Full Day K: More Worries About Overload (Nice Video too!)
The Baltimore Sun made their back to school story substantive by reporting on the challenges of the transition to full-day kindergarten. Article links full day to concerns about kindergarten becoming too academic and to NCLB. Critics quoted say that kindergarten shouldn’t be about stuffing kids’ heads with facts. While supporters, such as Maryland schools Chief [...]
Letters on Maria Glod’s Pre-K Story
Here’s a couple letters in response to the frontpager in the WashPost last week on the dilemma of targeted vs. universal pre-k. Both letters argue the universal side. The second letter, from a parent who applied for Head Start but was put on a waiting list, is particularly poignant and illustrates the argument universal advocates [...]
Full Day K. and Pre-K in PA.
Michael Pound had a nicely done piece in the Beaver County Allegheny Times, which serves communities just west of Pittsburgh, that took a look at both full day kindergarten and the growing public investment in pre-kindergarten. Sounds like full-day and pre-k in the local school districts there meld together well. Elsewhere, of course, those two [...]
Accountability and Assessment in Texas
Staci Hupp of the Dallas Morning News did a comprehensive job of examining a new certification system for public and private preschools in Texas. She included many different voices, including parents and skeptical preschool operators. But based on what I could find out about the certification system, the story makes it seem a bit more [...]
Va. Pre-K Trim Prompts News Roundup
The Washington Post’s Maria Glod used Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine’s decision to downsize his “universal” pre-k program to a targeted one as a news hook for a solid roundup of what’s going on with the expansion of publicly funded preschool nationally. The article, which ran on A-1, had a glimpse of a good classroom, regional [...]
Lots of Food for Thought (and a Juicy Back-to-School Story) in New Data on Chicago Preschool Study
The last time Arthur Reynolds of the University of Minnesota et. al. reported on the long-term effects of the Chicago Child-Parent Center programs the former preschoolers in the study were in their teens. That was in 2001 and the study results got good play in the New York Times and elsewhere, admitting the CPCs into [...]
WSJ Notes the National Trend Toward Pre-K
Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to (subscription required) label the national trend toward expanded public spending on pre-kindergarten for what it is: “one of the most significant expansions in public education in the 90 years since World War I, when kindergarten first became standard in American schools.” The Journal’s front page article Thursday [...]
Social Skills Twice As Important as Academic Skill for Success in School and Beyond
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Eleanor Chute wrote up an elegant little study paid for by PNC Financial Services Group. The basis for the study was a national survey of parents and teachers, asking them what they thought were the most important aspects of school readiness and how well they thought kids these days were to start kindergarten. [...]
Two editorials promoting pre-k in UT and MI
Nicole Christian wrote a compelling editorial in the Detroit Free Press this past weekend, arguing that even though strong evidence for the effectiveness of high quality pre-kindergarten eminated from the state, the state’s political leaders have not built on that legacy. She acknowledges that the state is struggling economically, as the auto industry tries to [...]
