Early Ed Watch

In a speech earlier this week at the University of Virginia, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan harshly criticized the nation’s education schools. “In far too many universities, education schools are the neglected stepchild," Duncan said. "Too often they don’t attract the best students or faculty." He added: "Many ed schools do relatively little to prepare students for the rigor of teaching in high-poverty and high-need schools.”  

Duncan has a point. Numerous studies and reports have documented the failures of our nation’s system for preparing prospective educators. In brief, our education schools enroll some of the least academically promising students; provide them with little practical teaching experience or grounding in evidence-based practice; don’t prepare them to work in high-poverty schools or serve students with special needs; and are not accountable for the performance of their graduates in the classroom — or whether they even make it there at all. While there's substantial disagreement in education policy circles about many issues, the shortcomings of our approach to preparing and training the nation's teachers are one issue that critics both across the policy and political spectrum can agree on -- although they have radically different prescriptions for how to fix the problem.

No progress on the math front. That's one way to interpret the 4th-graders' scores that were released today by the Institute of Education Sciences in the Nation's Report Card. For the first time since 1990, their average score in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress didn't budge. 

But good progress has been made over the past two decades. That's the other take on today's announcement. Since 1990, 4th graders have shown steady improvement in math. And the scores for 8th graders continued to go up this year. This graph on the first page of the report tells the story well:

The home visitation program -- a key piece of the Obama Administration's pledge to strengthen programs for children from birth to age 5 -- received another boost yesterday when the Senate's Finance Committee passed its version of the health care bill. The bill includes language that would establish a program for "maternal, infant and early childhood visitation."

Over the summer, the House committees with dominion over the financing and regulation of the proposed program had already cleared the way for the program. And it appears to have support from both Democrats and Republicans. Rep. Todd Russell Platts (R-PA) was among the authors of the first version to be introduced this year, and Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) has introduced similar legislation in the past. Unless something unexpected happens -- and anything is possible given the overheated environment surrounding health care reform (see our post on Chuck Norris) -- chances are good that any health care bill that passes the House and Senate will bring home visitation along for the ride.

Few people would disagree that how kids learn is connected to where they learn. Those wondering about how a school's physical environment enhances learning will relish The Third Teacher, a new book on school and classroom design. Published as a collaborative project by architects, designers and a furniture company, the book explores how schools and classrooms can be built in smarter, greener, and more imaginative ways.

The book itself is a beautiful piece of construction -- over 200 colorful pages of interviews, graphics, case studies and meditations that are grouped into 79 suggestions for improving school buildings and classrooms. With its visual ingenuity, the book suggests how powerful good design can be.

The authors are OWP/P | Cannon Design, a Chicago-based firm that has over 50 years of experience with school design; VS Furniture, a German company that specializes in educational furnishings, and Bruce Mao Design studio in Toronto and Chicago.

I have decided to pick on Webkinz in a post this week on the Breakthrough Learning blog -- a place where writers are stirring up ideas in preparation for a Google forum later this month called Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age.  I'll be moderating the "Literacy 2.0" panel. A copy of my post is below.

P.S. If you're not familiar with Webkinz, take a look at this screen shot, which shows you one view of what children see when they play with Webkinz on screen. Webkinz, you should know, are really two things. They exist physically as hold-in-your-hands plush toys -- like stuffed horses and dogs. And they exist as virtual characters that live online in virtual worlds that children create. Each toy comes with a password so kids can log in on their home computers and design rooms and outdoor spaces for the online versions of their stuffed animals. (I know, it sounds a little odd and confusing. But trust me, these toys and their accompanying virtual worlds are perfectly understandable to the 5- to 8-year-old set.)

On Tuesday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement Jim Shelton released proposed priorities and selection criteria for the Investing in Innovation Fund (i3), a $650 million pot of funds intended to support the development and expansion of innovative models to improve student achievement and narrow achievement gaps. 

For those of us interested in creating a high-quality continuum of education programs from the earliest years up through third grade, there is a lot to like in the proposed priority list. But first, some background and broader details from today’s announcement:

i3 was created this spring under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Because the program provides a unique opportunity for the Department to invest in the development and scaling up of innovative practices, and because the ARRA legislation left a lot of details to be filled in about how the program will work, many in the education community have been eagerly awaiting further information about how the Secretary intends to implement it.

New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to increase the number of charter schools in the Big Apple has generated a lot of buzz since Bloomberg announced it last week. Charter schools are independent public schools that are publicly funded, publicly accountable, and free of charge to students, but operated by independent nonprofit boards, rather than school districts. In late September, Harvard researchers released a study showing that predominantly disadvantaged students who attend New York City’s public charter schools are making more progress towards closing the achievement gap with their suburban peers than a control group of NYC students who remained in NYC public schools.

Mayor Bloomberg has proposed a number of steps to expand the number of charter schools in New York City, including raising the state cap on the number of charter schools, raising additional funding for charter school facilities, and co-locating charter schools with public housing projects.

After two years without one, the Office of Head Start will soon have an appointed director: Yvette Sanchez Fuentes, executive director of the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association, says she will take the post on October 13^th. She was appointed by Carmen Nazario, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families at HHS.

In a brief phone call with Early Ed Watch yesterday, Sanchez Fuentes described two areas that she will focus on from the outset: understanding the needs of training and technical assistance programs; and enhancing "transparency" among members of the early care and education community so that people "feel that information is flowing back and forth."

Another goal, she said, is to "helping states to learn from the lessons of Head Start" as they try to build cohesive early learning systems as envisioned under the proposed Early Learning Challenge Grant program. "We can use Head Start," she said. "A lot of programs already have infrastructure in place. The question is, how can you build off of what already exists?"

The Census Bureau just released America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2007, a report that describes the characteristics of American households and families. The report and extensive data tables that accompany it should interest early childhood policymakers, media, and educators because they tell us about the types of families American children are growing up in, as well as trends and changes in family composition over time.

This year’s report is especially interesting because it zeroes in on America’s parents, taking an extra close look at stay-at-home moms. About 5.6 million American women — about one out of every four mothers with children under age 15 — were stay-at-home moms in 2007. Not surprisingly, stay-at-home moms were more likely to have younger children—and to be younger themselves — than non-stay-at home moms. They are also disproportionately Hispanic, foreign-born, and have less education, compared to all mothers.

As part of her ongoing effort to promote healthy eating and lifestyle choices, First Lady Michelle Obama will appear on the November 10 episode of Sesame Street,in which she helps Elmo and his friends plant a  vegetable garden and explains to Big Bird that, even though they're both tall, that doesn't mean they're related. Check it out here: