ABCs for Latino Children; Roadmap for Journalists
Maria Glod of the Washington Post did a nice job over the weekend of reporting on the efforts of pre-school programs to get Latino parents on board with the fact that these programs are supposed to be educational. The story drew on classroom visits, interviews with parents, experts, policy makers and research. Similar approach could [...]
English-Only Pre-K Hurts Language Development of Spanish-Speaking Kids
Important new research out from the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina. From a press release: Contrary to conventional wisdom, English-only pre-kindergarten classrooms may not help native Spanish-speaking children become better prepared for school. According to research by FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at [...]
The Continuum of the Political Left and Right and “Corrals” for Toddlers
Over the past few years University of California Prof. Bruce Fuller has become the “bete noir” of the national movement pushing universally available, voluntary, publicly funded preschool. (Full disclosure: One of the major forces behind the movement is the Pew Charitable Trusts, which is an underwriter of this blog, although my ideas are my own. [...]
Accountability and Head Start
Joanne Jacobs picked up on the item I posted the other day about the pushback in Congress that may lead to the demise of the Head Start National Reporting System. I noted the criticisms of the technical quality of the test, which has led many experts to say that it doesn’t answer the questions it [...]
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times…
Rena Havner’s story in the Mobile (AL) Press-Register has been getting lots of traction on blogs and websites. The story, which was a follow-up to the NIEER report on the quality of state preschool programs, noted that while Alabama was one of two states to get a perfect score according to the NIEER scale, the [...]
Pre-K in Schools or Centers?
The Education Writers Assn. Web site has a new “issue brief” by Linda Jacobson that looks at the pros and cons of locating publicly funded pre-k in public schools or centers. The “brief” has some good experts and background information and notes that teacher unions have pushed for locating public pre-k in the schools, anticipating [...]
Homework for Five-Year-Olds?
A blog written by a mother in Arkansas notes that her five-year-old in preschool was assigned “homework” to practice writing her name. The teacher even sent home stickers for the mom to give as rewards for a good job. Feature story idea for a slow day: talk to pre-k teachers and parents about whether they [...]
Why and How Well-Educated Teachers Matter
This op-ed column by a former president of the American Bar Assn. includes particularly compelling descriptions of why and how well-prepared and skilled pre-kindergarten teachers matter. Some of the insights here would be useful to those reporting on the Head Start reauthorization bill, which in its current form would require more of the teachers to [...]
You Say Vase, I Say Vahz
The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss broke the story Sunday that the Democratic Congress is likely to vote to end the National Reporting System, the test that’s been given twice a year to a sampling of Head Start students to measure the effectiveness of the program. The story does a good job of explaining a difficult [...]
The Story With Legs
That Associated Press story from last week providing a national wrapup of the growing state investment in pre-kindergarten based on the latest NIEER report continues to have legs. Each day my Google alert for pre-kindergarten turns up two or three uses of the story. It was just posted on CNN.Com here. Shows how even in [...]
