PreK-3rd

Duncan: Early Ed Can Get Schools Out of 'The Catch-Up Business'

Lisa Guernsey — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:37:00 -0500

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan presented the fullest picture yet of his vision for a birth-to-8 education system in remarks yesterday at the opening of the annual meeting of the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

In a wide-ranging speech that emphasized the importance of "raising the bar" on the quality of early learning environments, Duncan said that early childhood advocates now face two challenges. One, he said, is the need for better transitions and "follow through" between pre-K and the K-12 years. The other is what he sees as a necessary shift in thinking about how to measure quality -- moving from "inputs" like teacher qualifications and child-to-staff ratios to "outcomes" that indicate whether children are developing and learning well.

Duncan praised the NAEYC, the nation's largest membership organization of preschools, child care centers, kindergartens and public elementary schools, for its insistence that to close the achievement gap, we must prevent the gap through high-quality early learning experiences.

"I want our schools to get out of the catch-up business," he said. "To prevent the gap," he continued, "we must be ready to dramatically improve outcomes for our children."

Later in his speech he provided more context for how he might define "outcomes," noting that measures of "school readiness have historically been treated as if they are apart from a child's social and emotional development." Today, he said, "We recognize that a child's ability to engage in self-regulation and cooperative play are critical to school readiness success ... It's time to recognize that they are inextricably linked."

Duncan did not address how those outcomes might be measured and used. Here at Early Ed Watch we see this question as critical and expect to be digging into it over the coming year. We agree that without indicators of children's progress - without measures of "outcomes" - we will never have a full enough picture of how well an early learning environment is meeting their needs.

We also agree with the need for "follow through" into the K-12 years. His remarks regarding the need for "better transitions" were especially encouraging.

"The best early learning system is of little use," he said, if a child ends up in "an inadequate or lousy elementary school." He added: "We cannot diminish the importance of K-12 reform."

As longtime readers of this blog know, we strongly support PreK-3^rd strategies that align curricula, standards and assessments from pre-K to kindergarten and on up through the third grade. Instead of educators focusing on the divide between early childhood community and the K-12 world, children would be far better served by a system that makes no distinctions, providing children with rich instruction, content knowledge and social interactions that are aligned and build on each other throughout each year of their early lives.

Duncan briefly mentioned the prospect of new public funding for early education in the proposed Early Learning Challenge Grants, the Race to the Top initiative and the Investing in Innovation, or i3, Fund. He also spoke about the Education Department's relationship with the Department of Health and Human Services (which administers Head Start). He said he sees a "new sense of partnership" between the two agencies, adding that Jacqueline Jones, senior advisor for early learning in the Ed Department, and Joan Lombardi, deputy assistant secretary of the HHS's Administration for Children and Families, work together daily.

The secretary also gave voice to some of the obstacles to creating high-quality environments by describing what he called the "iron triangle" that affects publicly funded preschools and child care centers. On one side, providers are being asked to open more slots for more children, otherwise known as "increasing access." On another side, providers are being asked to "boost quality," by paying higher salaries that attract more qualified teachers and investing in professional development. And on the third side, they are being asked to cut costs and show savings.

He did not offer step-by-step guidance on how to break free of this iron triangle, but he did commend several states for making progress. He singled out Oklahoma for "showing it's possible" and praised Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Alabama and New Jersey for being leaders in building high-quality early learning systems. He also singled out the Harlem Children Zone and the CLASS observational assessment developed by Robert Pianta at the University of Virginia.

Nor did Duncan's speech answer the toughest questions in early childhood -- such as how to improve teacher compensation, how to do appropriate assessments and how to use assessment data, and where states should look for sustainable funding streams. But he was interrupted by applause throughout his remarks and the audience of thousands -- sitting amid rows and rows of chairs in the cavernous Washington Convention Center -- gave him a standing ovation. As the NAEYC meeting goes into full swing over the next several days it will be interesting to see how preschool teachers digest the many details in his speech. We'll keep our eyes and ears open, and we encourage you in the blog comments below to give us your take on Duncan's vision.

UPDATE 11/19 1:35 PM: The full text of Duncan's remarks is now available on the Ed Dept web site, and J.M. Holland over at Inside Pre-K has posted an audio recording.

Department of Education Releases Race to the Top Application

Sara Mead — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:47:00 -0500

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Education released the application and notice of final priorities for the Race to the Top competition, a $4.35 billion grant program that rewards states that have shown the most commitment to and progress on education reforms to improve student achievement. The final priorities and application reflect a number of changes from a draft the department released in July that drew more than 1,100 comments.

The change of greatest interest to the early education community is probably the addition of a new invitational priority specifically focused on improving early learning outcomes. As we reported previously, a number of RTT commenters, including major associations and several major foundations that invest in early childhood, urged the Education Department to place greater emphasis on early learning in designing the grant program. The addition of the new invitational priority for early learning doesn’t give these groups everything they wanted. An invitational priority means states don’t get any extra points for including early ed in their applications. But it does indicate that the Secretary believes early childhood is an important component of a larger education reform agenda and wants states to include reforms that address or integrate school readiness and linkages between preschool and elementary schools in their RTT applications.

