Early Ed Watch

The Washington Post's "Answer Sheet" just published a commentary I wrote about how to improve children's grasp of math in the early years. It's a call to parents to build math moments into the morning routine, just as book reading is part of the bedtime drill. To make something like this work, we'll need preschool teachers and elementary school teachers to help parents recognize their own capacity for helping their kids, providing them with creative ideas that make math accessible and easy. I've included some of those ideas in the post below, but I'd love to find more. Please don't hesitate to add your feedback and ideas to the comment section below or at the Answer Sheet site, where parents are chiming in. 

Bedtime = book time. Parents know that equation by heart, or at least they're supposed to. The drill goes like this: Just before the goodnight kiss, we snuggle up with our young kids, open a book, and read with them. Okay, so maybe at first we have to beg them to just settle down. And maybe the baby is more prone to eat the pages than look at them. But still, we try. We're the ones responsible for these little human beings. It's part of our job.

Data from a survey of kindergarten teachers in California's Santa Clara County adds to the mounting evidence that kindergarten readiness is not as simple to define as you might think.

Contrary to popular conceptions of what it means for a 5-year-old to be ready for kindergarten, most kindergarten teachers are not wishing for rooms full of children who can already identify the letters of the alphabet. What they want instead are children who have learned how to regulate their impulses, follow through on a difficult task and have the self-control to listen to the teacher's directions for a few minutes.

This was one of several messages that emerged in Sacramento last Thursday during a presentation of recent data from the Santa Clara County Partnership for School Readiness, a collaborative of public, private and non-profit organizations in Silicon Valley. The presentation was part of the forum at which the New America Foundation released our report on early education in California. (For more about the report, see last week's post, the executive summary and the full report.)

As a recent TIME cover story notes, California is a state teeming with problems: Facing a 35 percent budget gap earlier this year, the state teetered on the verge of bankruptcy. It has a notoriously dysfunctional legislature and the nation's fourth-highest unemployment rate.

On top of that, California's schools, once among the nation's best, now rank among the bottom of all states-- 46^th nationally in 4^th grade math, and 47^th in reading. Equally troubling large achievement gaps between white and black or Hispanic fourth-graders. These problems begin even before children enter kindergarten. Only 31 percent of the state's 4-year-olds are enrolled in state-funded preschool or Head Start-and many early care and education settings fall short of high quality standards. These figures are particularly troubling considering that the state is host to one in every eight children under the age of eight in the country.

"The interesting thing about education reform is that we actually do know what works," former Prime Minister Tony Blair said during an event at the Center for American Progress yesterday. "The difficulty is in implementing it."

Blair was speaking about Britain's decision to convert all of its 23,000 public schools into community schools, which stay open longer and provide a range of activities and support to their local communities, between 2004 and 2011. Legislation enacted in 2004 provides over $3 billion in start-up-funds to help schools create partnerships with community organizations during the 8-year transition period. Blair spoke with confidence about Britain's educational change, stating that he never regretted making bold decisions when it came to education reform.

The United States is host to a small number of community schools, but there has been little effort or support to scale-up successful community school programs. However, a number of current policy developments-- the Obama administration's Promise Neighborhood program, prospective funding through Race to the Top grants, and community school legislation recently introduced in the House by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and in the Senate by Ben Nelson (D-Neb.)-- suggest that community schools are gaining momentum on this side of the pond as well.

There are significant differences between the various health care reform bills currently moving through the House and Senate, but here's one thing they all have in common: each would provide a substantial infusion of federal funding for home visitation programs that provide information to pregnant women and disadvantaged or first-time mothers about how to keep their babies healthy and safe.

Advocates cheer this potential expansion, pointing to the decades of research showing the effects of the Nurse Family Partnership program, started in 1977 in Elmira, N.Y., and now available in at least 26 states. But NFP is hardly the only model of home visitation programs out there, nor is it the only one that the new federal program would support. Do other models have strong research evidence showing they produce positive outcomes for children and mothers? What exactly are those outcomes? Are some models of home visitation more or less cost-effective than others?

On November 3, voters in New Jersey and Virginia head to the polls to select their states' next governors--the only two states with major statewide elections this year. Earlier this week Early Ed Watch took a look at early education in the New Jersey governor's race. Today we turn to Virginia.

The latest poll in Virginia's gubernatorial race shows Democratic former state senator Creigh Deeds trailing Republican Attorney General Bob McDonnell by 12 points.

Early education has been trailing in the Virginia election as well. In a race that has been dominated by debate over transportation, taxes, and social issues, education has been relegated to the background. This may be because neither candidate has taken a polarizing stance on education issues. Both Deeds and McDonnell would like to raise teacher salaries—which average $48,655—to the national average of $54,170. Both favor charter schools. And both would like to increase spending on education.

This morning, Pre-K Now released its annual Votes Count report, which summarizes state legislative action on pre-k during the 2009 legislative session, including pre-k funding in states' fiscal year 2010 budgets. This year's report focuses on which states have maintained and even increased pre-k investments despite budget shortfalls caused by the past year's economic pinch, and which states are falling behind.

Overall, Pre-K Now says that "the news for young children is surprisingly good." 27 of the 38 states that had state-funded pre-k programs in fiscal year 2009 (as well as the District of Columbia) managed to either increase pre-k funding or maintain current funding levels. That adds up to $187 million dollars of new money for pre-k in fiscal year 2010. Further, of the 10 states with the biggest budget shortfalls this year, seven managed to either increase or maintain their pre-k spending for the 2010 year.

The report groups states into 5 main categories:

We're in the thick of pumpkin patch season. Children around the country have been heading out on field trips with their classes and families, bumping along on hay rides to find the plumpest pumpkins they can get their hands on.

Good teachers know how to turn these field trips into curiosity-driven moments of learning for themselves and their students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds who finally have a chance to hear, see, use and interact with objects and concepts that they rarely come across in their everyday lives.  As a New York Times story highlighted yesterday, for some children a trip to the pumpkin patch means being able to hold and touch what is essentially a foreign object. When a classroom of 25 children at Harlem Success Academy 3 were asked how many had ever held a pumpkin, only two raised their hand.

This November, only two states will be electing new governors: New Jersey and Virginia. Political commentators frequently view these two off year races as harbingers of political winds to come, so we at Early Ed Watch are keeping a close eye to see what implications these races may have for early education.

There is a lot at stake for early education in New Jersey: As Early Ed Watch has discussed, New Jersey has made significant investments in preschool and PreK-3rd as a strategy to narrow achievement gaps between students from high-income and low-income families, and the state is seeing some successful results in several school districts.

Since Jon Corzine was elected Governor in 2005, he has made pre-K a pillar in his education policy . Last year's School Funding Reform Act, included plans to phase in state-funded full day preschool for all low-income 3- and 4- year olds in the state over the next eight years, and to expand universal pre-K from 31 Abbott districts to an additional 84 districts statewide, with the goal of providing preschool for an additional 30,000 children by the 2013 school year.

States this year have been faced with tough budget choices, and Pennsylvania certainly did not hurry in making its decisions. At long last, however, stakeholders in early education can relax: the 2009-2010 Pennsylvania budget is in, and early ed was not a victim of this year's budget crunch.

Gov. Ed Rendell signed the budget into law last Friday, thus ending the longest budget delay in any U.S. state this year. It was passed 42-7 in the state Senate, after a 101-day stand-off in the legislature.

The $2.62 billion budget slashed $500 million from 2008-2009 state spending levels and includes a $300 million spending increase in general education funding. This boost in education funding, along with the lack of broad tax increases in the 2009-2010 budget, may prove the most popular piece of the new budget.