The latest and most promising education reform in the early education realm, at least according to many advocates, is PreK-3 . The idea is to streamline curriculum and instructional approaches so that the transition from preschool to K-12 is seamless. It’s also to get educators from both sides of the line talking to each other about expectations and pedagogy — something that really hasn’t happened before.
The New America Foundation’s Early Ed Watch blog wrote yesterday about a new Pennsylvania State University study out that looks at how teachers are being prepared (or not) for this new way of doing things. Early ed folks say teachers are not the only ones who need help navigating the new terrain of early education, however.
This week, I met with the staff from Advocates for the Children of New Jersey who are training district administrators — many of whom have little experience with early education — about how to better connect the grade levels. The group held trainings last year and is launching a new set of sessions this year. According to Cynthia Rice, who is coordinating the trainings, administrators have clamored to participate.
One of the potential pitfalls of the PreK-3 model is that it creates more meetings for people to sit through, without necessarily guaranteeing anything will get done. A focus of the trainings is how to make meetings between educators across the grade levels constructive. “It’s setting up time for meaningful conversations about children, classrooms, curriculum and assessment,” says Rice. Another goal is to change mindsets, pushing administrators to think about education as a continuum and to think about what happens to children “outside of their buildings” as their responsibility, too.