Colorado Lieutenant Governor Barbara O’Brien, who’s been tasked with leading her state’s efforts to secure RTT funding, and is generally regarded as leading the pack on RTT reforms, clearly knows this. She’s been a strong advocate in her state for both early learning and what is often called a “P-20” approach to reform – one that integrates early childhood with K-12 school reform efforts and the elementary years. As other states start working on their RTT applications, they could do worse than follow O’Brien’s lead.

Here at Early Ed Watch, we’ve promoted these kind of linkages as well, often couched in terms of a PreK-3^rd approach – the creation of a seamless system from pre-K up through the early elementary grades. In fact, we see several ways that states could integrate early learning programs and PreK-3^rd reform to address the other RTT selection criteria, as well as ways that states could use the reforms encouraged by RTT to support a PreK-3^rd approach.

For example, take one of the selection criteria: a state’s commitment to turning around the lowest-achieving schools. A growing number of schools and districts, including Union City, N.J. and Montgomery County, Md., have used PreK-3^rd approaches (like comprehensive literacy programs that span pre-K up through 3^rd grade) to dramatically improve results in low-performing, high-poverty schools. States and school districts could make implementation of comprehensive PreK-3^rd reforms an important part of their strategy for turning around low-performing elementary schools, particularly now that these final priorities give districts greater flexibility to implement district-driven “transformational” interventions in these schools.

Requirements to “provide effective, data-informed professional development, coaching, induction, and common planning and collaborative time” for teachers could also support PreK-3^rd alignment and reform. More broadly, states that are serious about improving student achievement and narrowing achievement gaps will include a variety of policies and steps that support PreK-3^rd reforms in their RTT applications, because providing children with high-quality, seamless PreK-3^rd early learning experiences is essential to driving student learning gains over the long term.

For folks who are following this issue more closely, here are some other key changes in the final RTT priorities:

Creation of a new section at the beginning of the selection criteria in which states are expected to lay out their coherent, coordinated, statewide reform agenda, and provide evidence of buy-in to that agenda from school district in the state, state capacity to implement the agenda, and the ability to significantly improve educational outcomes. Some criteria in this section previously appeared in other sections in the proposed priorities.
Extension of the deadline by which states must commit to adopting new, common K-12 standards, because some states found the previous timeline too short to be feasible. Under the final priorities, states must adopt common standards by August 2, 2010, or demonstrate commitment to doing so at a later date in 2010.
Increased emphasis on use of data at the local level to inform professional development and improve instruction, in addition to the creation of statewide longitudinal student data systems.
Clarification that “teacher effectiveness” should be measured by multiple measures, including, but not limited to, gains in students’ academic achievement over time. Other factors might include high-quality teacher observations. While this change is getting a lot of attention from RTT watchers and the media, it’s not clear whether it’s actually that much of a change. While the proposed guidelines emphasized the importance of linking student performance data to individual teachers and including student achievement in measures of teacher effectiveness, Education Department officials have been publicly saying for some time that multiple measures, including observation, should be used to measure teacher effectiveness.
Increased emphasis on and clarification of points related to professional development and support for teachers and other educators.
A variety of changes related to requirements to turn around low-performing schools. The proposed priorities included four turnaround strategies, but they limited school districts’ ability to use the fourth strategy, “transformation,” other than as a last resort when other, more aggressive models could not be used. That limitation has been lifted, but districts with more than nine persistently low-achieving schools may not use the transformational approach in more than half of their schools. In addition, some provisions relating to creating a hospitable state policy environment for charter schools have been moved from the “turning around lowest-achieving schools” section to the “general” section, to clarify that the Department does not see charter schools as the sole or chief remedy for turning around low-performing schools, but views improving such schools as a competency all districts should have.
Addition of a new criterion inviting states to describe how they allow school districts to operate innovative, autonomous schools other than charter schools.
Expansion of the invitational priority for P-20 coordination, to include not just vertical coordination from early childhood to K-12 and up through higher education, but also horizontal coordination between schools and other agencies and organizations providing comprehensive services for children.

The final priorities have been getting lots of comment, from education policy experts, advocacy groups, and bloggers. Here’s some other coverage and analysis worth reading:

Education Week, “Rules Set for $4 Billion Race to the Top Contest” http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/11/11/12stim-race.h29.html
New York Times, “After Criticism, Administration is Praised for Final Rules on Education Grants,” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/education/12educ.html?_r=1
Eduwonk, “Racing to the Top” http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/11/racing-to-the-top.html
Education Gadfly, “Evaluating the Race to the Top Final Criteria” http://www.edexcellence.net/flypaper/index.php/2009/11/evaluating-the-race-to-the-top-final-criteria/
Eduflack, “The Race Officially Begins Now” http://blog.eduflack.com/2009/11/11/the-race-officially-begins--now.aspx

Preguntas, Preguntas: What Do We Know About Dual-Language Learners in Pre-K?

Lisa Guernsey — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:53:00 -0500

A symposium in Arlington on Tuesday brought together some of the most well-known researchers in the field of early childhood to dig into a tough and timely question: How do we help young children in the United States who know very little English?

