High Stakes Testing and Little Learners: Is a Second Chance Fair?

You can bite this banana, but how do you spell it? Don't worry, you get two chances

In the days of high-stakes testing, it’s hard to imagine the stress for parents who want nothing better than to send their progeny to private school, starting in kindergarten or even earlier. Actually, it’s not at all hard to imagine: the insanity of the process in New York City was documented brilliantly a few years back in the documentary “Nursery University.”

Taking an expensive intelligence test known as the E.R.B.  is tough enough, but now the New York Times reports that some well connected pre-schoolers (well at least their parents) are finding ways for them to take the test twice, just in case they had a bad day. The test, along with letters of recommendations and interviews, are all part of deciding who gets admitted.

In the overall scheme of parents-who-will-do-anything to get their kids in, finding a way for them to get a second chance at the E.R.B., an intelligence exam, isn’t as extreme as say, bribing a nursery school director or offering to build a gym, pool or a playground. (which would come as no surprise).

Still, it raises issues of fairness, say some education consultants and parents who object  to the idea that some students are quietly getting a do-over to boost their chance of success. And those students tend to be connected to the school (via an alumni or sibling) or perhaps are offspring of a celebrity, the Times notes. adding that the second test can provide an edge because “more often than not, children fare better.”

The mandatory $510 exam “is among the most nail-biting experiences in a parent’s life, ” and it’s already under attack “because of widely available preparation materials,” the story notes.

Some might argue that charging $510 for an exam that helps a child gain admission to a school that will ultimately cost as much as $35,300 annually is already unfair.

The best solution, of course, would be to offer more free, high-quality pre-kindergarten to all children, regardless of income, with a fine public school system to follow.  But in New York City’s public system, as in the private system, the number of seats in the most coveted schools does not meet demand. And so the testing and the gaming continues.

Private school consultant Amanda Uhry is spot on when she tells the Times: “These are private schools –  it’s their rules.”

The nursery school insanity begins anew in New York City

Wendy Levey of the Epiphany School says she'll interview parents "all night" if needed

It might seem as if the push to get into one of  New York City’s most prestigious and pricey nursery schools is an old story, but quotes like these remind readers that it’s not just the city’s übercompetitive parents who are keeping the frenzy alive: “I will interview parents all night if I need to,” Wendy Levey, the director of the Epiphany Community Nursery School, told The New York Times. 

The school has just 150 students ages 2-5. Levey and her school became well-known to viewers of the hilarious “Nursery University,” a documentary that a New York Times reviewer wryly noted would be well-received by those who “thrill to the sight of a preschool teacher bringing an investment banker to his knees.”

Levey’s comment about interviewing parents came in a story that described an “annual rite of Manhattan education … the crush of applicants to private nursery schools and kindergartens” that won’t take applications or even phone calls requesting them until the day after Labor Day.

One look at the competition and the prices — the 92nd Street Y, for example, will set parents back just under $15,000 for a three-day-a-week program for 2-year-olds, and just under $26,000 for a five-day program for 4- and 5-year-olds — might drive more reasonable parents to move to, say, Brooklyn. They might hope to live near a free public pre-kindergarten program.

Turns out, that is easier said than done. A story in the New York Daily News last week proclaimed getting into public school prekindergarten in certain Brooklyn neighborhods to be “harder than getting into Harvard,” while another noted that a record number of children were squeezed out of Brooklyn’s most popular — and crowded — pre-k programs.

Lesson? There’s a huge need for more high-quality pre-kindergarten programs — both public and private — to serve the many New  Yorkers who want to raise their children in the city and give them the best possible start. Supply does not come close to meeting demand.

Should gifted pre-schoolers be isolated, nurtured?

The little things young children do and say can be so amazing that it’s hard to imagine not thinking of all children as gifted. The very word is fraught, though, and has led to years of debate about what constitutes a gifted child.  How should the quality  be measured and how should the littlest learners who seem to show special talent or promise should be isolated? Or should everyone learn together?

Time to test for giftedness?

EarlyStories had a chance to participate in an interesting conversation about gifted children recently on the BAm!radio network, where a number of views were presented.

Joan Franklin Smutny, the founder and director of the Center for the Gifted at National-Louis University, said gifted children express  creativity and a unique problem solving ability, and said she believes giftedness can be determined easily in the early years. “It’s very important to nurture their nature….there are so many expressions of giftedness.”

Smutny maintains that no test scores are needed to identify a gifted child, and said they are hungry for new challenges. She said giftedness should be identified early so special attention can be paid to their education, while Clara Hemphill, an author and editor, argued that there is no need to test and isolate gifted children.

Hemphill said the  focus should instead be on educating all children while giving them additional opportunities.  Hemphill had an interesting piece on the topic recently in the New York Times. “What happens to gifted kids is what often happens to all kids that don’t fit the mold,” Hemphill said. She said it’s most important “to work harder,”  to provide opportunties for all children.

Preschool depression and poverty

The New York Times Magazine has a story about depression among preschoolers this week, which asks whether depression can be diagnosable among young children, and, if so, where it might come from.

