Some hope for closing the vocabulary gap
A new study has found that it may be possible, and not too difficult, to help low-income children significantly speed up their vocabulary acquisition in kindergarten. This is important because of the oft-cited 1995 study which found that low-income children know about 5,000 words before entering kindergarten, compared to 20,000 words for high-income children. This [...]
How does movement (or lack of it) help pre-schoolers learn?
It’s hard to imagine a group of pre-schoolers or kindergartners sitting still for hours at a time, listening intently — to just about anything. Yet in many cases that is what their teachers are expecting in the age of accountability. And yet, research shows that children who engage in regular physical activity perform better in [...]
The budget deficit battle and early learning
Can the cold calculations of economists withstand the heated ideological arguments over the role of federal government in education during the next Congress? James Heckman, the Nobel-prize winning economist and an advocate of early learning investments, writes in a letter to Obama’s deficit commission that as the country debates what to cut in order to [...]
Fade out in Oklahoma, and some silver linings
Oklahoma may win accolades year after year for its state-funded preschool program, but scores on the so-called Nation’s Report Card show the state’s fourth grade reading scores have been falling for the past decade. A recent article by Oklahoma’s News On 6 ponders the discrepancy: “The most recent National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) fourth [...]
To add to early childhood education spending, or not? Congress decides not.
The early education community went to battle this week: Congress has the opportunity during the upcoming lame-duck session to vote on an ominbus spending measure that could have injected a huge amount of funding into early education. Advocates have been calling on their supporters to get on the phones to push for the former option. [...]
Group work: A venue for bullying, or a way to prevent it?
Does group work turn children into productive, cooperative members of society, or provide the ideal venue for bullies? In new show posted at BAM Radio Network hosted by Rae Pica, Susan Engel, director of the Program in Teaching at Williams College, and Katharine Beals, author of Raising a Left-Brain Child in a Right-Brain World, debated [...]
