PK-3

Beyond Silver Bullets: Pre-k Effectiveness and PK-3

Sara Mead — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:00:00 -0400

There's a substantial body of evidence documenting the short term benefits of pre-k programs. Children who attend quality pre-k programs enter kindergarten with stronger literacy, math, and social skills than similar peers who did not attend pre-k. There's very little disputing this, even among individuals and organizations that oppose public investment in pre-k programs.

Short-term pre-k impacts are important, but policymakers and parents who invest in pre-k ultimately care most about the long-term impacts these investments have on children's outcomes. That's a more complicated question, as a back and forth I've been having with the Cato Institute's Adam Schaeffer illustrates.

Let's get this out of the way first: There is now extensive evidence for some long-term benefits from pre-k programs. Several studies that conduct medium- to long-term follow up on participants in pre-k programs (inlcuding publicly funded programs such as Head Start) find evidence that pre-k participation reduces grade retention and special education placements. That in itself can generate savings for taxpayers, not to mention lasting personal benefits for individual children who avoid retention or special education placement. Some longer term studies, of which there are fewer, also find positive impacts on high school graduation rates.

In a world where schools and educational interventions are increasingly judged based on student achievement results--test scores--and where individuals increasingly need strong academic skills to participate in the workforce, higher education, and mainstream society--that's not enough, though. Unfortunately, the very real achievement gains students experience in pre-k too often fade out by the end of third grade.

That shouldn't surprise anyone. Pre-k doesn't exist in a vaccum. Quality pre-k programs can help narrow the significant achievement gaps that exist for low-income and racial/ethnic minority students at school entry, and they can help place students on a solid foundation heading into kindergarten. But the schools children attend after pre-k have to build on that foundation in order for children to maintain early learning gains. Children learn by progressively building new skills and knowledge on top of the skills and knoweldge they already possess. It's an ongoing process. If schools aren't effective in helping students acquire new skills and knoweldge, then even children who went to the best pre-k programs are going to slip behind. That's why New America's early education work focuses on quality pre-k as part of a larger education reform agenda that simultaneously seeks to improve public education at the elementary level and beyond.

Evidence from the Chicago Child Parent Centers (CPC) program illustrates the importance of continuing intervention beyond pre-k into the early elementary years in order to produce lasting educational impacts. The CPC study is a quasi-experimental, longitudinal study that followed a cohort of more than 1,500 children attending kindergarten in Chicago in 1985. Some children in this sample had benefitted from early education interventions carried out by Chicago's Child Parent Centers, a program that provided quality pre-k, full-day kindergarten, and ongoing educational supports (reduced class size, parent involvement activities, enriched classroom environments) through third grade. Other children in the sample did not, allowing resarchers to study the CPCs' impact. The CPC study is particularly valuable because it focuses on the impacts of a large-scale, publicly funded early education program. In other words, CPC isn't a pie-in-the-sky "model program," but a real world model that states could reasonably seek to replicate in their pre-k and school reform efforts.

Research demonstrating CPC's positive long-term impacts on high school completion, grade retention, special education placement, and crime is well-known. Researchers have also used CPC data to separately compute the impacts of the program's pre-k and elementary support components. (This analysis was possible because some students in the sample received only pre-k services, but not elementary interventions; some received elementary interventions but not pre-k; some received both; and some received neither).

This research finds positive impacts for both students who participated in pre-k only and those who participated in elementary interventions only. As the chart below shows, participating in just the pre-k program had significant positive impacts on high school completion and also reduced special education placements and grade retention. In other words, the CPC pre-k intervention had some positive impacts even when children didn't receive sustained elementary supports. But the greatest benefits were for youngsters who participated in both the pre-k and the school-age interventions. Particularly important, students who participated in the full intervention had higher test scores at age 17--something that wasn't true for the other groups.

Intervention	Impacts (relative to comparison group)	Benefit to Society per $ Invested[1]
Preschool only	· Increased high school completion · Reduced special education placement · Reduced grade retention	$2.88
School-age only	· Reduced grade retention and special education placements	$1.42
Preschool and school age	· Reduced grade retention and special education placements · Higher achievement test scores (age 17)	$3.59

[1] Excludes benefits to individual program participants, such as higher earnings.

Research addressing the "fade out" phenomenon in Head Start also validates the importance of elementary school quality in mediating long-term pre-k impacts. Children who participate in Head Start programs make significant learning gains, relative to controls, over the course of their Head Start participation, and enter Head Start with stronger language, literacy, math, and social skills than non-participating peers. But many of these academic benefits appear to disappear by the time children reach third grade. Several researchers have sought to understand why this fade out happens.

