Early Ed Watch

Today our younger neighbors to the north will be celebrating their nation's birthday with parades and fireworks and maple-leaf flags. This year, kids in Ontario have something else to celebrate: the province is embarking on an ambitious strategy to expand early education access and better align child care, pre-k and elementary programs.

With Our Best Future in Mind, a new report commissioned by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and written by Early Learning Advisor Dr. Charles Pascal, maps out a major reorganization and expansion of early education services in the province. The report calls for expansion of full-day junior kindergarten (pre-k) and senior kindergarten classes (most are currently half-day programs). It also calls for Ontario to integrate day care for children up to age 4 , junior and senior kindergarten, and primary education from grades 1 through 6 in order to create a "continuum of services for children from birth to age 12." It encourages early educators to develop a "common programming framework for all of Ontario's early childhood settings," so that children experience similar curriculum and quality standards regardless of where they are served. And it recommends expanded parental leave, quality child care, support programs for the youngest children, and optional extended day programs for school-age children. Most of these programs could go into effect as soon as 2010, but with a longer timeline for expanding parental leave: the move would require significant changes in legislation, which Pascal expects by 2020.

National Journal, one of the most important sources of policy and politics journalism for D.C. insiders, just launched a new education blog featuring dozens of education policy experts, D.C. education policy insiders, and even a few elected officials(!). Good stuff. National Journal has long offered really excellent--if unfortunately difficult for most ordinary folks to access--coverage of education policy issues and the political debate around them in Washington.

Just one thing's missing--none of the blog's current, long list of contributors focuses on early childhood education. Only Checker Finn has written extensively on the subject. Not surprisingly, the contributors are primarily K-12 experts, but the blog also includes some very strong higher education voices--including ACE's Terry Hartle and NAF's own MaryEllen McGuire and Michael Dannenberg. Not so for early childhood. Considering that the Obama administration has proposed significant new early education initiatives, this seems like a major oversight.

Words are good. Conversation is better. That's the message of a study released today in the journal Pediatrics that links young children's language skills to the amount of time that adults engage them in back-and-forth exchanges.

Past research, particularly the acclaimed Hart & Risley study, has shown that children's cognitive abilities are strongest among those whose parents use many words in speaking to them. That study emphasized the importance of exposing children not only to directions or comments about their behavior ("drink your milk") but also to new vocabulary words and descriptions of the world around them ("did you see that hummingbird?"). Today's study builds on those findings, showing what many child development experts have stressed for years -- that some of the strongest learning moments happen in interactions between caregivers and young children.

While vocabulary is important, "we find that the effect of the conversation is six times as great as the words," said Frederick J. Zimmerman, the study's lead author and associate professor in the school of public health at the University of California at Los Angeles.

If you read an article about an audit of Georgia's pre-k program in the Atlanta Journal Constitution over the weekend, you probably thought you were reading bad news. According to the article, a recent state audit found that "the state has spent more than $216 million on a program to help low-income children get kindergarten-ready, without any concrete proof it's working." But the news is not as bad as it may sound.

The program in question is not the Georgia pre-k program, Bright from the Start, but a part of that program, the Resource Coordination (RC) Program, which provides grants to pre-k providers to provide enhanced services such as home visits and parent counseling. Pre-k directors are already responsible for the provision of these services, but the grant helps 227 programs across the state employ 484 dedicated resource coordinators to enhance these services in communities with greater need. Granted, the AJC article pointed out this distinction but did not mention that the $18.5 million spent on the RC program represents only 5.7 percent of the state's total pre-k expenditures.

A new report from California’s Children Now calls on the state to implement a comprehensive system that provides policymakers, educators and parents with better information about the skills of California’s youngsters when they enter kindergarten.

In 2007, a group of community organizers in Chicago surveyed several low-income neighborhoods and discovered some disturbing news: Between 40 and 64 percent of preschool-aged children in those areas were not enrolled in the state's preschool program or Head Start -- even though both are free to at-risk children.

"Why Isn't Johnny In Preschool?" is a new report that both reveals what has stymied pre-k attendance among children with the greatest need for it and offers a series of recommendations for how to increase enrollment. It was published this spring by the early learning committee of a group called POWER-PAC, a Chicago organization of low-income parents who advocate for new ways to help families. Recommendations derive from more than 5,000 interviews conducted from 2006 to 2008 in low-income neighborhoods with predominantly Latino or African American populations.

On Friday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry vetoed legislation, passed by the state legislature, to enhance pre-k standards in the state. Gov. Perry also signed a two-year, $182 million state budget that included $25 million in new funding to support the enhanced pre-k program. Although Perry's veto means the program will not be established, the money will remain in the budget, and will be allocated to the existing state pre-k program.

Play through learning. Play = Learning. Play is learning. These are the variations of the play mantra that was repeated by researchers and early childhood educators last week at the annual professional development institute held by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. 

More than 2,000 people attended the institute, which was held in Charlotte, N.C. Several of the presentations are now available online in a searchable directory on the NAEYC web site, which, by the way, received a major face lift last week to make it easier to navigate. Here are a few of the sessions that caught our eye (they cannot be directly hyperlinked but you can get to them by searching by author's name):

Yesterday, the federal government provided details about how and when states should apply for a chunk of $100 million in stimulus funds for "state advisory councils." These councils -- which are supposed to coordinate the growing tangle of early childhood programs at the state, local and federal level -- have been mandated by law since 2007 but have often languished for lack of  funding. It's not even clear how many actually exist.

The new guidance, which calls for proposals for three-year projects, was published on the Web by the Administration for Children & Families, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (It's also available as a 10-page PDF document.)

Sophia Pappas isn't above taking imaginary phone calls from Spongebob to keep her students engaged. These and other playful tactics are woven into the stories Pappas tells in Good Morning, Children, a memoir about her experience teaching pre-kindergarten as a Teach For America corps member. The first half of the book describes her anxieties about teaching pre-K and the ultimate success she finds in her classroom at Carter Elementary in the Newark Public Schools. The second half includes specific anecdotes and musings on her teaching philosophy derived from her blog for Pre-K Now, a non-profit organization that advocates for universal pre-K programs.

The book's amusing anecdotes keep the reader interested, while Pappas' careful description of best practices gives the book some real substance. Many chapter headings summarize the lessons Pappas teaches her students: "Making Peace," Saying Goodbye," "Taking Charge," and "Coping with the Bad Days," to name a few. Other chapters include recommendations for teachers, but without the prescriptive tone present in other "how to" manuals.