The day-long symposium, "Investigating the Classroom Experiences of Young Dual Language Learners," was hosted by the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education, based at the University of Virginia, in partnership with the National Center for Latino Child & Family Research. Designed to link together current research while also jumpstarting more probing studies, the symposium was peppered with lively discussions about how to gather and decipher evidence of what works in pre-K classrooms. The hosts intend to publish a collection of the day's papers.

Recent studies have shown that dual-language programs -- roughly defined as programs in which teachers give half of their instruction in a child's home language and half in English -- are effective at improving the school readiness of young children for whom English is a second language. But there is still vast uncharted territory for researchers to determine exactly what that these programs should look like in practice, what kinds of skills teachers need to teach dual-language learners, and what policies should be enacted (or scrapped) to turn classrooms into more appropriate language-learning zones.

The day was not billed as a seminar on research about children from Spanish-speaking homes specifically -- children arrive in early childhood centers speaking dozens of different languages -- but the Latino population was a main focus of discussion.

Among the many, many questions:

Current thinking assumes that Latino parents are less likely to seek out pre-K programs for their children. Is that still true, or is it a supposition based on old research? Are we starting to see a shift in which Latino families are more comfortable, or have more access to, center-based programs and are starting to seek out more pre-K experiences for their children?
How do we determine a child's first language? Just because a child comes from a home where Mom speaks Spanish, does that mean that the child's first language is Spanish or could he be gaining his first language skills from other adults or siblings in his life? Should we rely on the reports of parents and teachers to categorize children's language proficiency?
Are Quality Rating and Improvement Systems taking language-learning into account? These systems use trained observers to rate the quality of early learning centers (giving them, say, a 1, 2 or 3 star rating.) Should those observers be measuring whether child care centers and pre-K programs are helping to support children's home languages as well as helping to teach them English?
What words should we be using to describe children who come to classrooms without strong English skills: dual-language learners or English-language learners? Both? If we call them ELLs, are we ignoring the importance of them continuing to build their home-language skills? If we call them DLLs, will we get confused between categories of children and descriptions of formalized dual-language classrooms (in which half the day might be taught as an immersion in one language, and the other half in English?).
How do state policies that favor English instruction, such as those in California for K-12 systems, impact what early childhood educators do in pre-K classrooms? What happens when a child transitions from a dual-language program into a kindergarten classroom where teachers speak only English?
How should language skill be measured in determining "child outcomes," i.e., how well students are gaining new knowledge and skills? In other words, should we rely on a child's English-based math or English reading scores in determining whether he is learning math or language arts? Can proficiency in reading or answering qusetions in a home language be part of the picture? How do we tease apart what a child actually knows from how a child responds to an English-based test?

Ideas for how to support English-language learners have been trickling forth this year. For example, earlier in 2009, the Society for Research in Child Development published a policy report and accompanying commentaries on the needs of Hispanic children. One of the commenters in that series -- James A. Griffin of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development -- has been urging social scientists to go even further, noting the "paucity" of research on what interventions make the most difference to these English language learners.

Sounds like he's right, given that there are still so many questions hanging out there like those above. Much more needs to be investigated before we can speak definitively about how to prioritize resources and enact better policies to support young children's first language and help them master English. Hopefully the report from Tuesday's meeting will provide a better foundation for building pre-K programs that do the most good.

In the meantime, however, it's worth repeating one of the mantras that came out of Tuesday's symposium: "Good quality is good quality." No matter what a child's language background, we see mounting evidence that 3- and 4-year-old children benefit from teachers who converse with them, ask them about what they are seeing or doing, and respond to and elaborate on their questions. Rich language experiences, whether they happen in children's home language or in second language or both, are a cornerstone to a high-quality learning environment.

Make Way for Morning Math: A Modest Proposal for Lifting Math Achievement

Lisa Guernsey — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:12:00 -0500

The Washington Post's "Answer Sheet" just published a commentary I wrote about how to improve children's grasp of math in the early years. It's a call to parents to build math moments into the morning routine, just as book reading is part of the bedtime drill. To make something like this work, we'll need preschool teachers and elementary school teachers to help parents recognize their own capacity for helping their kids, providing them with creative ideas that make math accessible and easy. I've included some of those ideas in the post below, but I'd love to find more. Please don't hesitate to add your feedback and ideas to the comment section below or at the Answer Sheet site, where parents are chiming in.

Bedtime = book time. Parents know that equation by heart, or at least they're supposed to. The drill goes like this: Just before the goodnight kiss, we snuggle up with our young kids, open a book, and read with them. Okay, so maybe at first we have to beg them to just settle down. And maybe the baby is more prone to eat the pages than look at them. But still, we try. We're the ones responsible for these little human beings. It's part of our job.

Mathematics, on the other hand, that's not on the must-do list. Reading may be part of the raising-kids routine. Math -- not so much.

But maybe it should be. Our children's mediocre performance in mathematics has been a running theme. Reports stream forth on the need for educators to pay more attention to young children's math skills. Last month, new data out of the U.S. Department of Education showed that fourth-grade students are in a math slump. After nearly two decades of watching fourth graders make steady progress, scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress seemed to hit a wall. The average math score hasn't budged since 2007.

