Early Ed Watch

Americans aren't the only ones expecting national-level policy changes in early childhood education. In England, schools are preparing for what could be the biggest shake-up in primary education in decades, according to news reports. In early December, Sir Jim Rose, an advisor to English Schools Secretary Ed Balls, issued an interim report on the state of English primary education. His recommendation: Shift away from teaching about discrete subjects and introduce more opportunities for children to play and develop cognitive and motor skills.

The final recommendations of the Rose Review, as his report is called, are not expected until later this year and, if accepted by the government, they won't be in place until 2011. But, the new ideas have already caused a stir in England. Not only do they represent a major shift away from the National Curriculum of 1988, a set of concepts that are supposed to guide the instruction of all English students beginning in preschool. These changes come with a concerted emphasis on early education and early education alignment. On that last point, especially, U.S. policymakers should take note.

Early education advocates and practitioners across the country are viewing the coming state budget seasons with concern, as significant state budget deficits put pressure on lawmakers to cut state spending, threatening funding for pre-k and other early education programs.

A rare bright spot in this bleak landscape is Texas, where soaring oil prices earlier this year have generated a budget surplus estimated at over $10 billion. Pre-k advocates in the state, with support from the state's business and education reform communities, are pushing to use some of that surplus to fund a $600 million increase in pre-k funding, to expand pre-k programs from half-day to full-day, lower class sizes and child:adult ratios, and support partnerships with community providers.

For obvious reasons, this blog focuses primarily on early education policy issues in the United States. But sometimes taking a step back and looking at early education in other developed countries can offer a useful perspective on our own early education challenges.

That's why a recent report from UNICEF's Innocenti Research Center is particularly valuable for individuals working on early education policy issues. The report postulates that the developed world is undergoing a transition in how we care for an educate young children. Due to a combination of economic and social changes that have increased mother's participation in the workforce, and growing awareness of the importance of children's early years for long-term development and learning, young children in OECD countries are spending amounts of time in organized child care settings. In the words of the report, "Today's rising generation in the countries of the OECD is the first in which a majority are spending a large part of their early childhoods not in their own homes with their own families but in some form of child care."

If you read this blog, you probably already know how important it is for parents to talk to their babies and small children and engage them in conversation. Little Anders Gross and his mom, Lindsay, demonstrate below. Note that while Anders is still working on his language skills, he's already quite proficient in the 21st Century Skill of vlogging.

Happy New Year!

Miami-Dade County, the nation's fourth largest school district, offers a compelling example of how school district leaders can and must incorporate high-quality early education into their broader school reform and improvement. Spearheaded by Superintendent Alberto Carvalho and supported by a host of local and national partner organizations, Ready Schools Miami connects high-quality pre-k programs with improved kindergarten and early elementary school programs to create an aligned, high-quality pre-k through third grade continuum designed to ensure children exit third grade with a solid foundation in the academic and other skills they need to succeed in the later elementary, middle and high school years. Ready Schools Miami is also linked with quality childcare and other initiatives aimed at improving early learning and development for children even before the early elementary years.

The holidays have given me some time to finally read through the Five-Year Action Plan for the District of Columbia Public Schools that Chancellor Michelle Rhee released in late October. (Yes, I know, I'm clearly a girl who knows how to have a fun holiday season.) (Yes, I know, I should have gotten to it sooner.)

There's a lot of good stuff in there, but one glaring omission that really troubled me: A total lack of attention to early education. The word "preschool" appears exactly once in the document, as part of a series of early education programs given a passing mention in a section dealing with parental engagement. Pre-kindergarten or early childhood education? Not a mention. Kindergarten? Nope. On the upside, early literacy does get mentioned twice, and Rhee is proposing a solid, research-based approach to early literacy, including increased use of tiered interventions for struggling readers.

I tackle the question in today's Washington Times:

Advocates for early childhood education are understandably excited about their prospects under President-elect Barack Obama's administration. During the campaign, Mr. Obama pledged to increase federal early education spending by $10 billion annually.

Currently, the two largest federal early childhood programs, Head Start and the Child Care and Development Block Grant, spend about $12 billion annually combined. A $10 billion increase would almost double that investment.

Just as remarkably, Mr. Obama deliberately singled out early education as an important investment he would prioritize even in tight economic times. Add in a potentially $1 trillion economic stimulus package that's raising the prospects for even previously inconceivable public investments, and advocates are downright giddy.

It seems terribly Grinch-like to throw cold water on these hopes. But in fact this is a dangerous moment for both Mr. Obama and the early education movement.

In a coincidence of timing, we published our roundup of various organizations' proposals for early childhood care and education in the stimulus package at about the same time as Pre-K Now released a letter to House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid outlining their stimulus agenda for early education--so Pre-k Now's agenda didn't make it into our roundup.

Pre-k Now's first recommendation calls for state fiscal relief--an idea we've previously noted might be the best way to support early education in the stimulus, by staving of likely state cuts to early childhood and elementary school funding. Like some of the organizations we mentioned yesterday, they're also calling for $3 billion in increased funding for Head Start and Early Head Start, and another $3 billion increase for the Child Care and Development Block Grant.

As we've said previously, one thing for early education advocates to keep an eye on in the stimulus package is ensuring that community-based early education providers have access to any new school construction funding that the legislation provides: And Pre-k Now has kept their eye on that ball, encouraging Congress to allocate $1 billion of any school modernization package specifically for school facilities.

As we've previously noted, the economic crisis is hitting early childhood care and education programs, too. Parents who've lost their jobs are pulling their children out of preschool and child care programs. Child care centers in hard-hit areas are struggling to stay afloat amid growing vacancies, threatening the care other families need to stay in the workforce. Even worse, some financially strapped families, faced with choosing between child care and other essential bills, are choosing to leave their young children home alone while they work--a situtation that puts little ones in considerable danger. And states face budget shortfalls that could lead to cuts in child care funds.

Big front pages NYT article today looks at the palpable excitement within the early education community about President-elect Barack Obama's support for early education, and the ambitious agenda he put forward for early childhood investments during the campaign. The article's a big win for early childhood advocates, but it's also a bit diappointing from an analytical perspective. Although the NYT's Sam Dillon offers some interesting glimpses into the forces that influenced Mr. Obama's support for early education, there's nothing here that will be news to EarlyEdWatch readers, and the article touches only tangentially on some of the tougher policy questions that any effort to enact or implement these proposals will have to deal with: How will new investments interact with existing early childhood programs and funding streams, such as Head Start? What kinds of quality controls and state-level accountability can be incorporated into new federal investments to ensure that states are using them in ways that actually improve outcomes for kids? How can states ensure quality in early education services across a network of diverse providers? If we're talking about a federal role in fostering the development of systems of early care and education at the state and local level, what should those systems look like?