Happy Holidays. Blogging will return January 5.

As the economic crisis deepened in late December, Obama indicated that early education would be part of the recovery package, along with school construction, and tuition assistance. Details to come in January, perhaps before the inauguration. Congress will get involved. Look for strong support. But, as everyone knows, the child care-early learning-preschool landscape is a complex and crowded one. Don't expect that the federal money will all go to public entities. Several of the federal revenue sources, such as Child Development Block Grants, now support public as well as private service providers. Looking at Obama's platform, he'd like to devote some of the money to helping states coordinate all of these various services. All of which is an overly bureaucratic way of saying that tracking where that federal money goes and how it is used and whether it supports high quality learning environments.

By the way, another good source on these issues is the Ounce of Prevention Fund. Contact there is Jelene Britten.

Sam Dillon's front-page piece in today's New York Times offers education journalists a guide to the early care and education stories that will bear watching in the coming year and also a list of some of the key experts and resource people.

Over the past few weeks I've talked to a number of Washington education folks involved in the transition and they all have told me that, whatever the economic situation, President-elect Obama's plans to invest in early education will very likely go forward. If the federal government does become a significant source of funding for preschool, it would redefine the relationship between the federal government and parents and families.

A little more on the sources in the article:

Barbara Bowman happens to be the mother of Valerie Jarrett, a key Obama adviser. She also is a legendary figure in the field of early childhood education. She was one of three founders of the Erikson Institute, the nation's premier graduate school for child development, was a 2005 winner of the McGraw Prize and today is the head of the Chicago Public Schools' Office of Early Education. Chicago superintendent of schools Arne Duncan, Obama's nominee for Secretary of Education, no doubt learned a lot from Dr. Bowman and now will be charged with helping carry out the president's agenda on that issue which, by the way, Duncan had a big hand in developing.

Cornelia Grumman, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune editorial writer, heads up the First Five Years Fund. The fund is dedicated to promoting investments in expanding early learning services for children birth to age 5. She keeps close track of what's going on nationally on these issues.

Libby Doggett, the executive director of Pre-K Now, will be a good source on how the federal efforts connect with what states are doing in preschool. Pre-K Now advocates for universal pre-kindergarten.

Bruce Fuller of the University of California, Berkeley is a good source as well. Fuller will voice concerns about using public funds to make preschool available to all, regardless of income. This will be something to watch in the administration's specific proposals. Most state programs now are targeted to the poor.

Sharon Lynn Kagan of Teachers College is a leading policy expert on early education who has studied pre-kindergarten quality extensively. Look for a paper from her on how the federal government can invest in high quality programs out soon from the Center on Education Policy.

The New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell, whose new book on successful people, "Outliers: The Story of Success, is atop the New York Times' bestseller list, writes in this week's edition about how hard it is to tell in advance who is going to make a good teacher (or NFL quarterback.) All the usual proxies and requirements--certification, advanced degrees, cognitive aptitude--do not seem to predict classroom success, he argues. Yet, given that improving teacher effectiveness is critical to improving educational outcomes for children, Gladwell says teachers should go through a demanding weeding-out process, similar to what's used to choose financial advisors. Only those who hit certain benchmarks will be kept on.

It's a fascinating article, even if it does seem, as much of Gladwell's writing does, overly simplified and wide-eyed at ideas that are commonplace, especially to experts in the field. The best part was a passage featuring Robert Pianta, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. Gladwell reports the commentary of Pianta and a colleague as they watch videos of good teachers and weak teachers. How instructive that would be!

Go to the jump for an excerpt:

Continue reading "Gladwell, "Success" Guru, Turns His Attention to Teachers (and Quarterbacks)" »

When George Bush became president in 2001 he championed programs that emphasized the importance of paying systematic and explicit attention to teaching children that words were composed of sounds, letters represented those sounds, and that facility with the relationship between letters, sounds and words enabled children to "decode" new words. Decoding, it was asserted, had been neglected in favor of whole language strategies that de-emphasized the acquisition of discreet skills. Decoding was never meant to be the whole meal. Rather, it was to be just one part of a healthy diet of literacy instruction that included attention to vocabulary development, oral language, reading fluency, comprehension, writing. (It seems so quaint and somehow sad, given all that's happened since September 2001, that Bush was reading a story to first graders to promote his education agenda when the first plane hit the World Trade Center.)

As President-elect Obama takes office a new conventional wisdom is emerging from progressives: kids have been drilled on letter sounds for eight years in an attempt to boost test scores. Thinking and understanding have been neglected. "Reading First," the $1 billion a year federal program to support comprehensive reading instruction, has failed because it overemphasized skills. Bubbling in sample tests has replaced learning to read real stories.

