PreK-3rd

A recent American Prospect article about the Opportunity NYC program caught our eye. Opportunity NYC, initiated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, uses philanthropic dollars to reward poor and low-income families for engaging in behaviors that support their children's development, such as taking children to the doctor or dentist or attending parent-teacher conferences. Parents can also earn financial rewards if their children maintain a good school attendance record over a six month period. A recent evaluation suggests that the program has been successful in getting parents to make sure their young children are in school. 

Tomorrow is the deadline to submit comments on the Department of Education's proposed guidelines for Race to the Top, the new grant program created under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  Secretary Duncan released draft guidelines for RTT last month, and with more than 650 comments submitted so far, he is getting plenty of feedback on his vision.

Race to the Top gives the Secretary unprecedented discretion to dole out $4.3 billion in grants to states over the next year.  But the money doesn't come free. States have to be looking pretty good in Duncan's eyes even before they apply for the money. What's more, if they want their applications to have any shot of being competitive, they will have to show that they are already making progress on many fronts, including working toward common standards, allowing for the creation of more charter schools and using longitudinal data systems to track students' performance.

As regular readers of this blog know, Montgomery County Public Schools has done a good job capturing our attention with its PreK-3^rd alignment effort and high-quality early childhood programs. Now a new book, Leading for Equity, argues that Superintendent Jerry Weast's approach to management, which emphasized equity and excellence for all, was the key to success in MCPS.

This substantive but somewhat colorless book was written by three people who specialize in education leadership: Stacey M. Childress and David A. Thomas, who currently teach at Harvard Business School, and Denis P. Doyle, the chief academic officer of SchoolNet, which produces instructional management software.

Jay Mathews at the Washington Post recently skewered the authors for relying too much on education jargon in their analysis of MCPS' success, which they summarized as six lessons. Early Ed Watch helpfully translates for the common man: 1) adopt common, rigorous standards, and differentiate instruction rather than lowering expectations by placing struggling students in lower tracks, 2) focus on critical stages of the K-12 path, especially early childhood and the last years of high school, 3) hold everyone accountable and include everyone in the decision-making process, 4) persuade people of all students' ability to excel by requiring the use of programs that increase student achievement, 5) hire and retain people who believe that minority and low-income students can achieve at a high level and 6) always pursue equity and hold it as a top priority.

Earlier this week Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced his appointment of several key Department of Education officials, including the selection of Jacqueline Jones as senior adviser to the secretary for early learning. Jones previously served in the New Jersey Department of Education as assistant commissioner for the Division of Early Care and Education.

Last month, researchers gathered at the National Academies of Science to share new research on how often students change schools, why they do it and how becoming "the new kid" can impact their academic achievement, especially in the elementary school years.

In one paper presented at the conference, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan used data from the ECLS-K, a national dataset, to demonstrate that children who change schools between kindergarten and third grade (for reasons other than that the school didn't offer the next grade) perform worse than their peers in reading and math in this period. Negative effects were particularly apparent among special education students and students who moved multiple times in those early elementary school years.

While the impact of mobility on a child's academic achievement should not be overstated (the Michigan study found most impacts to be slightly negative), changing schools is an increasingly common experience among young children.

An initiative to help children prepare for school has been quietly underway in Bremerton, Wash. over the past several years -- and we're starting to see signs that it's working. Linda Sullivan-Dudzic, the Director of Special Programs in Bremerton, WA, explained the underlying philosophy of the Early Learning Program in a recent interview with Public School Insights, a website maintained by the Learning First Alliance for discussion of "what works" in public schools. 

In the interview, she touches on a number of ingredients that appear to have played a role, including partnerships with community-based providers, "friendly accountability," and PreK-3^rd alignment.

The program focuses on creating partnerships with numerous community-based preschool providers: "We've had deep relationships in the community," Sullivan-Dudzic said. It was important, she added, that the district partner with existing schools to make curricula more rigorous and offer district-provided literacy coaches. Working with faith-based and community-based organizations allowed the district to reach almost 600 students immediately.

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.

Here at Early Ed Watch, we spend a lot of digital ink writing about "PreK-3^rd alignment." But what exactly are we talking about? I explain in this short video (7 mins) with help from Dr. Jerry Weast, Superintendent of Montgomery County Schools in Maryland, which is home to one of the country's most successful PreK-3rd reform efforts.

Still thinking about how to spend your stimulus dollars? Earlier this spring, I visited an elementary school in Montgomery County that offers a great model to ensure the greatest academic bang for your ARRA buck. Hint: It has something to do with PreK-3rd Alignment. (See our video, released today, for more details.)

In 2000, Broad Acres Elementary School in Montgomery County, Maryland, faced the threat of a state takeover. That year, 11.8 percent of the school's third-graders scored "proficient" on state reading tests, and only 5.3 percent achieved proficiency in math. Today, more than 60 percent of the school's third-graders (most of them poor, many of them English language learners, almost all of them minorities) are proficient in reading and math.

The source of the transformation? A new approach that focuses on early learning, including pre-kindergarten and full-day kindergarten, and promotes strong alignment between pre-kindergarten and each of the early primary grades. As states and districts look for smart ways to use the funds available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), this approach - known as "PreK-3^rd" - provides a compelling model.

Today's big education policy news is that 49 states and the District of Columbia have signed on to an effort, led by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers, to establish a common core of voluntary, rigorous standards in mathematics and English language arts in grades K-12, to be shared across participating states.

That's big news and, given the abundant evidence of disparities and lack of rigor in states' existing standards, a positive development.