Janet Currie and Duncan Thomas demonstrate that the phenomenon of "fade out" for Head Start alumni occurs at least in part because black children who participate in Head Start go on to attend low-performing public schools than other black children, with the result that they lose many of the learning gains they made in Head Start. Currie and Thomas did not find the same evidence Head Start fade out among white Head Start graduates, who did not attend poorer quality schools than their non-participating white peers. Similarly, Valerie Lee and Susanna Loeb have found evidence that children who attended Head Start programs go on to attend poorer quality schools in the middle grades than their non-Head Start peers. These studies illustrate why narrowly focused pre-k advocacy is not likely to achieve its desired results, unless advocates place pre-k in the context of a broader school reform agenda.

In a post earlier this week, Schaeffer derided pre-k advocates who view pre-k as a silver bullet, writing: "Preschool activists kneel before a holy trinity of early-intervention programs that supposedly prove preschool is our educational, nay . . . our societal savior."

That's a little harsher than we'd put it, but Schaeffer is right to question claims that pre-k is a silver bullet. That doesn't make him right, though, to dismiss the benefits of pre-k entirely. High-quality pre-k does have demonstrated, substantial short term benefits, which can become long-term benefits when integrated with high-quality elementary programs that sustain early learning gains. And, Schaeffer is most definitely wrong, given our commitment to pre-k as one part of a broader school reform agenda, to lump me in with the silver bullet crew.

Put PK-3 First, with or without Reading First

Sara Mead — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:59:00 -0400

In late June both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees approved separate versions of the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill, which funds federal education programs. Both the House and Senate committee bills would zero out funding for the Reading First program, which funds scientifically-based reading programs in grades K-3. If the bill passes in its current form, Congress will have cut funding for PK-3 literacy by $1 billion over two years. And that’s something early education advocates, regardless of their views on Reading First per se, should be up in arms about.

The appropriators cite unimpressive results from a recent evaluation of Reading First as a rationale for eliminating the program. They also cite management scandals that plagued the program last year but which the Department has addressed. Early Ed Watch has previously discussed why these are not necessarily good reasons to defund Reading First.

We agree that congress should not waste taxpayer dollars on ineffective education programs. But we also shouldn’t judge Reading First just on one, preliminary evaluation—particularly when other data sources yield more promising (albeit less rigorous) evidence. If the appropriators are going to defund Reading First based on one evaluation, there are a number of other programs, which they did choose to fund in the current bills, that have even less evidence of effectiveness and that we’d like to see them apply the same standard to—We’ve got some ideas about better ways to use that money.

Yet there’s a bigger picture here: If congress does indeed eliminate Reading First funding for fiscal year 2009, that will constitute a $1 billion cut in K-3 education funding over just two years. That’s a huge step backwards at the very time that many in congress are seeking to increase federal investments in young children.

Early education advocates are understandably excited about the prospects for increased federal investment in young children in the next congress and administration. But even as the political climate seems increasingly hospitable for new federal early education investments, the overall federal fiscal situation is making it all the more difficult to pay for those investments. Early education advocates will face increasing pressure to identify potential savings to offset the cost of new investments.

That makes it all the more important that early education advocates not stand idly by while congress eliminates $393 million that Reading First currently provides to support early education. If the appropriations committees are dead set on eliminating Reading First funding, early education advocates should put intense pressure on them to ensure that the funding remains focused on PK-3 education. Otherwise, the money freed up by eliminating Reading First will be distributed in dribs and drabs across a variety of committee members’ favored programs—or be used to fund earmarks—and little kids will wind up the net losers.

What could congress do for early education with $393 million in funding? Given American students’—and adults’—poor showings in reading, keeping the money focused on early literacy, under another name, would be a smart idea. Here's another option: We’ve previously proposed creating a “2020 Early Education” state grant program that would provide grants to states to align standards, curricula, and teacher quality requirements from pre-k through third grade; improve the quality of PK-3 programs; and expand access to pre-k and full-day kindergarten for low-income students. That would be a good way to use $393 million, which would go a long way there. And we’re sure the early education community could come up with some other good ideas.

The current Committee Bills are not necessarily the death knell for Reading First. Appropriations bills still need to pass in the full House and Senate, go to conference committee, and either get the President’s approval or overcome a veto (which President Bush has already threatened for the bill). During that process, funding levels for many programs will change. Assuming, of course, that congress can even complete work on a Labor-HHS-Education bill this year at all. But right now the outlook for Reading First is certainly grim. All the more so, because the Bush administration and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings aren’t expending much political capital to preserve their signature initiative.

Looks like it’s time for the early education advocacy community to gird up its loins and start pressuring congress to keep Reading First funding focused where it counts—on children from preschool through third grade.

Improving Early Education in Southern States

Sara Mead — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:59:00 -0400

We've written previously about how southern states are leading the way in expanding access to quality pre-k. They're also among the national leaders in expanding access to full-day kindergarten.