Theories abound on why this might be. For one, we don't recognize that young children can grasp more mathematics concepts than we give them credit for. A report from the National Academies of Sciences earlier this year pointed out that "although virtually all young children have the capability to learn and become competent in mathematics," most of them don't have good opportunities to do so. Teacher preparation programs are partly to blame too. Many teachers admit to being uncomfortable with math themselves - let alone prepared to make it fun and interesting for young kids.

So, yes, the educational system can do a lot more, but isn't it time for numbers to get the nod in households too? Could mathematics for young children become embedded in family's daily routines as deeply as bedtime books?

Here's my proposal: Make way for morning math.

Now don't take this the wrong way. This is not a call for yet more hyper-parenting. You won't need preschool math tutors or 1+1 flash cards. Hang up the phone and put those away. A sure-fire way to make math miserable is to force a 4 year old to memorize what the number 10 looks like without giving him anything concrete to help him relate to those strange symbols and what they are supposed to represent.

Nor is this a proposal that only mathematical geniuses can pull off. This isn't about doing differential equations at the dining room table. It doesn't require pencils and paper, calculators or measuring sticks.

This is about helping to lay a foundation for children in their youngest years, when doing math is about finding fun, playful moments to introduce numbers, shapes, measuring, grouping and sorting.

Rummage through the sock drawer with your 4 year old, encouraging her to find a matching pair. Voila. You've covered one math concept already. Go to the freezer and pull out the frozen waffles for your 6-year-old. "You want one-and-a-half? How about three halfs instead?" Wink, wink, another concept down the hatch. Ask your 8-year-old to pour the juice so that the glasses are 75 percent full. Aha. A good opening for a chat about fractions.

Two years ago, in an influential article in the journal Developmental Psychology, researchers reported that mathematics skills trumped reading skills as one of the best predictors of success in the later school years. As policy makers and educators continue to search for the best ways to close the achievement gap, you can bet that math education for young children will be attracting more and more attention.

So let's make math count in the home as well as at school. On the literacy front, we've had decades of reading research to remind us about the importance of that bedtime book-reading routine. Public service advertisements, kindergarten homework assignments and family literacy programs all urge parents to read a book with their kids.

Imagine what might happen with a similar campaign that suggests ways for parents to do math in the morning with their children. Look for numbers on cereal boxes. Talk about the score of last night's ball game. Point out patterns on their hats and mittens as you dress them for school.

At the very least, this morning math concept should be an idea worth pondering while we sip our morning coffee -- after we've challenged our kids to estimate how many cups are still left in the pot.

Photo courtesy of flickr user Mario Bellavite under the Creative Commons license.

What Kindergarten Readiness Means to Kindergarten Teachers

Lisa Guernsey — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:48:00 -0500

Data from a survey of kindergarten teachers in California's Santa Clara County adds to the mounting evidence that kindergarten readiness is not as simple to define as you might think.

Contrary to popular conceptions of what it means for a 5-year-old to be ready for kindergarten, most kindergarten teachers are not wishing for rooms full of children who can already identify the letters of the alphabet. What they want instead are children who have learned how to regulate their impulses, follow through on a difficult task and have the self-control to listen to the teacher's directions for a few minutes.

This was one of several messages that emerged in Sacramento last Thursday during a presentation of recent data from the Santa Clara County Partnership for School Readiness, a collaborative of public, private and non-profit organizations in Silicon Valley. The presentation was part of the forum at which the New America Foundation released our report on early education in California. (For more about the report, see last week's post, the executive summary and the full report.)

Researchers for the Santa Clara County Partnership surveyed 36 kindergarten teachers in 2008, asking them multiple questions about what they believed entering kindergarteners should to be able to do in the domains of self-care and motor skills, self-regulation, social expression and kindergarten academics. Loretta Burns, director for the partnership, showed this slide at the California event to explain how these domains build on each other:

(If the slides are hard to read on your monitor, you may want to open the larger versions by clicking on the attachments at the end of the post.)

While kindergarten academics is at the top of the pyramid, most kindergarten teachers did not report that children need to come in with a strong base in academic skills if they want to have a successful kindergarten year. Instead, the teachers gave top billing to self-care and motor skills followed by self-regulation.

Teachers said that it was easiest to help students develop their academic skills and hardest to make an impact in developing their self-regulation skills. In fact, they said they had to spend the most time in the classroom focusing on self-regulation. This slide below tells the story:

This highlights the importance of designing interactions in the preschool years that are developmentally appropriate. Worksheets that force 4-year-olds to trace the outline of the letter A are a far cry from the types of experiences young children really need in the preschool years.

The slide also raises a key question: How can preschool and kindergarten experiences help children learn to self-regulate? Research on the importance of building self-regulation skills in young children has been accumulating over the past few years, and some of it is starting to zoom in on the significance of playtime, particularly pretend play scenarios that are child-led but feature teacher input. For example, the Tools of the Mind approach, which we've written about several times, incorporates pretend play in classroom settings and has been shown in scientific research to improve children's executive function and self-regulation skills.

Burns' presentation about the Santa Clara project was valuable on several other levels too. It provided a view of kindergarten readiness assessment that may help to dispel concerns about inappropriate testing of preschoolers. As Burns explained early in her presentation: "This is not about standardized tests for 4-year-olds."

