnist David Brooks has identified this "skills slowdown" as "the biggest issue facing the country," and has proposed increased early education investment as one response. As president, what will you do to reverse the skills slowdown and restore our nation's position as first in the world in educational attainment?

2. One in four American students who enter high school as ninth graders fails to graduate within four years, as do half of Latino and African American students. Research shows that failure to read and do math at grade level by the end of third grade is a strong predictor of later school failure and dropout. As president, what will you do to ensure that all American students achieve grade level proficiency by third grade?

"Whoa"

That's a reasonable response on reading the new National Center for Children in Poverty report on chronic school absenteeism in the early elementary grades, which finds that roughly 1 in 10 kindergarten and first graders miss at least 10 percent of school days each year (18 days for a typical 180-day school year), and in some urban districts the rate of chronically absent children in grades K-3 is as high as 1 in 4. We're used to hearing about high truancy rates for urban high school students, even middle schoolers. But the fact that way too many elementary school students are missing a lot more days of class than they should be is unexpected. It's also a serious obstacle to ensuring all children achieve proficiency in reading and math by third grade--a strong predictor of later academic success or failure.

In 2006 Massachusetts began implementing a new Universal Pre-K Initiative that provides grants to existing early childhood providers--including school districts, Head Start programs, center-based childcare, and family child care homes--to improve the quality of pre-k education they provide to 3- and 4-year-olds. 131 providers received grants in fiscal year 2007, and the program added another 105 grantees in fiscal 2008. Selected providers were those that demonstrated capacity and committment to provide quality programs. A new report from Abt. Associates looks at how these recipients used grant funds and recommends next steps for the program.

Researchers in England have identified a gene linked to poor reading ability. Previous research had identified a correlation between the gene and dyslexia, but this research shows a correlation between the gene and poor reading ability among non-dyslexic children, as well. While the presence of the gene correlated with poorer reading performance in a population of 6000 children, ages 7 to 9, it does not affect overall cognitive abilities. Further research is needed to better understand the role this gene plays in affecting reading abilities and children's brain development.

Last August, the Michigan legislature passed a new education funding law designed to encourage school districts to offer full-day kindergarten. Currently, half-day and full-day kindergarten programs get the same amount of per-pupil funding. Beginning in 2010, full-day kindergarten will continue to get the full amount, while half-day programs will get half their current funding.

Encouraging full-day kindergarten is a good move: research shows that attending full-day kindergarten (as opposed to half-day kindergarten) helps narrow developmental and literacy gaps, especially among low-income children. All children benefit from academically-rich full-day kindergarten because for most children with working parents, the alternative for those afternoon hours is a lower-quality daycare.

Yet in Michigan, this move is forcing school districts to revisit their balance books and do some real number crunching and spending cuts. That is because this new law has changed the balance of two key budget seesaws:

One of our favorite reads here at Early Ed Watch is AFT's American Educator--a great quarterly magazine on education that, if you're not currently reading, you should be. In recent years, American Educator has featured numerous articles relevant to early education--including a sobering analysis highlighting the poor quality of state standards for K-2 earlier this year, E.D. Hirsch on the importance of developing vocabulary and content knowledge for warding off the fourth grade slump in reading scores, and a terrific 2004 issue that focused on preventing early reading difficulties.

Earlier this month we praised the Texas Education Agency for requesting a $65 million increase in pre-k funding for 2010 and 2011, to expand access and improve quality in the state's pre-k program, which is the nation's largest. But even as TEA pushes to increase investments in pre-k, another state agency, the Texas Workforce Commission, which administers child care funding programs, seems to be backtracking on both access and quality. According to the Texas Early Childhood Education Coalition, TWC has failed to allocate needed state funds for childcare quality enhancement efforts--and unless the state invests in those activities it may lose matching federal funds, too. This could result in some 35,000 Texas children losing access to services that the Texas Early Education Model provides to improve educational quality in child care, Head Start, and preschool settings across the state. Early education advocates in the state are concerned that this signifies a problematic shift in TWC's approach, away from support for childcare quality and towards a narrow focus on providing childcare "slots," regardless of quality. That would be a big step back at the same time other state agencies are taking important steps forward.

Friday's Presidential debate was supposed to focus on foreign policy, so we weren't expecting to hear much discussion of early education issues. But during a section in which moderator Jim Lehrer asked the candidates about how the current financial crisis will impact their proposed policy agendas, Democratic candidate Barack Obama gave a shout-out to early education as the kind of needed investment that produces long-term returns that justify increasing investments even in tight economic times:

LEHRER: Would you go for that [a freeze on domestic spending proposed by McCain]?

OBAMA: The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel. There are some programs that are very important that are under funded. I want to increase early childhood education and the notion that we should freeze that when there may be, for example, this Medicare subsidy doesn't make sense.

Delaware ranks 4th in the nation in the rate at which children are expelled from preschool and pre-k programs, according to research by the Yale Child Study Center. Out of every 1,000 children enrolled in pre-k in Delaware, 13 are expelled. The state recently got some help to address that problem, in the form of a grant from the Center for Mental Health Services, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The $9 million grant will support therapists to work with children ages 2-5 who have been identified as having emotional disturbances, as well as their families and caregivers. Young children with emotional and behavioral problems need access to mental health services and other supports that can help them develop the skills they need to deal with their emotions and succeed in school and interaction with others. Unfortuantely, access to mental health services in the United States is poor, even for many families with health insurance, and children who need these services often cannot access them. Delaware might also want to take a look at the recommendations from this report from Yale Child Study Center and the Foundation for Child Development on policies that can reduce the rate at which children are expelled from pre-k programs.