But did you know that southern states are also leaders in improving academic achievement in the early grades? That's what a new report from the Southern Regional Education Board shows. On the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the state with the greatest increase in the percentage of students reading at the proficient level was Alabama, and the state with the greatest increase in the percentage of students proficient in math was West Virginia--both southern states. In the 1992 NAEP, only one southern state--Virginia--had a higher percentage of 4th grade students proficient on in reading and math than the national average (Maryland had a higher percentage proficient in math, and Oklahoma had a higher percentage proficient in reading). On the 2007 NAEP, seven southern states bested national averages for the percentage of students proficienct in reading or math, and four--Delaware, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia--did so in both subjects. Most important, low-income students from southern states are outperforming their peers nationally on the NAEP.

That's good news. Southern states have made significant investments in early education as well as focusing substantial energy on standards-based reforms (particularly in the early grades). But there's still a great deal to be done. Overall, southern students still lag their peers nationwide on the 4th grade NAEP in reading and math, and far too many southern children complete fourth grade without the skills they need to succeed in the next level of their schooling. That's in part because standards in many southern states are to low--the definition of "proficiency" on many state standards and assessments is closer to what NAEP defines as "basic" achievement. (To be fair, that's also a problem in non-southern states).

SREB offers five recommendations for southern policymakers to continue the progress their states have made in improving early elementary students' achievement:

Increase the rigor of state academic standards to appropriately challenge students and prepare them with the skills they need to succeed in the middle grades. (Some states have already raised their standards, but more work remains to be done.)
Provide professional development to help educators align standards, curriculum, and assessments to support student learning in the early grades.
Improve schools' capacity to educate English language learner and low-income students, who will comprise a larger share of southern states' student populations in the coming years.
Invest in early grades reading programs to sustain reading achievement gains and fill in for funding lost as a result of federal cuts to the Reading First program.
Implement effective intervention programs that help students who fail state gateway exams required for grade promotion to gain the skills they need to pass.

Those are good recommendations. We have two others. First, southern states that have made significant investments in pre-k programs should ensure that standards, curricula, and professional development in those programs are aligned with early elementary standards, so that pre-k and early elementary programs work together to ensure students are proficient by fourth grade.

Second, federal policymakers should help and prod states to implement these recommendations. For instance, federal policymakers could create incentives for states to increase the rigor of their standards (or implement high-quality voluntary national standards); restore Reading First funding; and should ensure that NCLB maintains its focus on improving how schools serve low-income, racial/ethnic minority, and English language learner students. All of these policies would help continue and build on the progress southern states have made so far.

Beyond the recommendations, the report provides a wealth of information on state policies related to early education in the 16 SREB states, and it's well worth checking out.

Broader, Bolder Follow Up

Sara Mead — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:58:00 -0400

The edublogosphere is still buzzing about EPI's Broader, Bolder Approach to Education, so here are a few points to follow up yesterday's post on this:

Statement co-drafter Pedro Noguera has penned a Huffington Post column that doesn't really add anything beyond what the statement says, but casts a clearer anti-NCLB light on this. Kevin Carey and Charlie Barone have some smart and important things to say about the statement, so check them out.

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation's Mike Petrilli, also writing on this, has a question for Early Ed Watch:

Second, the group’s big idea—that poor kids need high-quality preschool—is riddled with the same challenge as the big idea the group is challenging—that schools alone can narrow the achievement gap. Namely: we don’t have any experience bringing high-quality preschool to scale, just like we don’t have any experience bringing “no excuses” schools to scale. To my knowledge, the number of high-quality pre-K programs with strong evidence of effectiveness can be counted on one hand. So why should we feel any better about putting our eggs in the preschool basket?

Mike's wrong on the latter point: We do have experience with high-quality pre-k at scale, most notably Oklahoma's universal pre-k program and the Chicago Child Parent Centers Program, both of which operated at scale and with relatively modest public funding, and which rigorous evaluations have found produce significant positive impacts on children's learning and, in the case of CPC, life outcomes (the children in the Oklahoma study are still in school).

But his first point, that efforts to provide high-quality pre-k at scale face the same challenges as efforts to deliver quality K-12 education at scale, is an important one that deserves repeating. Pre-k advocates frequently talk as though, if policymakers just provide the funding for universal pre-k, if we can just get all pre-k teachers to have bachelor's degress, if we can just ensure that pre-k programs meet the 10 NIEER quality indicators, then all children will access to high-quality pre-k. But experience with K-12 education tells us it's not that simple.

Let's start with a simple premise: We know there is tremendous variation in K-12 school quality, that some public elementary and secondary schools are very good, some others are very bad, and far too many are mediocre. Now consider the quality standards pre-k advocates argue public pre-k programs must meet:

Teachers have bachelor's degrees and specialized training in early education,
Assistant teachers hold at least a CDA credential,
Teachers and assistant teachers receive ongoing professional development,
Class sizes are under 20 students and adult: child ratios are better than 1:10,
States have comprehensive early learning standards,
Programs provide meals, screenings, parental engagement, and access to wraparound services.