The assessments in Santa Clara collect information from parents, teachers and observations of children in classroom settings. They are not used to determine where children should be placed or what schools they should attend, nor are they used to evaluate teachers or for other high-stakes purposes. The observations are done by trained teachers who look for signs of children's progress on multiple levels. Some examples of what they look for:

Can the child operate zippers or work with crayons?
Can the child follow one- or two-step directions?
Can the child engage in symbolic play with others (like playing house or fire station)?
Can the child count 10 objects correctly?

The appendix of Santa Clara's September 2009 report provides a sample of the observation sheet used for recording children's development in these and several other areas.

Santa Clara has been conducting these assessments since 2004, and the data is providing new insights to better prepare teachers for the children coming through their doors. Besides demographic and skill-based information, the data tells schools and teachers how many children are arriving with some experience in early learning environments like preschools and high-quality child care centers.

Collecting information like this is critical to ensuring that early education systems provide what children need. We hope that, as states continue to build out more robust and accessible systems of early learning for young children, well-designed and appropriate kindergarten readiness assesssments like this one continue to be part of the picture.

Content Knowledge in the Pumpkin Patch

Lisa Guernsey — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:58:00 -0400

We're in the thick of pumpkin patch season. Children around the country have been heading out on field trips with their classes and families, bumping along on hay rides to find the plumpest pumpkins they can get their hands on.

Good teachers know how to turn these field trips into curiosity-driven moments of learning for themselves and their students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds who finally have a chance to hear, see, use and interact with objects and concepts that they rarely come across in their everyday lives. As a New York Times story highlighted yesterday, for some children a trip to the pumpkin patch means being able to hold and touch what is essentially a foreign object. When a classroom of 25 children at Harlem Success Academy 3 were asked how many had ever held a pumpkin, only two raised their hand.

The importance of content knowledge in children's reading comprehension has been a favorite topic on this blog, and field trips can be powerful conductors in this realm. A child who has explored a pumpkin patch will have a much easier time in the future when he or she comes across paragraphs about vines and tendrils, maturing fruit and harvest time. And it's not just children's reading skills, of course, that can improve. Their grasp of science and social studies becomes more sophisticated too.

For an example of how pumpkin picking can provide kids with a strong foundation of content knowledge, check out this video from a first-grade teacher who goes by the name of Wojtera and runs a class blog:

Not only are these children having a chance to see, up close, what tendrils are and how the fruit gains shape, color and heft over time, their teacher has extended the experience as a science lesson in the classroom, giving children a chance to see what pumpkin vines, flowers and seeds look like under a microscope. As students see and ask questions about pollen magnified 60 times or a tendril at 10 times the size, they gain more facility with the words and concepts of biology and horticulture. As cognitive scientist Dan Willingham writes in his book, Why Children Don't Like School and explains at the Core Knowledge blog, without this content knowledge, students may never fully comprehend what they read. They may be able to artificially pick their way through a paragraph about a farmer checking her pumpkin crop or a scientist peering into a microscope, but they will not have enough content stored in their long-term memory to be able to really make sense of what the paragraph means.

By the way, I came across the video of this field trip while reading the comments that accompanied one of the posts on The Early Years, a blog published by the National Science Teachers Association. The blog is written by science teacher Peggy Ashbrook, who last week was looking at state and national-board science standards as she grappled with what is a tough balancing act for early educators: being sure not to underestimate what children can learn about the relationships in natural systems, nor overestimate their cognitive abilities to understand abstract and tricky concepts like the importance of sampling sizes in conducting science experiments. In the post, she posed a great question: "Is anyone very satisfied with their state or program content standards for preK-grade 2 science?" Anyone with experience in teaching science in the years from pre-kindergarten through third grade should chime in.

Pumpkin on vine photo by flickr user John Carleton reprinted under Creative Commons license.

Sec. Duncan Calls Out Ed Schools' Shortcomings: Could New Early Ed Credentials Be Part of the Solution?

Sara Mead — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:23:00 -0400

In a speech earlier this week at the University of Virginia, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan harshly criticized the nation’s education schools. “In far too many universities, education schools are the neglected stepchild," Duncan said. "Too often they don’t attract the best students or faculty." He added: "Many ed schools do relatively little to prepare students for the rigor of teaching in high-poverty and high-need schools.”

Duncan has a point. Numerous studies and reports have documented the failures of our nation’s system for preparing prospective educators. In brief, our education schools enroll some of the least academically promising students; provide them with little practical teaching experience or grounding in evidence-based practice; don’t prepare them to work in high-poverty schools or serve students with special needs; and are not accountable for the performance of their graduates in the classroom — or whether they even make it there at all. While there's substantial disagreement in education policy circles about many issues, the shortcomings of our approach to preparing and training the nation's teachers are one issue that critics both across the policy and political spectrum can agree on -- although they have radically different prescriptions for how to fix the problem.

Duncan's harsh criticisms of ed schools have gotten considerable attention from the K-12 education policy community, but early childhood advocates -- particularly those seeking to expand access to universal pre-K programs -- should take heed as well.

