Early Ed Watch

More than 60 percent of Americans have jobs that pay  by the hour. One-quarter to one-third of them are low-wage jobs like waiting tables, working at nursing homes and standing behind the counter at the Rite-Aid. These employees often face unpredictable hours and less-than-full-time paychecks. And if these employees also happen to be parents, the instability and inflexibility of their work life is likely having negative effects on the health and education of their kids.

Yesterday, at a New America event titled "Flexible Work Arrangements and Low-Wage Work," several researchers laid these facts on the table. It was another reminder of the interdependence of policies related to health, education, the economy and the American workforce. And it highlighted why working families often struggle to find appropriate child care, to care for sick children or to find ways to participate in their children's education.

Daniel Willingham, the UVA psychologist and Brittanica blogger,  flags an interesting and important new study from Hong Kong that analyzed the relationship between 39 teacher characteristics and instructional practices and 4th grade students' reading scores on the PIRLS international reading assessment. Of the 39 teacher factors, Willingham notes, four were found to play a significant role in predicting fourth graders' reading scores:

Over at the Quick & the Ed, Chad Aldeman does a great job of unpacking some of the reasons why it's incredibly difficult for college students who begin their education at community colleges to successfully transfer to 4-year institutions and earn a bachelor's degree (a model known as "2+2," because successful students would, in theory, spend two years in a community college, plus two more in a 4-year institution). In fact, shockingly few students who enroll at community colleges with the intention to earn a BA ever do so. This is a problem on a whole bunch of levels. But it's particularly likely to become an issue as states and now the federal Head Start program seek to increase the number of pre-k and early education teachers who have bachelor's degrees.

For many current pre-k and Head Start teachers who will seek to earn bachelor's degrees in order to meet new requirements, local community colleges are the logical place to start on their path to a BA. Community colleges are cheaper and more convenient than four-year institutions, and they're often much more targeted to the needs of older adults returning to college. Moreover, many community colleges already have relatively strong associate's degree programs for early childhood educators.

Last week by the National Research Council released an extensive report which argues that children need more math instruction in early childhood than they are getting now - much more. Why? Because children are not only ready to learn but are in fact learning math long before they enter a preschool classroom.

Research shows that even in infancy children develop an implicit understanding of basic mathematical concepts, such as shapes and spatial relationships. The NRC report details the "foundational and achievable" math content that can and should be taught to children in the early years to support and nurture what children are already learning from the world around them. Teachers can help by focusing and building upon this spontaneous learning.

Yes, we are now officially "cool."

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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.

National Journal, one of the most important sources of policy and politics journalism for D.C. insiders, just launched a new education blog featuring dozens of education policy experts, D.C. education policy insiders, and even a few elected officials(!). Good stuff. National Journal has long offered really excellent--if unfortunately difficult for most ordinary folks to access--coverage of education policy issues and the political debate around them in Washington.

Just one thing's missing--none of the blog's current, long list of contributors focuses on early childhood education. Only Checker Finn has written extensively on the subject. Not surprisingly, the contributors are primarily K-12 experts, but the blog also includes some very strong higher education voices--including ACE's Terry Hartle and NAF's own MaryEllen McGuire and Michael Dannenberg. Not so for early childhood. Considering that the Obama administration has proposed significant new early education initiatives, this seems like a major oversight.

Words are good. Conversation is better. That's the message of a study released today in the journal Pediatrics that links young children's language skills to the amount of time that adults engage them in back-and-forth exchanges.

Past research, particularly the acclaimed Hart & Risley study, has shown that children's cognitive abilities are strongest among those whose parents use many words in speaking to them. That study emphasized the importance of exposing children not only to directions or comments about their behavior ("drink your milk") but also to new vocabulary words and descriptions of the world around them ("did you see that hummingbird?"). Today's study builds on those findings, showing what many child development experts have stressed for years -- that some of the strongest learning moments happen in interactions between caregivers and young children.

While vocabulary is important, "we find that the effect of the conversation is six times as great as the words," said Frederick J. Zimmerman, the study's lead author and associate professor in the school of public health at the University of California at Los Angeles.

If you read an article about an audit of Georgia's pre-k program in the Atlanta Journal Constitution over the weekend, you probably thought you were reading bad news. According to the article, a recent state audit found that "the state has spent more than $216 million on a program to help low-income children get kindergarten-ready, without any concrete proof it's working." But the news is not as bad as it may sound.

The program in question is not the Georgia pre-k program, Bright from the Start, but a part of that program, the Resource Coordination (RC) Program, which provides grants to pre-k providers to provide enhanced services such as home visits and parent counseling. Pre-k directors are already responsible for the provision of these services, but the grant helps 227 programs across the state employ 484 dedicated resource coordinators to enhance these services in communities with greater need. Granted, the AJC article pointed out this distinction but did not mention that the $18.5 million spent on the RC program represents only 5.7 percent of the state's total pre-k expenditures.

A new report from California’s Children Now calls on the state to implement a comprehensive system that provides policymakers, educators and parents with better information about the skills of California’s youngsters when they enter kindergarten.