The article suggests that maternal depression can play a role, but is not definitive. The author writes: “Despite the assumption that these kids must have experienced severe psychosocial deprivation, abuse or neglect, Luby says: ‘I’ve seen many depressed kids with nurturing, caring parents. We know that psychosocial stress is an important ingredient, but it’s not the only issue. And it’s not a necessary condition either.’”

I was reminded of some of the research in Ellen Galinsky’s new book, which we wrote about here a few weeks ago, that looked at how maternal non-responsiveness can adversely affect infants. In particular this can be an issue among families living in poverty, where family stress can exacerbate the problem.

The Times story doesn’t really get into what role poverty might play in exacerbating depression among young children; she does write about the connection between anxiety and depression. This seems in part because the research is new, but common sense would say that children growing up in poverty would be more susceptible to early onset of depression and anxiety disorders, or at least would have fewer opportunities to combat it in the ways described in the story. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the future research tells us.

Ready for Recess? Raise your hand!

How often have you heard children answer “recess,” when asked the following question: What is the best part of your day at school?
Who can blame them? EarlyStories wouldn’t mind running and jumping around outdoors in the middle of the day if given the opportunity. What’s interesting about the concept of recess, however, is the new life and attention it is getting from the media and from bloggers, including my excellent colleagues over at Early Ed Watch and Birth to Thrive.
The discussion started anew last month after the New York Times ran a piece about how much sense it might make to reschedule recess for before, instead of after lunch. Writer Tara Parker-Pope last year in a column looked at new research findings that children who had more than 15 minutes of recess a day showed better behavior in class than those who had little or none.
This week, Paul Nyhan noted on his blog that some 30 percent of students in a study published in the journal Pediatrics have little or no recess at all.
At a press conference this week at Scholastic headquarters, Beth Prince, a kindergarten teacher in Washington, D.C., said that many of her students show up at kindergarten unable to focus in class because they’ve spent too much time in front of television, computer and video game screens. Prince noted that while she can’t control the technology they are exposed to at home, her preferred solution is more outdoor time. “These kids need to run around,” she said.

Early childhood literacy: Questions and connections that matter

A study about childhood literacy and then an unrelated story about adults who cannot read out of Chicago prompted some thought about literacy here at EarlyStories.
The study from the University of British Columbia, found that neighborhoods where children live while they are in kindergarten predict their reading comprehension skills seven years later. Published in the journal Health & Place, , the researchers found a “delayed effect” of the residential environments in which children are raised.
“The researchers say it’s possible that the socioeconomic conditions of children’s early residential neighborhoods exert a strong effect later because acquiring reading skills involves the collective efforts of parents, educators, family friends and community members, as well as access to good schools, libraries, after-school programs and bookstores, ” according to an article about the study in Science Daily.
The interesting story about adult illiteracy out of Chicago prompted EarlyStories to think once again about how and why some 23 percent of the U.S. population cannot read, according to statistics from the National Center for Family Literacy. The story described a vibrant volunteer culture for a program known as Open Books in Chicago, where the number of adults who cannot read is even higher.
The story did not delve into what kind of early childhood education, if any, the adults who want to learn how to read had previously. And yet, the question must be raised. How could such large numbers of our population be so deficient in reading skills? What does that say about the way reading is — or is not taught?

New, fascinating findings on little brains and math

Just how much math are little children capable of learning? For years, it seemed educators and scientists did not believe little brains could handle much math at all before the age of five. But now new research is showing they can, according to an interesting piece in the New York Times. EarlyStories immediately wondered what kind of impact the research might have on the way math is taught in pre-schools across the U.S.
The story pointed to new studies from the world of neuroscience showing that preschoolers can perform far more complicated math problems than initially thought. It noted that about a dozen states are using a program that helps the youngsters develop their frontal lobes, and that the new findings are fusing the fields of brain science and education for the first time, The story also described how a program in Buffalo already has a track record for teaching early math.
Herbert Ginsburg at Teachers College has also done some groundbreaking work on teaching math to young children, another terrific resource for journalists trying to figure out what — if any — math is being taught in pre-kindergarten and even kindergarten classrooms. The article also pointed to the interesting work that Sharon Griffin is doing with Number Worlds, a research-based math program for young children.
Journalists don’t usually venture deep into the world of education research when covering pre-school issues, but there is clearly a rich world to tap and ask about when visiting classrooms. What sort of math, if any, is being taught, and why? Do the teachers have any sense of what the children could be capable of learning? How do school officials explain the math curriculum, or the lack of one?

NY Times: Charter schools are the new chic?