Anything catch your eye? K-12 public schools already have most of the things that pre-k advocates want high-quality pre-k programs to get. K-12 teacher licensure and credentialing policies require public elementary and secondary teachers to have a bachelor's degree and specialized education coursework. Certification policies in most states also require ongoing teacher professional development. NCLB requires most paraprofessionals in high-poverty schools to have at least two years of postsecondary education (a higher credential than a CDA).Forty-nine states have state academic standards for K-12 (although they're often lousy and typically don't address social and emotional development). Most public schools provide meals (at least lunch, often breakfast) through the National School Lunch program. The biggest exception is that many public schools have higher class sizes and adult: child ratios than pre-k advocates would like to see in pre-k. And K-12 schools also receive a lot more money per-pupil than state pre-k programs provide.

Yet despite the fact that K-12 public schools already have many of the things pre-k advocates argue are essential for quality, there are still many poor performing public elementary and secondary schools. That's because having degreed teachers, small class sizes, sufficient funding, and so on isn't the same as providing quality education. Educational quality lies, first, in the quality of the emotional and instructional interactions between adults and children in the classroom, and also in the quality of the curricular content conveyed through those interactions. Qualified teachers, managable class sizes, adequate resources, and so forth all help create the conditions that allow those interactions to occur, and increase the probability that they will occur, but they are no guarantee that good education is happening. That's equally true whether we're talking about K-12 education or pre-k programs.

That's why talking about quality early education as a substitute for K-12 reform is misguided. Unless pre-k advocates and policymakers crafting pre-k systems are willing to grapple with the same structural issues school reformers are grappling with as they try to improve K-12 education systems, we'll get a pre-k system that looks a lot like what we already have in K-12: Some really good programs, some really lousy ones, and a lot of mediocrity. And twenty years from now we'll be debating what to do about lousy pre-k programs.

Unlike some school reformers, we at Early Ed Watch believe that high quality pre-k must be an integral part of K-12 school reform--not just because good pre-k will make children more prepared for K-12 schooling, but also because we believe good pre-k systems can be a force to catalyze greater transformation in our public education system. But unlike some early education advocates, we also believe that school reform--or at least the issues school reformers care about--needs to be an integral part of pre-k advocacy. We're not going to get good pre-k programs without accountability, opportunities for parent choice and customization, proven curricula, research-based instructional strategies, and the right incentives and supports for educators, anymore than we'll get better K-12 schools without them.

Broader and Bolder, but Missing Something

Sara Mead — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:03:00 -0400

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) recently released a statement, endorsed by some 60 education scholars, foundation officials, and “big names” from other fields, calling for a “broader, bolder” approach to education that extends beyond schools to address early childhood education, health care, and out-of-school time. The argument runs as such:

Student achievement is highly correlated socio-economic status,
Schools, while they can mitigate some of the consequences of economic disadvantage, are inadequate to overcome social and economic disadvantages altogether, so
Education reform should focus more on factors outside of school that impact student achievement.

That should sound familiar to anyone acquainted with the work of EPI’s Richard Rothstein. Based on that argument, the statement proposes a “broader, bolder” education reform agenda focused on four areas:

Continued K-12 school improvement,
Increased investment in early education,
Increased investment in health services, and
Increased attention to out-of-school time.

Richard Colvin, David Hoff, Andy Rotherham, and Alexander Russo all offer reactions.

Here at Early Ed Watch, we’re—not surprisingly—pleased to see this statement give such prominence to early education programs. As the drafters aptly note, as much as half of the achievement gap exists before students even begin first grade—so efforts to eradicate achievement gaps need to begin much sooner, too. Signatories Sharon Lynn Kagan and Jane Waldfogel also lay out the evidence* that high-quality early education programs (particularly high-quality pre-k) actually work to improve disadvantaged youngsters’ educational and life outcomes. In education, where we often struggle with a lack of high-quality evidence about what does or does not work for kids, the evidence for the benefits high-quality early education is some of the most compelling.

That’s the good news.

What gives us pause, however, is the way this statement treats early education relative to K-12 schooling in general and K-12 school improvement or reform efforts in particular. The entire structure of the statement is designed to draw a distinction between reforms focused on improving K-12 schools (which the statement argues have been the focus of recent efforts to close achievement gaps) and reforms focused on out-of-school factors (which it argues are needed). It places early education firmly in the latter category.

That’s a mistake. Early education investments can’t occur in isolation from K-12 school reforms. While the evidence for the benefits of early education is strong, evidence also suggests that a significant portion of those benefits is lost in the first three years of schooling—a phenomenon known as fade-out.** Researchers Janet Currie and Duncan Thomas have demonstrated that fade-out among Head Start alumni is linked to poor elementary school quality. So, getting the most bang for our buck out of early education investments requires linking them to real reforms in the K-12 schools children will enter following early education. That means improving the quality of K-12 programs for disadvantaged youngsters, with smaller classes; stronger teachers; increased customization; and clearly defined academic expectations, supported by aligned, academically rich curricula and appropriate assessments.