Over the past decade, early childhood advocates have fought tirelessly to raise the educational credentials of early childhood educators. Universal pre-k advocates, in particular, have pushed to require a bachelor's degree -- and in some cases state teacher certification as well -- for all teachers in state pre-K programs. The 2007 Head Start reauthorization gave a boost to these efforts, by mandating that half of all Head Start teachers should have a bachelor's degree by 2013. And the Early Learning Challenge Grants currently before Congress as part of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act include requirements for states to build systems that raise the credentials of early childhood educators and provide greater compensation to preschool and childcare teachers who earn postsecondary degrees.

There are good reasons for this focus on raising the skills and qualifications of early childhood educators. Research documents the tremendous amount of learning that takes place in children’s earliest years, as well as the importance of nurturing, consistent and stimulating caregivers to children’s development during this time. Yet childcare and preschool teachers often earn less than parking lot attendants or hotel maids, and many also have correspondingly low education levels.

This is particularly perverse because in many ways we know more from research about the skills early educators need than we do about the qualities and skills that are essential for educators working at higher grade levels. Yet we tend to have higher -- and more specific -- education requirements for teachers in K-12 schools than we do in early childhood.

A growing number of states require teachers in state-funded pre-kindergarten programs to hold qualifications on par with those of elementary school teachers. But some of the states that enroll the most children in pre-K — Texas, California, Florida — set the bar lower. Education requirements for teachers in private preschool and childcare settings are often minimal. Low-income, English language learner, and minority preschoolers — the ones who most benefit from skilled teaching in the early childhood years — are the least likely to have well-trained teachers.

All these factors point to a need to raise the skills and education levels of many of our nation’s early educators. But, unfortunately, our nation’s schools of education -- where states and reformers expect early childhood educators will turn to earn these credentials -- by and large aren’t up to the task.

Beyond the problems that Duncan called out in his speech, our nation’s schools of education are particularly ill-suited to prepare the next generation of early childhood educators. To be sure, there are some excellent programs preparing early childhood educators out there, but they are not the norm, and are insufficient to serve the growing demand. If, as Duncan says, education schools are the "neglected stepchildren" of our nation's universities, then early childhood programs are the neglected children of ed schools. Because preschool teaching jobs have historically paid much less — and required fewer educational credentials — than those in public K-12 settings, early childhood education programs have tended to be fewer, smaller, and more focused on preparing future researchers than prospective educators. Too many faculty in these programs are out-of-touch with the needs and realities of the field, or subscribe to outdated philosophies of child development that are not informed by recent research on how young brains develop and how children acquire language, pre-literacy, and social skills. And we need many more options for nontraditional students seeking to raise their credentials and skills after years of working in preschool classrooms.

None of this is to say policymakers should give up on raising the skills and qualifications of early childhood educators. Rather, it means we need to take a much more critical look at the programs on which we’re relying to do the difficult but important work of educating and training early childhood professionals. For a long time, universal pre-K advocates have pushed to mandate bachelor’s degrees for all pre-K teachers — but have focused much less attention on the quality of those BA programs, or what prospective teachers should learn in them.

Early childhood advocates and policymakers should take heed of the complaints Duncan aired recently about our nation’s system for preparing K-12 educators and should avoid replicating that same flawed system at the pre-K and early childhood level.

That means that initiatives — like those under the Early Learning Challenge Grant program — to raise the qualifications of early childhood educators should also improve the quality of programs preparing those early educators. States that receive Early Learning Challenge Grants should be required to put in place systems that evaluate the quality of bachelor’s and associate’s degree programs that train early educators in the state, and track both how long their graduates stay in the early childhood field and their performance in the classroom.

Federal policymakers should also fund the development of new, innovative programs -- based in solid evidence about how young children learn and the skills that early educators need to teach them effectively -- to prepare early childhood educators and raise the credentials of existing teachers, including expedited alternative routes to credentials that take into account the considerable skills many early childhood professionals already possess -- even if they currently lack bachelor's degrees.

The Classroom Assessment Scoring System -- developed by researchers at the University of Virginia, where Duncan spoke -- and its accompanying professional development tools provide one compelling model. CLASS is a validated, reliable observational tool that measures the quality of teachers' emotional and instructional interactions with children in the classroom. Research documents that teachers who score better on CLASS produce better student learning gains -- regardless of their level of formal schooling. And teachers who participate in targeted professional development and coaching linked to CLASS can also raise their teaching skills and student outcomes -- again regardless of formal education levels. Rather than requiring all pre-k teachers to complete a one-size-fits all early childhood degree program, why not allow existing teachers an opportunity to earn credentials by demonstrating their skills on CLASS, while also providing customized professional development and coursework to supplement areas where teachers need additional skills? And this is just one of many innovative approaches universities and states could develop to build early educators' skills and credentials.

Ultimately, such innovative models could provide a strategy not just for improving the qualifications of early childhood educators, but also for transforming our entire system of teacher education to address the concerns that Duncan raises. Here at Early Ed Watch, we advocate the creation of PreK-3rd teacher credentials that reflect the unique needs of children in this age range. But while we believe more states should establish such credentials, we don’t think that programs to prepare teachers for these credentials should simply replicate the weaknesses of existing programs. Rather, policymakers and higher education institutions should use the creation of such new credentials as an opportunity to also support the creation of new, better models of teacher preparation - -ultimately spreading effective innovations to prepare early educators upward to reform our K-12 teacher preparation system.