Journalists need to be wary about being swept up in what I think may become a rancorous post-hoc critique of reading instruction in the Bush years. As journalists, pundits and policymakers struggle to make sense out of the many Bush administration failures, it will be tempting to add reading instruction to the list. It is important, however, to be skeptical about how much has actually changed instructionally. Is it credible to think that teaching in first grade classrooms across the vast and decentralized non-system of American public education really was transformed--and not for the better--in only seven years? (Louis V. Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM and a longtime laborer in the vineyard of education reform argued in this Wall Street Journal piece this week that the U.S. should do a massive consolidation to reduce the number of school districts to only 70 school districts, so that change can come more quickly.) If scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress are any guide nothing much is different.

These musings were prompted by two articles in this week's excellent edition of "Education Week." On the bus this morning I read television journalist
/"> John Merrow's back page commentary on his impressions of approaches to early literacy in New Orleans elementary schools. (You have to subscribe to read it online but here is a link to a transcript of related program he did.) Merrow highlights first grade classrooms where children not only read the words, they understand them, certainly a good outcome. He asserts that his visits show children do not (italics his) need more decoding drills and says that "that they get too much now" because of the over-emphasis on testing. The implication is that NCLB is at fault here. But I suspect the reality is that early reading teaching in most classrooms today looks a lot like it has for decades.

What we know from research is that teachers should be paying attention to skills, oral language development, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, writing--the whole gamut--from preschool on. Real reading, discussion, and thoughtful attention to the characteristics of words should be a daily occurrence. As with the example in Merrow's piece, even beginning readers can take a critical stance toward what they read and question its accuracy and meaning. This is not easy for students or for their teachers.. Merrow is certainly right when he says that teachers' attitudes about their students' capacity to engage in these high level literacy activities is important. But it's also critical that teachers know how to make this happen. Caring and trying different approaches, while positive, is not enough.

That brings me to the other piece in Ed Week, the cover story on a new evaluation of the effects of Reading First. The research could not find evidence that the program improved students' comprehension. Most of the article dealt with the limits of the research. But I predict that it will be used by some to argue that too much attention has been paid to phonics. Journalists should be wary of getting involved in the back and forth over that question. Instead, they should seek out excellent first grade teachers and get a first-hand look at what kids can do with reading when they're well taught by well-trained teachers who know the research on literacy acquisition.. That's what Merrow did.

So, with headlines about the nation's economic problems dominating the front page, what are some early education stories that might get on the front page?

In no particular order:

1. Are companies that now provide child care at the job site reducing their support? Charging families more? Closing programs altogether?

2. How are private programs faring? Are families asking for financial help to offset tuition for programs in churches, synagogues, and for-profit programs?

3. With more workers cobbling together two or even three part-time jobs, who is watching the children?

4. Young children need stability in their lives. Are programs seeing more families move in and out as their family circumstances change?

5. Are center directors seeing evidence of the recession in the children they serve? More need for winter clothes? More hunger?

6. Are state-funded programs seeing more demand for their services, as families who previously could afford private preschools seek cheaper alternatives?

7. How are the children being cared for while their laid-off parents look for work?

Keep the human angle in mind. Every time you see a story about budget cuts, think about people and how they may be affected.

Linda Darling Hammond, who is heading up the Policy Working Group for the Obama transition team, said at a National Academy of Education gathering in Washington Nov. 18 that Obama would hold true to what he said during the campaign regarding spending on early childhood education. Asked during debates which of his initiatives would have to fall by the wayside due to the recession, Obama answered that one thing he would not cut would his spending plans for early childhood education. Darling Hammond assured the 500 people attending the National Academy event that he would not falter in that commitment. Here's the Obama plan as laid out during the campaign. If he can get this through Congress (perhaps as part of a stimulus package), the federal government would spend $10 billion a year to expand pre-kindergarten, and spending on Head Start and child care would go up substantially. With many calling for a stimulus package of $700 billion or more, the $30 billion Obama wants to add to education spending is, as Darling Hammond has called it, "decimal dust."

With new evidence every day that the U.S. economy has run off the rails, there apparently is much talk in D.C. education circles about including a big federal investment in early childhood education as part of the Obama administration's stimulus package. Andy Rotherham of Eduwonk fame surfaces the idea here. He wonders, however, whether spending money to build new classrooms wouldn't provide more immediate stimulus.

While it's true that a lack of space hinders the growth of some pre-k programs, and it's also true that, as Rotherham notes, charter schools need better facilities, I think helping states expand or maintain existing pre-kindergarten programs would provide a more immediate stimulus. It also would show Obama's commitment to helping the middle class.

Why? Because states may be forced to cut back on their pre-kindergarten programs without federal help. A Wall Street Journal article reports that, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, states have cut $53 billion from their 2008 and 2009 budgets and 43 states will have to make additional cuts. During a Hechinger Institute-organized discussion with reporters last month, Michael Bird of NCSL reported that 17 states will have deficits of between 5% and 10% in the coming year. Over the next couple of years, he said, states may have to cut as much as $150 billion in spending.

