PK-3

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Last week United Federation of Teachers (New York City’'s teachers union) President Randi Weingarten gave a major speech proposing a new accountability framework to replace the controversial school report cards that NYC schools chancellor Joel Klein instituted last November.

In contrast to Klein’'s report cards, which assigned schools a single letter grade based primarily on student test scores, UFT'’s proposed alternative would offer parents and the public a matrix of indicators concentrated in three areas: academic achievement; safety, order and discipline; and teamwork for student achievement. Each school’s report would also rate the NYC Department of Education on the quality of support it provides the school.

Earlier this week we looked at myths and evidence about educating English language learners. Helping these children to obtain proficiency in both English and their native language must be a critical goal for PK-3 education. But what about the 90 percent of children who already speak English--are we missing out on a critical opportunity to teach them a second language in the PK-3 years?

In our increasingly global economy, developing a workforce that is conversant in other languages and cultures will be increasingly important for our national economic competitiveness. Our government also needs a greater supply of proficient speakers of a variety of other languages to ensure our national security.

Yet only 9 percent of American adults are proficient in more than one language--compared to 53 percent of Europeans. And only a small percentage of multi-lingual Americans are proficient in Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, and other languages that will be in increasing demand in the years ahead.

A new report from the Foundation for Child Development surveys the research about language learning in the PK-3 years and debunks six common myths about young English Language Learner students.

Myth #1: Learning two languages during the early childhood years will overwhelm, confuse and/or delay a child’s acquisition of English. Scientific research shows that children as young as three years old are able to differentiate between different languages—so parents don’t need to worry that exposure to more than one language will confuse children. Research also suggests that there are long-term cognitive benefits to learning multiple languages early.

Myth #2: Total English immersion from Prekindergarten through Third Grade is the best way for a young English Language Learning to acquire English. In fact, recent research shows that ELL children who receive support for both home language and English acquisition in the pre-k and early elementary years have better middle- and high-school English language achievement than children from English-only early education. Children in total-immersion pre-k programs tend to lose their ability to speak in their home language, which may harm their ability to communicate with their families, and deprive them of the cognitive and economic benefits of knowing a second language.

Texas is currently in the process of revisiting its "Pre-kindergarten Curriculum Guidelines"--a name that's something of a misnomer, because the guidelines are really more like a set of standards for what prekindergarteners should know and be able to do, as opposed to specifying a detailed curriculum. Vanessa, a Texas pre-kindergarten teacher who blogs at Inside Pre-k, thinks this revision is well overdue, because the current guidelines are insufficiently ambitious in their expectations for pre-kindergarteners' learning.

Vanessa's comments raise an important point. It's not enough for states simply to have standards for what young children should know and be able to do. Pre-k standards must also be aligned with K-12 standards --and both pre-k and K-12 standards must be sufficiently rigorous.

 Education policymakers are increasingly concerned about how to turn around chronically underperforming schools. Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), states and school districts must restructure schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) for five years—and they’re looking for strategies to do so. At the same time, policymakers are focusing on early education—36 states increased pre-k funding in 2008. Yet these two policy strands rarely intersect.

They should. Research shows that quality pre-kindergarten can boost student achievement and narrow achievement gaps. While NCLB doesn’t require states to assesses students until grade three, the foundational skills that support students’ later learning are already in place by then. Therefore, efforts to improve chronically low-performing elementary schools must start early.