The Long Wait For Quality Child Care
(Affordable day care in Philadelphia hard to find) Alfred Lubrano of the Philadelphia Inquirer did a good job explaining the dilema facing parents who want to work, but can’t find decent and affordable child care. His piece brings home the issue with some startling facts: The list of children waiting for federal and state child [...]
NYC’s Pre-K Debacle: Siblings Shut Out?
(The bus may take off without siblings in NYC) A quick follow-up to New York City’s pre-kindergarten woes: Turns out the New York City Department of Education got confused about who had siblings in the same school this year, and now must straighten out complaints from parents whose children were denied a pre-kindergarten spot in [...]
Pre-K Roadblocks in Little Manhattan
Finding a high-quality pre-kindergarten or even kindergarten program in New York City has never been easy, but lately a few new obstacles have entered the picture.
Survivor: Port St. Lucie, Florida
Or as USA Today’s Greg Toppo says in an email: “What not to do as a kindergarten teacher.” This teacher ought to be voted off the island. But, since the police determined what she did wasn’t a crime, she probably possesses the immunity idol.
How Can Pre-K Help? A Push to Study the Ways
An editorial in the Charlotte Observer followed up on the excellent reporting by Ann Doss Helms earlier this month on Bright Beginnings, a program aimed at helping at-risk children succeed later on by giving them preparation for kindergarten and helping them learn to read. School officials in Charlotte-Mecklenberg told the paper that tracking the children [...]
Early Reading: Too Much, Too Soon?
(Early reading or book eating?) A story in The Sun about a class of pre-kindergarten students in Oklahoma who are “already reading,” caught my eye this week, in part because I’m always on the look out for ways in which we are pressuring children to hurry up and master skills. Turns out, while some of [...]
Talk About A Head Start: Texas Tries Pre-School for Toddlers
While some states are pushing for all day kindergarten, Texas and Florida are jump-starting pre-school, trying out children as young as 2 and 3-years-old with the help of a $6 million grant from the University of Texas. A piece by Staci Hupp in the Dallas Morning News noted that pre-school is “moving to the potty-training [...]
Leave No Child Asleep: Debating Full-Day Kindergarten
(Wiped out by kindergarten?) Children who don’t get a chance to attend pre-kindergarten may have their first experience with school when they enter public school for government-funded kindergarten. Pressure is growing to make such programs a full-day in areas where they are not, better to give children the academic start they need and mesh with [...]
Asking The Tough Questions: Why Pre-K Follow-up is Critical
Ann Doss Helms of the Charlotte Observer posed some interesting questions in a Sunday story on Bright Beginnings, a pre-kindergarten program in Charlotte-Mecklenberg schools with a big promise — to transform the lives of at-risk children and help them succeed later on. Her story found the $23 million a year program has not kept its [...]
When it Comes to Pre-School, Relationships Matter
Some of the most interesting work I’ve read about early childhood comes from Ross Thompson , a professor at the University of California, Davis. I heard him give a fascinating talk once about the importance of the mother child relationship for early learning. This week, Education Week published a story about a new study indicating [...]