Moreover, we can’t really talk about significant new early education investments without also engaging the structural issues that are at the center of K-12 school reform battles. When policymakers make large investments in early education, they’re not just investing in programs and services. They need to think of these new investments as building systems of early care and education, on par with the system of K-12 public education we currently have. That’s essential, because the patchwork nature of our existing nonsystem of early education and care creates inefficiencies, allows tremendous quality variation, is confusing and difficult for parents to navigate, and allows too many children to slip through the cracks. Fixing these problems requires thinking about systems.

That doesn’t mean our early education system should look like, or be just another part of, the existing K-12 system. The last thing we should do is build an early education system that simply replicates the flaws in our current K-12 system. But there’s no getting around the fact that the questions policymakers have to answer in designing early education systems are the same ones at the center of K-12 school reform battles: Who may deliver publicly funded education programs? Who can teach? How should we prepare, credential, and compensate teachers? How do we measure quality? How do we hold programs accountable to the public who funds them? What should children know and be able to do? What are the goals of publicly funded education? Efforts to build early education systems must be informed by how these debates have played out in K-12 education. Policymakers investing in early education must learn from what has worked—and what has not—in the K-12 sector. At the same time, building new systems of public education to deliver early education gives policymakers an opportunity to try out new approaches to public education that, if successful, should eventually inform and help to reshape the K-12 sector as well. Unfortunately, when we go to conferences on early education, or meetings on K-12 school reform, there’s virtually no overlap in the participants. And this statement’s decision to treat early education as an “out-of-school” reform issue only exacerbates that divide.

Early education investments are neither a substitute for K-12 reforms, nor an escape from it. The very issues that are hot-button issues in K-12 reform—school choice, teacher quality, accountability, funding—are also inevitable in early education. And, by turning away from K-12 reform to focus on out-of-school issues, this statement doesn’t provide any real answers on those questions.

*One note to the good folks at EPI who put this together: The "background papers" you offer reviewing the evidence on various policy areas would be much, much more helpful and compelling if they included links to the studies you cite, many (though not all) of which are available on the web. And as for those that aren't on the web--they should be! (See Kevin Carey here for more on this.)

**To be clear, the evidence of fade-out does not negate the benefits of early education entirely. To the contrary, there is strong evidence that high-quality early education programs produce benefits for participants—in the form of higher wages, lower crime rates, and reduced welfare dependency—well into adulthood. But the fact that, by grade three, a significant portion of the advantages early education graduates had over non-participants at kindergarten entry disappears, suggests that we are losing out on some of the benefits of early education. If we could help children preserve a greater share of early learning gains throughout early elementary school, they (and we) would reap even greater benefits in adulthood.

Early Education at Risk?

Sara Mead — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:55:00 -0400

Last week's Nation at Risk anniversary spawned a boatload of commentary on the seminal report's impacts, as well as the continued shortcomings in American public education 25 years later. Thinking about Nation's impacts on early childhood and elementary education can be perplexing. As E.D. Hirsch notes in Education Week, the original report gave barely a mention to early education, focusing primarily on the need to dramatically improve academic rigor and core course-taking at the high school level. Yet it's undeniable that the standards-based education movement that emerged out of Nation has led to significant reforms in early education--and that early education reforms have actually be more aggressive, and have produced greater results, than have reforms at the high school level Nation's authors originally sought to affect.

Pre-kindergarten: Publicly funded pre-kindergarten was hardly unheard of before Nation at Risk--the federal Head Start program began in 1965. But the universal pre-k movement at the state level emerged in the 1990s in conjunction with state K-12 education reform efforts--particularly in Southern states that have led the charge in both pre-k and standards based reform--and in response to first National Education Goal: "by 2000 all children will start school ready to learn." The state universal pre-k movement further gained steam in early 2000s, and today state-funded pre-k programs enroll more than 1 million 3- and 4-year-olds nationally.

Full-day Kindergarten: As states invested resources in education reform, standards, and accountability, many prioritized full-day kindergarten investments. For example, more than half of funds from Pennsylvania's Accountability Block Grant support full-day-kindergarten. Since 1994, the percentage of children enrolled in full-day, as opposed to half-day, kindergarten has risen from under half to roughly two-thirds.

Reading Instruction: Since the mid-1990s, we have invested significant resources in improving reading instruction at the early elementary level. The National Reading Panel, which was established in 1997 and released its final report in 2000, established a new national consensus around how to effectively teach young children to read. The Reading Excellence Act, passed in 1998, and No Child Left Behind's Reading First program, which replaced REA in 2002, affirmed that consensus and have provided billions of dollars in federal funds to help states and school districts implement sound reading instruction in the early grades.