What the 2009 NAEP Math Scores Tell Us

Lisa Guernsey — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:32:00 -0400

No progress on the math front. That's one way to interpret the 4th-graders' scores that were released today by the Institute of Education Sciences in the Nation's Report Card. For the first time since 1990, their average score in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress didn't budge.

But good progress has been made over the past two decades. That's the other take on today's announcement. Since 1990, 4th graders have shown steady improvement in math. And the scores for 8th graders continued to go up this year. This graph on the first page of the report tells the story well:

Both readings are right, which begs two questions: What caused the upward trend of the last two decades, and have we hit a ceiling? Is there something about the way we approach mathematics instruction with young children that can only take them so far?

Several reports over the years have strenuously called for educators to pay more attention to math. Earlier this year, National Research Council released an extensive report which argues that children need more math instruction in early childhood than they are getting now.

In 2008, the National Mathematics Advisory Panel put out a 120-page report that included four helpful recommendations related to math teaching in the pre-K through 3rd grade years. To recap: Focus the curriculum on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division; make sure children arrive in kindergarten with a basic understanding of numbers and counting; ramp up the use of math specialists who can ensure that there are strong curricular bridges between grade levels; and provide training to pre-K-3rd teachers so they can recognize when children are, or aren't, understanding some basic priniciples of mathematics. As we've noted before, too many early educators are unaware of young children’s cognitive capacity to understand math concepts.

All of this will require improvement in the math skills and knowledge of early education teachers. The current system is producing school teachers who do not have a strong background in math themselves and may even be "afraid" to teach math to pre-K students, according to a 2008 policy brief from the Society for Research in Child Development.

In short, if we want to improve students' proficiency in math, we have to improve teachers' proficiency too. That may be the best way to start bending that score curve upward again.

Ed Dept Outlines Priorities for Stimulus-Funded Innovation Grants

Sara Mead — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:42:00 -0400

On Tuesday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement Jim Shelton released proposed priorities and selection criteria for the Investing in Innovation Fund (i3), a $650 million pot of funds intended to support the development and expansion of innovative models to improve student achievement and narrow achievement gaps.

For those of us interested in creating a high-quality continuum of education programs from the earliest years up through third grade, there is a lot to like in the proposed priority list. But first, some background and broader details from today’s announcement:

i3 was created this spring under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Because the program provides a unique opportunity for the Department to invest in the development and scaling up of innovative practices, and because the ARRA legislation left a lot of details to be filled in about how the program will work, many in the education community have been eagerly awaiting further information about how the Secretary intends to implement it.

In August, Department staff indicated that i3 grants will be made in multiple “tiers,” depending on how much evidence of effectiveness there is for a particular innovation. Today’s announcement confirms this and provides further information about these three categories. The department will accept applications for:

Scale-up grants, to support innovations with the strongest evidence of effectiveness in scaling up to have national, regional, or statewide impact. These will be the largest i3 grants. Although the Department’s official notice to the Federal Register does not specify the award amounts, a powerpoint presentation by Department staff indicated Scale-Up Grants could be for as much as $50 million each.
Validation grants, to support innovations with moderate evidence of effectiveness so that innovators can conduct further evaluation to validate effectiveness and to scale up at the state or regional level. These grants will be smaller than Scale-Up Grants, but larger than Development Grants. Awards could be for as much as $30 million each.
Development grants, to support the development and implementation of new, high-potential, relatively untested practices whose efficacy should be systematically studied. Although these innovations need not have been evaluated, the Department indicated that they should be based on research indicating that their approach is promising. These grants will be the smallest grants, up to perhaps $5 million each.

The Secretary intends to make one or more awards in each category, provided there are enough applicants of sufficient quality.

Duncan also outlined four absolute priorities and four competitive priorities for the award of i3 grants in each of the three tiers. Absolute priorities are requirements that grant applicants absolutely must meet in order to receive funding. Applicants do not have to meet competitive priorities, but those who do so receive additional points or other advantage in the selection process.

The four absolute priorities outlined by the Department are aligned with the four assurances required of states under the ARRA. The four absolute priorities include:

Innovations that support effective teachers and school leaders, such as models that recruit, develop, place, reward, and retain effective teachers and leaders, or remove those who are ineffective, in order to increase the number of effective teachers and school leaders
Innovations that improve the use of data, by encouraging and facilitating evaluation, analysis, and use of data by educators, families, and other stakeholders to improve student learning outcomes
Innovations that complement the implementation of high standards and high-quality assessments, such as innovations that enable high-need students to succeed in academically rigorous courses and programs; innovations that increase development and use of formative, interim, and performance-based assessments aligned with rigorous academic standards; and tools that translate standards and assessment information into effective classroom practices
Innovations that turn around persistently low-performing schools, including both 1) whole-school reforms that comprehensively intervene in or replace persistently low-performing schools and 2) interventions targeting specific reform needs in low-performing schools, such as extended learning time or approaches that address non-academic barriers to student success

The four competitive priorities include:

Innovations for improving early learning outcomes, including innovations that improve school readiness and those that improve alignment, collaboration, and transitions between 0-3 programs, preschools, kindergarten, and grades kindergarten through third grade
Innovations that support college access and success, including innovations that improve students’ college preparedness, expectations, and understanding of financial aid and college application process
Innovations to address the unique learning needs of students with disabilities and English-language learners
Innovations that serve schools in rural districts

Early Ed Watch is particularly pleased to see innovations that address early learning included in the four competitive priorities for i3 grants. As we’ve written previously, the early childhood field has in many ways been more innovative that the K-12 education system, so it’s good to see the federal government seeking to invest in studying and scaling up those innovations. Many supporters of quality early childhood programs were troubled that the Secretary’s proposed criteria for Race to the Top included early learning only as an “invitational” priority (meaning that while the Department invites RTT applications that address early childhood, states that are implementing early childhood reforms or making early learning gains don’t get a leg up in the competition for RTT funds) -- and many of the comments the Department received reflect this concern. The fact that early learning is included as a competitive priority for i3 suggests the Department has gotten the message here.

We’re equally pleased that the proposed criteria describe early learning as being from birth through 3rd grade, and that innovations that strengthen alignment along the PreK-3rd continuum are specifically mentioned. Numerous school districts and charter schools across the country—some of which we’ve profiled on this blog — are working to create aligned systems of PreK-3rd early education. Evaluating, scaling up, and helping to replicate those efforts could significantly improve outcomes for disadvantaged children. School districts and nonprofits that are implementing innovative approaches to improving early childhood programs or strengthening PreK-3rd alignment should take a closer look at the i3 grant program as potential source for funding to further develop and validate their efforts and bring them to scale.

Under ARRA, local educational agencies (LEAs, which are typically school districts), and nonprofits operating in partnership with one or more LEAs, or a consortium of schools, are eligible for i3 grants. School districts applying for these funds need to have met “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) for the past two years or have significantly increased achievement for all subgroups of students, and also need to have made significant improvements in other areas. Nonprofits must have a track record of helping school districts do the same, but, under the Secretary’s proposal, would be allowed to partner with districts or schools that fall short of this criteria to help them improve.

Recipients of i3 funds must agree to participate in a rigorous independent evaluation of their effectiveness, and the Department is also proposing a requirement for grantees to participate in “Communities of Practice," which are essentially forums for the collective problem solving and sharing of lessons learned and best practices among i3 grantees.

The Secretary is also proposing a requirement that all i3 grantees obtain matching funds, from private sector or philanthropic sources, equal to 20 percent of the federal grant award they receive.

These proposed priorities, requirements, and selection criteria will be published in the Federal Register, and interested parties will have 30 days to offer comments on them. The Department is particularly seeking comments that might better inform the definitions and criteria it will use to gauge the evidence as to the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of applicants’ models and proposed projects. It is also seeking comments to help it ensure that innovations that comprehensively address the needs of students or that have cumulative effects over time are properly considered in the selection process -- something that will probably be important for early childhood innovations, and where it would probably be beneficial for early education researchers and advocacy groups to provide information and comment to the Department.

Drafting Common Standards: What's Ahead -- And What's Missing

Sara Mead — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:00:00 -0400

Last week the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and National Governors’ Association (NGA)—the two organizations leading efforts to develop “common core” state standards—released a first draft of their “college- and career-ready” standards. The overall reaction from education groups, policy wonks, and other observers has been pretty positive so far, although some critics say the standards devote too little attention to specific content knowledge.

These standards articulate what students should know and be able to do in English language arts and math by the time they graduate from high school, in order to succeed in college or the workforce. But as regular Early Ed Watch readers know, the path to college and career readiness begins much earlier than that—in preschool and the early grades. “College and career-ready” standards define end goals for public schooling. The real meat of the “common core” effort will lie in a series of grade-by-grade academic standards, which will define what students need to learn each year in K-12* schools in order to stay on track to reach the “college and career ready” goalposts.

As experts convened by CCSSO and NGA work to develop those grade-by-grade standards, they need to make sure that they provide clear expectations for the content and skills children should learn each year, and that those standards are aligned from grade to grade. This will be especially important in the early grades, which are often an area of particular weakness in existing state standards. Many states’ early elementary standards are too vague to provide useful guidance to teachers and repeat the same standard over multiple grades (NOT helpful for alignment!). In a few states, the expectations for grades K-3 or K-2 are clustered into a single standard (even less helpful!).

Discussions about the CCSSO-NGA effort often emphasize the need for standards that are “common” and “rigorous.” But for standards to serve as tools educators can use to drive real improvements in student learning—and that’s what we want, right?—“clarity” and “alignment” are just as important. When the grade-by-grade standards come out, we’ll be paying very close attention to ensure that they provide the clarity and alignment necessary to support high-quality, aligned educational experiences for children in the early grades.

*Note that we say “K-12.” As we’ve previously noted—with disappointment and disapproval—CCSSO and NGA have declined to include pre-k standards in their efforts—even though pre-k is increasingly becoming part of the public education system in a number of states. This omission is particularly problematic because it does not allow for easy integration with the Obama administration’s efforts, through the Early Learning Challenge Fund, to raise standards for early childhood programs and help states build more coherent early childhood systems. A clear definition of what children should learn in pre-k, in order to be on track for college readiness by the end of high school, would be very helpful to these efforts. Since the CCSSO-NGA effort isn't going to provide that, someone else needs to.