Poor Quality Preschools in Boston
‘The story Tracy Jan published in the Boston Globe about a month ago on the frank and disturbing study of preschools and kindergartens in the city got a lot of attention, as it should have. I’ve been waiting to find a copy of the full report to link to but so far haven’t. I’ll keep [...]
A Flurry of Reports!
Pre-K Now, the advocacy group underwritten by The Pew Charitable Trusts, has put out a helpful, dispassionate report that provides journalists and policy makers with very helpful tools for analyzing the many studies that calculate precise economic benefits of high quality preschool. What I like about the report, by Albert Wat, is that it gives [...]
Pre-K in the South: New Report Due Out Today
The Southern Education Foundation today will release a report that will say that the region is ahead of other parts of the country in terms of its pre-kindergarten programs. The report “pulls together and synthesizes the findings of every major independent study of state-supported Pre-K across the South in the last ten years. These reports [...]
Budget Showdown in Michigan Over “Seed Corn.”
Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm is in a tight spot. She’s caught between a here-and-now plunge in current tax revenues and the need to prepare children of today as best she can to function the world of the future. She wants a $1.5 billon tax increase to offset a deficit over two years of $2 billion. [...]
An Assignment for Journalists From Andy “Ed Sector” Rotherham
Andy Rotherham, the policy analyst and provocateur who is co-founder of Education Sector, gave us ink-stained wretch types a good assignment the other day. Here’s the nub of it: What I’d really like to see is a big picture and long article about where the nation is and where it is going on pre-kindergarten education. [...]
Economic Benefit or No, Pre-K is Worth the Money
The Economic Policy Institute’s report “Enriching Children, Enriching the Nation” got lots of ink in papers around the country. Every story I read expressed no skepticism about the state-by-state number crunching, which reported enormous returns from public spending on preschool. Andrew Leonard in a piece on Salon acknowledged up front that he supports public spending [...]
Double Spending on Pre-K in Georgia?
Maureen Downey in the Atlanta Journal Constitution uses a study by the Economic Policy Institute to argue that the state should abandon two tax cuts–for homeowners and the elderly with incomes of $150,000 or more–to pay to double spending on the state’s pre-k program. The money would increase enrollment and increase quality, by raising per [...]
House Passes Head Start Bill White House Won’t Like
The Associated Press and Washington Post report that the House of Representatives has passed by a more than 7-to-1 margin a Head Start reauthorization bill that increases spending by $500 million, increases enrollment, boosts salaries, and expands services. The bill also sets a goal for increasing the percentage of Head Start teachers who have gone [...]