So far, pre-k has mostly been spared. PreKnow, the policy advocacy and analysis organization, reported last month that 32 of 38 states with pre-k programs maintained or increased their spending for this year. But can that last in the face of such deficits? Another PreKnow reporthighlighted the trouble middle class families are having paying for high quality pre-k and said that 20 of the state program determine eligibility using income. As incomes fall, more families will qualify. If the federal government invested in expanding existing high quality programs--and raising the quality of those that are subpar--it could keep teachers on the job and help parents working two or three jobs to make ends meet. Pre-k shouldn't be viewed as an employment program, as Rotherham notes. But supporting such programs would not only help parents work it would pay long-term benefits, as would investing in infrastructure.

Protests and a police presence at a kindergarten Thanksgiving celebration?

While recent research is shining a spotlight on the value of role play in early childhood education, a California community found itself so divided over a time honored tradition of having kindergarten students dress up as Pilgrims and Native Americans this week that the students got a different kind of lesson entirely.

The costumes first came under attack in the college community of Claremont, after a parent complained they "demeaning and dehumanizing,'' according to an article in the Los Angeles Times.

Seems even play has political and racial implications, and the school decided to take the objections of a parent seriously and ban the costumes. Parents who disagreed protested and sent their children to school in Pilgrim hats and other garb nonetheless.

All of it led to a spirited protest and the presence of police at the school.

The clash left the superintendent claiming he was threatened and other parents angered at school officials for bowing, as they put it, to political correctness.

Lessons learned, anyone?

Turns out a puppet named Twiggle the Turtle has an important lesson to teach us about how preschoolers learn: Social skills matter.

An Associated Press story this week described the results of a study by Karen Bierman at Penn State, who took at a look at Head Start programs in Pennsylvania. The study concluded that weekly social skills lessons and sessions with puppets like Twiggle can teach young children specific problem solving skills and improve both vocabulary and behavior.

I particularly liked the story's use of examples to bring the study alive. A description of Twiggle's emotional reaction after a friend knocked over his block tower, for instance, helped illustrate the unpredictable nature of 4-year-olds. As part of a conflict resolution lesson, an older, wiser turtle puppet urged Twiggle to go inside his shell after having his blocks knocked down -- and then to take a deep breath and talk about his feelings.

The teachers then urged the students to cross their arms to be like Twiggle in his shell, which, according to Bierman, became a habit more helpful than the old "use your words,'' approach.

The study -- funded by the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies -- divided about 350 students from 44 Head Start classrooms. About half of the four-year-olds were in classrooms that added puppets and problem solving skills sessions.

The study is another reminder of the need for reporters to go and visit preschool classrooms and find out what is being taught -- and why. It comes at a time when educators are under pressure to show that preschools provide a strong academic foundation. As Bierman noted in the article, though, a focus on the just-the-facts in preschool will miss "the engine that's going to drive the desire and motivation for learning."

Score one for Twiggle.

I'm really sorry I missed a talk at New York's 92nd Street Y by child psychologist Michael Thompson last week, because I would have enjoyed the chance to see preschool teachers squatting on the floor and pretending to be cave men. The scene was described in an Associated Press story carried by USA Today.

Before a packed audience of early childhood educators, Thompson made an impassioned plea for more play-time, taking up a cause endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics two years ago. Somewhere along the line, he noted, play-time has slipped off the agenda for U.S. children, resulting in eight to 12 fewer hours of free play per week since the 1980s.

Thompson told the crowd that play has been replaced by video games (a form of play kids I know would vigorously defend if given the chance), television and an emphasis on formal learning in preschool, along with pressure from parents to push their children into more structured activities.

Fretta Reitzes, director of the Goldman Center for Youth & Family at the Y, told the crowd it is up to preschool teachers to lead by example. It's probably why the conference included pre-school teachers drumming and pretending to be cave-dwellers.

I'm all for play, but I found it amusing that a conference advocating more of it took place in a building that houses what might be among the most competitive -- and expensive -- nursery schools on the planet. Spots at the 92nd Street's program are so hard to come by that parents start speed-dialing the number the day after Labor Day just to get an application.

They are so coveted that stock analyst Jack B. Grubman told a friend in an e-mail message that Citigroup Chairman Sanford I. Weill, his boss at the time, helped him get slots for his twin children after he recommended investors buy AT&T stock, according to a New York Times story in 2002.

For the record, tuition at the Y this year is $23,000 for 4 and 5-year-olds or $18,780 for 3-year-olds who attend three hours a day. That's awfully pricey play.

Without knowing all that background, I might simply have been able to enjoy an evening with early childhood educators pushing fantasy play and recess instead of phonics and banging on musical instruments.

