Pre-K

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.

ECACs: The Next Step in Systems-Building

Christina Satkowski — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:24:00 -0500

Over the past several months, I have spent a lot of time talking to early childhood stakeholders about collaboration, and today the Early Education Initiative is releasing a policy brief based on that reporting. "The Next Step in Systems-Building: Early Childhood Advisory Councils and Federal Efforts to Promote Policy Alignment in Early Childhood." It provides a status report on all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

You'd think that sharing information and working together nicely would be second nature to leaders in early childhood policy. After all, it is something they teach in kindergarten. But in practice, collaboration -- or more specifically, policy alignment -- is more than just a matter of making sure everyone knows what everyone is doing and playing nicely. It takes hard work.

What makes policy alignment so hard? Government programs serving young children and their families are spread across departments of education, health and welfare. Non-profit organizations and private childcare providers also play a significant role in caring for and improving the lives of young children. The result is a tangled web of avoidable dysfunction. Low-income parents may not know that their children are eligible for Medicaid or Head Start, kindergarten teachers are given no information on the background of their incoming students, providers file redundant paperwork for different agencies, and the list goes on.

In recent years, several states have taken steps to address this issue by bringing policymakers and stakeholders together in early learning councils and having them, as a group, outline aligned policy objectives across multiple fields and ultimately create a high-functioning system of early childhood services. Based on the success of councils places like Illinois and Pennsylvania, Congress mandated that every state designate a State Early Childhood Advisory Council (ECAC) as part of the Head Start Reauthorization passed in December 2007.

After floundering for a year, ECACs are suddenly attracting new attention in Washington and in state capitols. Through the stimulus, ECACs finally received promised funding - ranging from $500,000 to more than $10.6 million per state, depending on size. ECACs also play a central role in the proposed Early Learning Challenge Grants legislation that is expected to be taken up by the Senate in the coming months. ECACs are being positioned to play a major role in early childhood policy, but what do we know about them?

First, the good news: States are making good progress on developing their ECACs, with much of the activity taking place this fall. In fact, many states already had something close to an ECAC in place in 2007 when the Head Start law was reauthorized. These states are being re-energized by the new federal guidelines, which is helping them fine-tune their council's structure and vision, individuals close to the process tell me. Of course, the funding is a big boost too, as many states had no funding at all for their ECACs. More importantly, several states are creating ECACs for the first time, finally bringing together relevant stakeholders to build an early childhood system in their state. (See the report for a state-by-state breakdown of ECAC development and funding). I was especially impressed by those states that were able to get multiple stakeholders together on an email chain or on a conference call with me - having this kind of natural communication network is an important first step.

But don't get your hopes up yet. In many states, the men and women I talked to had a story to tell about similar councils that started a few years back and showed so much promise but became effectively defunct because they lost funding or suffered from turnover in a state's governorship. Most states also receive grants from the five other federal programs that promote early childhood systems-building (such as the Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Initiative) but these programs have not been a uniform success. In a couple of isolated cases I was told of some real tension (such turf wars) between key individuals or organizations involved in early childhood policy. And sometimes, officials were not well-informed about the roles they are supposed to play. In reporting this paper, I came across people who were obvious potential members for their state's council, even people who are required to be on the council, but who were first hearing about it from me.

This time around, we should see these councils making a greater difference. Because of higher-level membership requirements -- as well as the requirement that the states develop a plan to be submitted to the U.S. Department of Health and Human services -- ECACs are more likely to create a comprehensive system-building plan and will have the right people at the table to make sure it happens. Plus, the federal funding commitments give them a buffer against cyclical state budgets. Yet there is also a risk that ECACs could go the way of the several attempts at policy alignment that came before them. This means those states that are already ahead on the policy alignment front could emerge as winners, in a better position to win competitive federal grants, while those states that are just starting their system-building process could falter once again. Of particular concern is South Dakota, which has officially decided not establish an ECAC due to insufficient state funds.

The convenings, discussions and decisions that will determine the vitality of ECACs are happening right now, and new information about ECACs can be found every week. As states work to finalize their applications for federal ECAC funding by the August 1, 2010 deadline, we have 10 recommendations for state and federal policymakers to make sure that ECACs can live up to their promise to power a vision for effective early childhood systems. Read those recommendations and the full report here.

Early Ed for “The Safety of Our Country”

Lisa Guernsey — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:41:00 -0500

A report last week from a new group called Mission: Readiness featured a very troubling statistic: 75 percent of young Americans cannot join the U.S. military because they are too poorly educated, have a criminal record or are overweight.

But here's a promising development to go along with that startling data: The report goes straight to the heart of the problem, explaining that the solution is to ensure that all children receive a high-quality early education. In fact, the report puts early education its sub-head.

The title is, "Ready, Willing, and Unable to Serve: 75 Percent of Young Adults Cannot Join the Military; Early Education Across America is Needed to Ensure National Security."

Eighty-nine retired military leaders, including two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed the report. They have come together to form Mission: Readiness, a non-profit, bi-partisan organization dedicated to supporting public investments in early childhood programs as a matter of national security.

In their words:

"The safety of our country demands urgent and intelligent action. We call on all policymakers to ensure America's national security by supporting interventions that will prepare young people for a life of military service and productive citizenship; this includes fully funding early childhood education programs, improving graduation rates, supporting families in ways that improve parenting skills and reduce child abuse, improving child health, mental health and nutrition services, and helping troubled kids get back on track."

In its "Next Steps" section, the report hails Oklahoma for its pre-K program, and points out that "Head Start serves less than half of all eligible children," and Early Head Start serves far fewer than that.

But the report doesn't simply urge the opening of more pre-K programs for 4-year-olds. It includes examples of birth-to-5 strategies and stresses how important it is to deliver high-quality programs -- both of which are approaches that we fully support as well.

The only piece missing from the military leaders' assessment is an acknowledgment that school readiness by age 5 is not the end-all, be-all either. It will take high quality early education programs that push up through the primary grades, maintaining the momentum of the gains made in children's preschool years. The faster we start focusing on that, the more likely the chances that our country can not only pull itself out of the military-recruitment morass but also improve the quality of life that these children will lead no matter what career path they choose.

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.

New Report: On the Cusp in California

Maggie Severns — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:28:00 -0400

As a recent TIME cover story notes, California is a state teeming with problems: Facing a 35 percent budget gap earlier this year, the state teetered on the verge of bankruptcy. It has a notoriously dysfunctional legislature and the nation's fourth-highest unemployment rate.

On top of that, California's schools, once among the nation's best, now rank among the bottom of all states-- 46^th nationally in 4^th grade math, and 47^th in reading. Equally troubling large achievement gaps between white and black or Hispanic fourth-graders. These problems begin even before children enter kindergarten. Only 31 percent of the state's 4-year-olds are enrolled in state-funded preschool or Head Start-and many early care and education settings fall short of high quality standards. These figures are particularly troubling considering that the state is host to one in every eight children under the age of eight in the country.

But, as a new report from the New America Foundation's Early Education Initiative argues, there are reasons for hope. Despite budget shortfalls, California is on the cusp of making real improvements in its early education system.

On the Cusp in California: How PreK-3rd Strategies Could Improve Education in the Golden State, written by long-time California education reporter Linda Jacobson, explains that key state officials, along with early childhood advocates and school reformers, have taken some important first steps to better integrate early childhood programs and move towards the more seamless PreK-3^rd early education system in California. Now policymakers and advocates need to exert leadership to create a sense of urgency around PreK-3rd reform as a strategy for improving California's education system.

PreK-3^rd reforms-- which combine high-quality pre-k and full-day kindergarten with a high-quality, aligned early elementary learning experiences that seamlessly build children's skills and knowledge to bring them to proficiency by the end of third grade-have tremendous potential to help California narrow achievement gaps and raise student learning across the board. The report seeks to help policymakers and advocates in California understand the promise of PreK-3^rd PreK-3rd strategies as well as the hurdles, and the steps the state can take to overcome them.

The report recommends 13 steps to getting this done - many of which are not budget-busters and may even help California compete for federal education grants, such as the Race to the Top program and the proposed Early Learning Challenge fund. For example, the report recommends that the state:

Replicate and scale up effective PreK-3rd models,
Implement a comprehensive early childhood data system,
Integrate pre-k funding into broader conversations about reforming the state's school finance system,
Continue working to develop and fund a voluntary Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS), and
Create a PreK-3^rd teacher credential for early childhood educators.

The report also includes recommendations to improve coordination and quality among existing early care and education programs in the state and to address the needs of California's growing population of English language learner and Hispanic students. For the full list of recommendations, check out the report here. Today in Sacramento, New America is presenting details from the report to a gathering of policymakers and stakeholders.

The report was funded through generous grants from the Foundation for Child Development, the W. Clement adn Jessie V. Stone Foundation, and the Strategic Knowledge Fund, co-funded by the Foundation for Child Development and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Pre-K Now Reports on the States

Maggie Severns — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:23:00 -0400

This morning, Pre-K Now released its annual Votes Count report, which summarizes state legislative action on pre-k during the 2009 legislative session, including pre-k funding in states' fiscal year 2010 budgets. This year's report focuses on which states have maintained and even increased pre-k investments despite budget shortfalls caused by the past year's economic pinch, and which states are falling behind.

Overall, Pre-K Now says that "the news for young children is surprisingly good." 27 of the 38 states that had state-funded pre-k programs in fiscal year 2009 (as well as the District of Columbia) managed to either increase pre-k funding or maintain current funding levels. That adds up to $187 million dollars of new money for pre-k in fiscal year 2010. Further, of the 10 states with the biggest budget shortfalls this year, seven managed to either increase or maintain their pre-k spending for the 2010 year.

The report groups states into 5 main categories:

State champions: Alabama and New Jersey earned Pre-K Now's top praises for their pre-k efforts.
States new to pre-k: Despite budget shortfalls of their own, Alaska and Rhode Island both approved their first state-funded pre-k programs for the 2010 fiscal year, bringing the total number of states investing in pre-k to 41.
States that came close: In Texas and Washington, legislative measures to improve pre-k quality and increase funding were thwarted by gubernatorial vetoes.
States that struggled: Pennsylvania and Michigan had their share of hiccups while trying to negotiate FY2010 budgets. Ultimately, Michigan averted a budget that would have devastated pre-k funding, but still decreased its investment in pre-k by about 7 percent. Pennsylvania flat-funded its major pre-k programs for the coming year, but a drawn-out budget battle-the state legislature just completed work on the fiscal year 2010 budget last week -forced many providers to delay or cancel programs this fall.
The state of Ohio: If Alabama and New Jersey get gold stars, Ohio gets the biggest frowny face for its pre-k funding record this year. Even though Ohio's 5 percent budget shortfall of 5 percent was far more mild than those in many states, the state "chose to decimate" its pre-k system, according to Pre-k Now, and will serve at least 12,000 fewer low-income children (a decrease of more than 50 percent) during the coming year.

Votes Count 2009 also looks at progress and funding strategies in the eight states (as well as the District of Columbia) that have committed to work towards universal, voluntary pre-k. The report commends Oklahoma, D.C., Iowa, West Virginia, and Georgia for being "on track" towards achieving universal pre-k.

To find out more about how states fared under the Pre-K Now study, read the full report.

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.

The N.J. Governor’s Race: Comparing the Candidates

Maggie Severns — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:49:00 -0400

This November, only two states will be electing new governors: New Jersey and Virginia. Political commentators frequently view these two off year races as harbingers of political winds to come, so we at Early Ed Watch are keeping a close eye to see what implications these races may have for early education.

There is a lot at stake for early education in New Jersey: As Early Ed Watch has discussed, New Jersey has made significant investments in preschool and PreK-3rd as a strategy to narrow achievement gaps between students from high-income and low-income families, and the state is seeing some successful results in several school districts.

Since Jon Corzine was elected Governor in 2005, he has made pre-K a pillar in his education policy . Last year's School Funding Reform Act, included plans to phase in state-funded full day preschool for all low-income 3- and 4- year olds in the state over the next eight years, and to expand universal pre-K from 31 Abbott districts to an additional 84 districts statewide, with the goal of providing preschool for an additional 30,000 children by the 2013 school year.

School construction was a major part of Corzine's economic recovery plan. As part of a July 2008 law, the School Development Authority is spending $3.9 billion constructing and expanding New Jersey schools, the largest state school construction program in the country.

Chris Christie, the Republican nominee, entered the race after spending six years as New Jersey's U.S. Attorney, the chief federal law enforcement officer in the state. During a heated campaign, Christie has criticized Corzine's education spending, saying in official statements last month that the governor has a "blind eye to waste" with a "failed record when it comes to promoting successful school alternatives," a reference to the fact that Corzine-appointed Commissioner of Education Lucille Davey approved only one new charter school in 2008.

Christie has specifically attacked Corzine's record on early education spending, referring to preschool as "babysitting" in an October 6 interview with New Jersey pundit Steve Adubato. Corzine is using the clip as part of an escalating cycle of attack advertisements between the two camps. Christie says he did not intend to use the word "babysitting" pejoratively.

Christie's stance on education emphasizes the need for improved job readiness and more choices in New Jersey's public school system. He is in favor of authorizing more charter schools and establishing a private school voucher system, both of which Christie says would give parents the choice to send their children to more successful schools.

Last week, the New Jersey Education Association's political action committee unanimously endorsed Corzine. The NJEA, which has over 200,000 members from New Jersey's education community, says that Corzine "made significant progress in implementing the progressive, pro-public education agenda he ran on in 2005," and praised him for increasing education funding despite the harsh economic climate during his term as governor.

The race itself has been close, with Christie and Corzine usually falling within a few points of each other in the polls. Chris Daggett, the Independent candidate, has had a recent increase in support, but still trails significantly behind the other two candidates.

Early Ed Watch will continue monitoring the New Jersey race in the coming weeks. Watch later this week for our rundown of the Virginia gubernatorial race as well.