Smaller Class Sizes: Since the mid-1990s, states, school districts, and even the federal government have invested significant resources to reduce class size in the early elementary grades, in response to research linking smaller class sizes to improved student outcomes. Although some of these initiatives have been revised, and further research has refined our understanding of the connection between class size and student achievement, we are still spending more today to educate young children in smaller classes than we did a decade or more ago. Between 1993 and 2003, the average elementary school class size in the United States fell from 24 to 20.

These are significant reforms, and they all grow out of the standards-based reform movement sparked by Nation at Risk. Moreover, these and other reforms at the early childhood and early elementary education levels appear to be producing results: Since the mid-1990s 4th grade scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading and math have been on a steady upward trajectory. On the most recent long-term trend NAEP assessment, administered in 2004, 9-year-olds performed better in both reading and math than at any time since the assessment was first administered in 1971! That's a striking contrast to the middle and high school levels, where student achievement has stagnated and even declined.

Yet, even if the past 20+ years of education reform efforts have had their greatest success at the early education level (and we would argue that they have), that doesn't mean they've been anywhere near successful enough. Consider: Despite dramatic improvements, only 33 percent of fourth-graders were proficient in reading on the 2007 NAEP assessment, and only 39 percent were proficient in math. Moreover, the failure of elementary achievement gains to translate into better middle- and high-school achievement shows how far we continue to fall short in equipping our young students for the next level of their education. In other words: There's a lot more left to do in reforming early education.

For all their beneficial impacts, most of the early education reforms of the past two decades have been around the margins--adding a year of schooling prior to elementary school, lengthening the school day. All of these reforms are improvements, but they're about doing more of the same and getting marginal returns--not fundamentally improving the core of the early learning experience. (Improvements in reading instruction do get closer to this core, but, as research from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation demonstrates, too many schools are still not really implementing read curricula informed by the evidence).

To get the results we want, we need to dramatically improve the core of the learning experience--the curriculum and concepts to which children are exposed, the quality of instructional interactions between teachers and children in the classroom, and the alignment between curriculum, instructional strategies, evaluation and teacher training.

Right now we're a long way from where we need to be on all these factors. State content standards in the early elementary grades are woefully inadequate, and 9 states either have no literacy and numeracy standards at all in grades K-2, or had chosen to "cluster" their K-2 standards in one, largely useless, set of standards for the entire K-2 grade range. The early elementary curriculum remains woefully devoid of content. In-depth observational studies of early elementary classrooms find that the typical American elementary school classroom offers low levels of instructional support for students' learning. And the "egg carton" structure of many public schools leads to little alignment even among same-grade class rooms--let alone across grade levels.

Changing these conditions will be incredibly difficult. But it's essential to dramatically improving early education outcomes and getting the results we want at the elementary, middle and high school levels. And the body of research that can help us address these challenges--as well as new tools based on that research--is growing rapidly. The success of the next 25 years of early education reform will depend on the extent to which we can employ that research to move beyond the margins and radically improve the core of children's early education experiences.

Keystones for Early Education?

Sara Mead — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:36:00 -0400

Today’s Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania is focusing national media attention on the state, so we at Early Ed Watch thought we’d use the occasion to look at what’s happening with early education in Pennsylvania—actually, quite a lot! Pennsylvania currently supports several different initiatives that seek to improve early education quality and access in the state:

The 2007-08 Pennsylvania budget provided $75 million to launch Pre-K Counts, a statewide pre-k initiative that supplements and coordinates existing early education programs in the state to provide pre-k for nearly 11,000 three- and four-year-olds.
The Accountability Block Grant, funded at $275 million in the 2007-08 budget, provides school districts with funding they can use to implement proven practices that improve student achievement—75 percent of funding goes to support early education programs, including pre-k, full-day kindergarten, and reduced class size in the early elementary grades.
Pennsylvania invests $40 million a year to supplement federal Head Start funding and expand the number of children served in Head Start programs.
School districts that choose to offer pre-kindergarten to four-year-olds can receive partial funding for these programs through the state school funding formula.
Pennsylvania’s Keystone Stars is regarded as a model quality rating system for early childhood care and education providers. Participating providers receive between one and four stars depending on the quality standards they meet, and a tiered state childcare subsidy system provides increased reimbursements for providers that have more stars.

Yet despite the variety of initiatives in place, Pennsylvania’s public pre-k investments serve fewer than 25,000 of its 289,000 three- and four-year-olds. The state’s doing slightly better when it comes to full-day kindergarten, serving more than 63,000 children—more than half again as many as in 2002—in full-day kindergarten programs. But that still puts Pennsylvania well below the national average of 65 percent of kindergarteners enrolled in full-day programs. In other words, despite its progress, this is a state that has some work to do on early education.

Pennsylvania’s taken a slightly different approach on early education than many other states. Rather than focus on universal pre-k for four-year-olds, as some other states have done, Pennsylvania first focused on improving childcare quality from birth on, creating the Keystone Stars program in 2002 to rate and help improve the quality of early education and childcare providers. Keystone Stars ratings, and the professional development policies and resources that have been created to accompany them, help support the state’s more recent efforts to expand pre-k access. For example, community-based childcare providers who want to be part of Pre-K Counts must meet receive at least two Keystone Stars.

