Steal These Ideas

Sara Mead — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:14:00 -0500

The Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation is known for the high quality of its research work, particularly its evaluations of federal and publicly funded workforce, education, and other programs. But while it turns out excellent research, it's typically much more hesitant to make unsolicited policy recommendations or attempt to influence federal or state policies. That's why a series of "Policy and Research Recommendations" briefs that MDRC published late last year, to provide guidance to the new administration and Congress, deserve particular attention from the policy community. The briefs address a broad range of topics within the areas of education, youth development, and workforce policy, but three are of particular relevance to early education:

The first two focus primarily on why research shows these areas are important and type of research Congress and the new administration should fund to improve our understanding of what works, and thus the policies we fund, in the respective areas they address. The third, however, offers specific policy recommendations for the Reading First program:

Even if these PD efforts have not produced overall impacts on student reading achievement, they have been able to improve teacher knowledge and instruction. Federal support through Reading First and in special PD initiatives has demonstrated that it is possible to fairly quickly change teacher instruction and teacher knowledge, suggesting that further efforts to improve PD could be worthwhile. However, improving student achievement may require a longer timeframe or other changes. Exploratory analyses suggest that focusing on multi-year PD programs and strategies that target needier schools may show promise. Continue to experiment with innovative ways to deliver PD and related support in large school districts. For example, recent findings illustrate the need for new ways to deliver teacher coaching that will increase its power to improve instruction.

All three are worth checking out, as is a fourth policy brief on How Best to Determine Whether Social and Educational Programs Work-Or Don't Work.

Putting a Stop to Pre-K Expulsion

Sara Mead — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

In 2005 Yale researcher William Gilliam found that pre-kindergarten programs expell children with disturbing frequency. Pre-k programs expell nearly 7 out of 1,000 students annually--that's 3 times the rate at which public schools expell K-12 students. This shocking finding gained national news coverage, and raised important questions about how well our patchwork of public, private, and community-based pre-k providers is equipped to serve children with behavior and other problems.

Now Gilliam's back with a new report that looks at what policymakers and pre-k providers can do to reduce the number of pre-k expulsions. Gilliam offers seven recommendations:

Early education programs should assess children's needs and provide behavioral supports necessary for the child to succeed in her or her current educational program, or transition the child into a program better able to meet his or her needs, rather than expelling children with challenging behaviors.
All early education and child care teachers should have regular access to early childhood mental health consultation to help teachers address challenging behaviors in the classroom.
Early education and child care programs should enforce student-teacher ratios of no more than 10 preschoolers per teacher, preferrably fewer.
Early education and child care programs should ensure that teachers whor reasonable hours with breaks away from children.
Supportive policies and services should focus on teacher job stress.
Federal and state funds should be made available to track the number of children expelled from public-funded programs and to implement and evaluate promising models of improving children's classroom behaviors and preventing preschool expulsion.
Further reserach should focus on (a) family and community factors associated with risk for expulsion, (b) effective methods for fostering effective preschool-home collaboration, (c) teacher training in classroom behavior management, and (d) the effectiveness of early intervention services as a rpeventive for severe behavior problems.

We would add that, as states build universal pre-k programs that include diverse community providers, they need to ensure that all providers in a state pre-k system have the resources and expertise to intervene effectively and address children's problem behaviors. Gilliam's earlier study found that faith-based and for-profit providers had higher expulsion rates than public schools--a result that likely reflects differences in the resources available to these providers. Faith-based and for-profit providers may also have different expectations around expulsion than public schools, which are required to serve all comers. State policymakers must ensure that pre-k systems connect all providers with mental health and special education professionals working with school districts and other agencies. They must also make sure that the expectation to serve all eligible students is aligned across all providers. Pre-k providers and K-3 teachers must also work together to ensure that behavior supports and interventions that enable children to succeed in pre-k classrooms continue in the early elementary environment.

State and federal policymakers should keep these recommendations in mind as craft new early education investments. Abundant evidence shows that fostering children's social and emotional development--including identifying and intervening to address emotional and social problems--is every bit as important a goal for pre-kindergarten and early elementary programs as developing children's cognitive and academic abilities. Without such support, unaddressed social and emotional difficulties too often become an obstacle that prevents children from succeeding academically.

Gilliam's recommendations also align with the most recent reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Act, which emphasizes both early intervention/prevention and positive behavioral interventions. Providing teachers with training and resources to respond effectively to problem behaviors before they become an obstacle to students' and their classmates' learning advances the goals of both IDEA and early education reform.

Social and Emotional Development

Steal These Ideas

Putting a Stop to Pre-K Expulsion