With so much debate and discussion over charter schools lately, EarlyStories found it fascinating to read the New York Times style piece Sunday, entitled, “Scholarly Investments.”
First thought: What on earth is a story about charter schools doing on the style page? The answer of course, can be seen in the picture of Ravenel Boykin Curry IV, who helped found two Girls Preparatory Charter Schools, posing with six uniformed young students in the Bronx.
Turns out that well connected, socialite hedge fund managers like Curry are are embracing charter schools as their new cause; these maverick investors have decided they like this new model — whatever that means. So now it’s in vogue to be supportive of charters in the largest school system in the U.S., with more than 1.1 million public school children — although according to the story, only about 30,000, or 2.5 percent of them, attend attend charters.
So why are the money folks choosing charters instead of embracing some of the other struggling public schools, many of which could use an infusion of hedge fund cash at a time of deep budget cuts?
Because, according to Nancy Hass of the Times, “their obsession — one shared with many other hedge funders — is creating charter schools, the tax-funded, independently run schools that they see as an entrepreneurial answer to the nation’s education woes.”
Curry himself explained that hedge fund mavericks see charter schools as “exactly the kind of investment people in our industry spend our days trying to stumble on.”
The story did not explain why the wealthy fund managers are attracted to the type of education that charter schools offer, or how it differs from what happens in some of the 1,600 New York City public schools. Are they excited about the quality of teaching and learning, and the success of students? It did point out that studies on the effectiveness of charter schools differ in their conclusions.
One manager suggested the attraction has to do with the way charter schools rely “on metrics and tests to measure progress,” — a concept that is also deeply ingrained in the public school culture in the aftermath of No Child Left Behind, and also part of U .S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s education agenda. (He is also a big fan of charter schools)
The hedge fund managers appear to be excited by the notion that charter schools are “scalable,” with models that could be emulated in many communities that have long waiting lists of parents looking for free alternatives. Charter schools, for the record, also pay their employees differently and don’t choose their staffs from teachers unions.
There are many good questions that should be raised here, and the style piece attempted to raise some of them. EarlyStories can’t help but want to see more journalists spending time in charter schools, starting in pre-kindergarten if at all possible, to let the public know how these schools are different. Are they changing lives for children? How so?

The Lives of Children in a Downturn: What Stories Can Be Told?

The downturn economy is taking a toll on grown-ups, with a confluence of stressful events: rising unemployment, a housing crisis, income cuts and an overall sense of fear that is permeating everyday life. But how are children faring? EarlyStories was reminded why journalists should be paying closer attention, after reading Bob Herbert’s column in the New York Times this week.
Herbert didn’t speak to any children for his column, nor did he focus on any particular family. He wrote rather broadly and stated some obvious facts that really could be the starting point for taking a closer look at the lives of children in just about any U.S. community: “Official statistics are not yet readily available, but there is little doubt that poverty and family homelessness are rising, that the quality of public education in many communities is deteriorating and that legions of children are losing access to health care as their parents join the vastly expanding ranks of the unemployed,” Herbert wrote.
He went on to describe the efforts of a Dr. Irwin Redlener, a pediatrician who also is a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and president of the Children’s Health Fund in New York. Redlener is headed to Detroit this week with a medically equipped mobile operated by the Children’s Health Fund that will provide free health and dental care to children whose parents cannot afford to pay for care. Just imagine the stories he will hear along the way.
It’s important for journalists to delve into the health and well being of children in these tough times, along with covering local school news and pre-k battles. What kinds of stories are teachers hearing? Have requests for free lunch doubled and even tripled? What are schools doing in particularly hard hit communities to help the many newly laid off families along with those that have struggled in poverty for years? And how are children faring? Are they displaying signs of stress, and are schools dealing with more discipline issues, more children coming to school hungry, angry and stressed? Are they looking for these signs and providing any kind of help or assistance?
Journalists who spend time speaking with and listening to children and their families right now will find some terribly sad — but important– stories, just waiting to be told. EarlyStories would like to hear them.

NIEER Report Finds Economic Crisis Threat to Pre-K

EarlyStories has been urging reporters to think hard about dueling trends in pre-kindergarten education as long planned expansions run into hard fiscal realities. The National Institute for Early Education Research has explored the issue in depth. Their annual survey of state-funded programs, released in Washington D.C. on Tuesday is a must read for journalists, especially because it provides state-by-state snapshots. NIEER, based at Rutgers University In New Jersey, has produced an annual report on state preschool programs since 2002.

NIEER found ample evidence of the growth of pre-kindergarten programs, as follows:
• Enrollment increased by more than 108,000 children. More than 1.1 million children attended state-funded preschool education, 973,178 at age 4 alone.
• Thirty-three of the 38 states with state-funded programs increased enrollment.
• Eleven states improved the quality of their preschool programs, based on quality standards developed by NIEER. One fell back.
• State funding for pre-k rose to almost $4.6 billion. Funding for state pre-k from all reported sources exceeded $5.2 billion, an increase of nearly $1 billion (23 percent) over the previous year.
But the report also noted that the economy has taken a toll on expansion, as Sam Dillon of the New York Times noted. Nine states have announced cuts to state-run pre-kindergarten programs while legislatures continue to debate cutting others.
As the debate over the value of spending money on pre-k programs continues, Congress is raising federal funding for preschool while President Barack Obama continues to promise new investment in early childhood education. That means reporters will be monitoring state budget cuts, use of stimulus money to boost early childhood education and long-planned state expansions all at the same time. In this confusing and quickly changing landscape, the NIEER report is an especially helpful tool.