At the same time, Pennsylvania’s efforts to strengthen accountability in the K-12 public education system have supported increased investments in early education by school districts. The Accountability Block Grant provides school districts with resources to improve student achievement and meet NCLB goals. School Districts devote three-quarters of this funding to improve PK-3 education.

Pennsylvania’s current efforts to improve pre-k access and quality through Pre-K Counts builds on both Keystone Stars and the K-12 school reform activities that were already in place and supporting early education in the state. The challenge facing the state now is to use Pre-K Counts to expand and better integrate these efforts so that all Pennsylvania children receive a seamless, high-quality early education experience from age three (or younger) through early elementary school.

Pennsylvania’s approach to early education over the past several years—seeking to improve the quality of early learning and care from birth through school entry—more closely resembles Senator Obama’s approach to early education than it does Senator Clinton’s. But the state’s new investments in expanding pre-k access look more like Senator Clinton’s universal pre-k proposals. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, a Clinton supporter, championed new Pre-K Counts investments in the 2007 legislative session. Senator Bob Casey, who has endorsed Obama, introduced federal pre-k legislation similar to a bill Clinton sponsored.

Ultimately, both Senators Clinton and Obama have proposed early education investments that would bolster Pennsylvania’s early education efforts. Senator Clinton’s universal pre-k proposal could provide the funding the state needs to catch up on pre-k access and quality. Senator Obama’s proposed Early Learning Challenge Grants could help the state integrate different early education and care programs supported by childcare funding, Head Start, and the Education Accountability Block Grant, in order to build a more seamless early education and care system. Moving forward in improving early education quality, access, and alignment in states like Pennsylvania will require a combination of state and federal leadership.

A Call for Clarity in Early Elementary Standards

Sara Mead — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:37:00 -0400

The spring issue of AFT's American Educator makes the case for clear, specific content standards--and it should be must reading for anyone interested in improving early elementary education or PK-3 alignment. Clear, specific content standards are the cornerstone of an aligned PK-3 early learning experience. But, unfortuantely, too many states lack strong content standards in the early grades.

We're used to hearing the case for strong standards made in terms of equity--children in Detroit or Hampton Rhoads need to master the same knoweldge and skills as children in Ann Arbor or Fairfax. But good strandards should play an equally important role in aligning curriculum, assessment, and professional development within and across grades.

In an aligned PK-3 program, what children learn each year build seemlessly on what they learned the year before. But that's impossible without clearly articulated, detailed expectations for what children should learn each year: If we don't know in detail what children learned in second grade, it's hard to ensure that the third grade curriculum builds seamlessly from that; and if we don't know what children are expected to learn in third grade, then it's hard to design a second grade curriculum to prepare them for the next grade. If teachers don't know what children learned the previous year, they may repeat content or concepts that children already learned, or they might try to teach content that requires background knowledge children haven't yet acquired.

Unfortunately, AFT's analysis of state content standards in four key content areas--reading/English language arts, math, science, and social studies--shows that too many state standards are woefully lacking. That's particularly true at the early elementary level. AFT found that 9 states either had no literacy and numeracy standards at all in grades K-2, or had chosen to "cluster" their K-2 standards--in other words, writing one set of standards for the entire K-2 grade range--thereby making them utterly useless as a tool to support PK-3 alignment. AFT's Heidi Glidden write further,

This is a serious problem that states must address because specific, coherent, grade-by grade standards at the early grades are essential to building students’ background knowledge and vocabulary... Knowledge-rich K-2 standards are especially vital for young children from low-income families who, on average, have been exposed to roughly 30 million fewer words than children from professional families—and whose “word and world knowledge” is, therefore, substantially less than that of their peers.

We couldn't have said it better ourselves. AFT suggests that states have failed to write grade-by-grade K-2 standards because these grades aren't subject to assessment, and states haven't seen the need to write standards for grades that aren't assessed. That's incredibly short-sighted, and reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the point of standards. Standards don't exist to serve assessments--assessments exist to ensure that students are actually being taught standards. And standards exist because there are specific things children need to learn at each grade level in order to be successful in the next one. Clear, specific grade-by-grade standards in the early years chart a pathway for children to achieve proficiency by third grade. They are not optional.

Glidden calls on states to address their weak content standards in the early grades. But Congress should not leave this critical issue to the discretion of states. National standards--including clear, specific content standards in the early grades--would be the most straightforward way to address the problem of weak state content standards. Short of that, Congress should include language in the NCLB reauthorization mandating clear, specific grade-by-grade content standards in at least literacy and math in all of grades K-8, not just grades 3-8 (and course standards in the high school years). As we continue to expand high-quality pre-k and full-day kindergarten programs, we must not jeopardize that investment with indifferent, vague, and clustered standards in the early elementary years.