Journalists don't always have time time to visit preschools while covering the weightier academic battles in their districts, but this story reminded me of some really excellent questions to ask. Just how much time is devoted to play these days in an age of accountability? Is play for play's sake okay anymore?

An editorial in the Anchorage Daily News took Governor Sarah Palin to task for missing a statewide conference on the future of Alaska's educational system last week. Palin, the former Republican candidate for Vice President, skipped the conference to speak in Miami about the future of the Republican Party. The editorial urged her to come home and start focusing on the needs of the state.

While Palin gave her talk about national issues, her home state was in the midst of charting the future of its educational system. For the record, Alaska is one of only 12 states that has no state-funded education system for pre-kindergarten students. One of the goals that came out of last week's education summit included a committment to offer state-funded preschool to every three, four and five-year-old in Alaska. A plan to evaluate pre-school programs to make sure they are adequately preparing children for school also emerged as a goal during the conference Palin missed.

The goals are just a starting point and still need to be adopted, possibly refined and publicized. Some will also require funding that may not be available. It isn't clear where Palin stands on any of them.

On the stump as a vice-presidential candidate, Palin, the mother of an infant with Down syndrome, made some proposals about the education of children with special needs. Without giving specifics, she also noted that education "is near and dear to my heart.''

High quality pre-kindergarten has become something of an elusive luxury for middle class parents, caught between rising prices, the housing crisis and stagnating wages, according to report released by Pre-K Now during a Hechinger Institute Webinar on Wednesday.

The report provides a great starting point for rich and worthwhile stories journalists should be telling about the hard choices middle class American families are making as they struggle to pay mortgages and credit card debt and worry about holding onto their jobs.

Families earning too much to qualify for state-funded programs but not enough for higher quality private schools in some cases are choosing substandard care or keeping their children out of pre-kindergarten altogether, said the report’s author Albert Wat, a policy analyst for Pre-K Now.

Middle-class families and their children need and would benefit from voluntary, high-quality pre-k indergarten programs funded by their states but they often don't have access to them, notes the report, which calls for states and the federal government to expand such programs. Wat found that the average middle class family of four, living in a state with a public pre-k program, spent about 29% of their income on pre-kindergarten for their two children.

"Middle class families are feeling increasingly pessimistic about their financial situationn,'' Wat noted during the webinar, which will be available on the Hechinger Institute's website.

The webinar also offered views from William Gormley of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, the author of a study on the benefits of Oklahoma's early childhood programs. Gormley's study found students experienced substantial gains and that the negative effects of family and environmental risk factors can be lessened by a strong preschool program.

Douglas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute, , pointed out that emphasizing the needs of the middle class can divert attention from the most needy children in the U.S. He said the federal government help poor children by strengthening federal Head Start programs.

The report comes at a time when 80 percent of Americans believe it is more difficult to maintain their standard of living than it was five years ago, and some twenty percent think their children will have a lower standard of living than they do.

Rising expenses and declining incomes are leaving more Americans in debt, although many still earn too much to qualify for state-funded pre-k programs.

The report's recommendations include a phase-in plan to expand pre-k to all children, using factors other than family income to define eligibility, creating full-day programs to meet the needs of working families and extending eligibility for voluntary pre-k to three year-olds.

An Associated Press story this weekend pointed out a major problem working parents are facing in a tough economy: Finding affordable child care. It's a topic that will be explored, along with tough choices about pre-school, during a webinar the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media is holding on Wednesday, November 12 at 1:30 p.m on Albert Wat's upcoming Pre-K Now report "The Pre-K Pinch: Early Education and the Middle Class."

The Associated Press story focused on one early childhood center in the Midwest where parents facing job losses are pulling their children out, but similiar scenarios are playing out all over the U.S. as workers are laid off.

Pre-K Now will release a report during the webinar that will analyze the financial challenge many families face in accessing and paying for high quality pre-kindergarten education. The report includes case examples of actual families across the country who will be available to comment following the release. Journalists can sign up here

As President-elect Barack Obama gets ready to visit the White House today, he's getting no shortage of advice. some of it on an Education Week blog about fulfilling the promise of his early education proposals. Bruce Fuller, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, weighs in as well, reminding Obama that increasing access to quality pre-schools for poor families is a strategic long-term investment.

Of course, when it comes to the education of their own two elementary-school aged daughters, the Obama family is also getting lots advice. Jay Mathews of the Washington Post took a look at some of the options and found a compelling public elementary school near the White House where the principal noted she would be more than willing to make room for two mid-year transfers from the Midwest. While choosing a public school would be a powerfully symbolic gesture, the Obamas are also said to be considering the private Georgetown Day, where tuition tops $25,000 annually for elementary school students.

Continue reading "Some Urging Obama to Put Pre-School First on Ed Agenda" »