Combatting The Third Grade Slump

Sara Mead — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:40:00 -0400

THIRD grade has always been a hard year for Rahmana Muhammad’s children, and therefore for her. All of a sudden, it seems to this mother of four, their textbooks have fewer pictures, their homework lasts for hours, and their test scores plummet.

That's how a recent New York Times article about efforts to turn around Newark's struggling Newton Street School begins. But, unfortunately, it's not a problem that's limited to Ms. Muhammad's children, or to Newton, or even to similarly struggling schools. Across the country--in schools rich and poor; urban, suburban, and rural--too many children's learning hits a roadblock when they come to third or fourth grade.

We know that third grade is a major transition point in children's education. It's when they make the switch from learning to read, to reading to learn. As a result, children who haven't mastered proficient reading by third grade face a plethora of challenges--not only are they behind where they need to be in reading, but their inability to read well keeps them from mastering essential content in other subject areas, leading them to fall farther and farther behind. This begins a vicious cycle of school failure that can have devastating long-term consequences.

Children don't fall behind in third or fourth grade because they're not smart enough to handle third grade content. Children fall behind because their previous years of schooling haven't equipped them with the foundation of skills and knowledge to master the more challenging work they begin to tackle in third grade. But this fall-off isn't inevitable. Providing children with an aligned early education experience from pre-k through third grade can can help prevent third grade struggles by ensuring that each year's learning builds seemlessly on what children learned the year before. Unfortunately, too many schools ask too little--and provide students with too little support for learning--in the early grades before dramatically increasing the rigor of instruction in third grade leading up to all-important third grade tests. That's a recipe for disaster.

Because third grade is a stumbling point for so many children, PK-3 alignment must be a key strategy for turning around low-performing elementary schools. Providing aligned curriculum, supported by effective professional development and added support for struggling students, is essential to ensuring that students get to third grade with the skills they need to master third grade-level content, perform well on state assessments, and, most importantly, proceed successfully to the next stage of their learning.

Let’s Count: Boosting Math in PK-3

Christina Satkowski — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:54:00 -0400

The National Mathematics Advisory Panel’s (NMAP) new report on math instruction in America has drawn a lot of press attention. Of the dozens of recommendations outlined in the report one thing is abundantly clear: We need to focus more on building core math skills in the early grades PK-3.

We all know that American high school students are falling behind in math. American 15 year olds rank 25th in math among their peers in the 30 most industrialized nations, according to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). But another international study, the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), finds that the international math gap starts even earlier: Only 7 percent of U.S. fourth graders achieved the “advanced” level on TIMSS, compared to 38 percent in Singapore.

Improving PK-3 math instruction is critical to improving our standing in math. We all know that the early years lay an essential foundation of literacy skills that students must acquire to support later learning. But it’s also true that children need to master foundational math skills in the early grades in order to learn more complex math content—in particular, algebra—in middle and high school. Research shows that children who are exposed to a math-rich environment prior to entering school (both at home and in a pre-k classroom) are less likely to struggle with math in later grades. A 2006 study published in Developmental Psychology found that even trivial math talk to pre-schoolers (“you two go get your coats”, “put away four toys”) can boost a child's math skills.

To that end, the NMAP report makes four recommendations for PK-3 math instruction:

Focus curriculum around the goal of ensuring proficiency in whole number operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) by Grade 4, in order to put students on track to learn algebra by Grade 8.
Ensure that students come to school with a basic understanding of numbers and counting. Familiarity with counting and numbers lays a foundation for children to acquire additional math skills and knowledge. Achieving this requires better pre-school and pre-k math instruction, as well as more research on quality early childhood math instruction.
Equip pre-k and early elementary teachers with the skills and knowledge to to recognize their students’ math capabilities and teach them core concepts and content.
Increase use of “math specialists” at the elementary level who have specialized math teaching knowledge and can focus on coordinating math curricula across grade levels.

The panel’s recommendations affirm and the importance of aligned curriculum in grades PK-3. Providing aligned math curricula and instruction beginning in pre-k and continuing through the early elementary years is the best way to ensure that young students build essential math skills at an even, graduated pace that leads to proficiency in whole number operations by fourth grade. Aligning PK-3 math curricula can also help reduce and weed out repetition from grade to grade, which the report identified as one factor slowing children’s acquisition of math skills.

The panel also highlighted an urgent need to improve the math skills and knowledge of PK-3 teachers. Too many early educators are unaware of young children’s cognitive capacity to understand mathematical concepts, or are themselves uncomfortable with and poorly trained in math. We need more research on both how to better prepare elementary educators in math, as well as the instructional methods that work best for teaching early math.

The NMAP report is the highest-profile recommendation in recent years to cement the link between quality math instruction in the early grades and math literacy in high school and beyond. It reminds us all that when it comes to boosting student success, Early Ed counts.

Photo courtesy of flickr user Inkyhack, used under a Creative Commons License.