Early Education Initiative

How to improve under-achieving schools in America’s poorest communities has vexed policy makers for generations. President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law insists on accountability. But critics charge it encourages teaching to the test at the expense of real learning.

The law still sparks a loud argument -- but as one of our guests today writes in the current issue of Harper’s magazine, there’s debate that test-prep companies such as Kaplan are profiting handsomely from the federal mandate to test, and test, and test again.

Featured Guests:

Jeremy Miller,… more

After peaking in 2002, child well-being in the United States has been stagnant for five years. Meanwhile, recent data from the Child Well-Being Index shows some disturbing upward trends in child obesity and youth violence, as well as a persistent academic achievement gap. To date, public policy has not sufficiently mobilized to combat these issues before they start to affect the nation’s children. The New America Foundation brought together key policy makers and experts involved in improving child well-being to… more

If McCain proposes an ambitious school voucher program, as he did in 2000, it will underline stark philosophical differences between the GOP and Democratic presidential candidates on education policy. . .

Clinton and Obama share many policy goals but often differ on the means to achieve them. For instance, both have committed to spending an additional $10 billion annually on programs for children under 5. That would mean doubling the current federal investment in early childhood education.

But their approaches… more

Over the past eight years, states have dramatically expanded their support for publicly-funded pre-k programs, and the number of children enrolled in these programs has grown significantly. States are investing in pre-k because research shows that high-quality pre-kindergarten programs can have a positive long-term impact on children’s life outcomes, help narrow the achievement gap between poor and affluent youngsters, and that the benefits of these invest­ments to children and the taxpaying public outweigh their costs. In other words, high-quality pre-k is a key weapon in the… more

New York Times | Teaching Boys and Girls Separately

. . . More recently, in what Sara Mead, an education expert at the New America Foundation, calls a “man bites dog” sensation, public and parental concerns have shifted to boys. Boys are currently behind their sisters in high-school and college graduation rates. School, the boy-crisis argument goes, is shaped by females to match the abilities of girls (or, as Sax puts it, is taught “by soft-spoken women who bore”… more

Sara Mead, senior research fellow and director of the Early Childhood Initiative at the New America Foundation, testified at the Washington, D.C. City Council's Jan. 3, 2008, hearing on the Pre-K for All DC Amendment Act of 2007. A complete copy of her testimony is available below in PDF form.

Playtime's over (Macleans, Canada)

He pointed to researchers like Sara Mead, who studied the data and concluded that "[t]he real story is not bad news about boys doing worse; it’s good news about girls doing better."

Spend Unused NCLB's Tutoring Funds on PreK, Mead Says

Yesterday at the New America Foundation, Sara Mead released a list of 10 ways NCLB could be tweaked to bolster prekindergarten programs. In a panel discussion, which I moderated, she highlighted three items:

Require districts to use their unspent money for tutoring and choice on preK in schools that are in need of improvement;Allow schools required to restructure to transform into "early education academies" serving preK-3; and more

Congressional leaders recently announced that they will not finish reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act -- the major federal law authorizing elementary and secondary education programs -- this year, but will continue working on reauthorization in 2008. This gives Congress a chance to revisit an issue that was largely ignored in this year’s debate over NCLB reauthorization: early education for pre-school and early elementary aged youngsters.

Evidence shows that the foundations of children’s future academic success… more

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) seeks to improve student learning and narrow academic achievement gaps that place low-income and minority students at a disadvantage relative to their affluent and white peers. Evidence shows that the roots of children’s academic success or failure are already firmly in place by third grade and as much as half of the black-white achievement gap already exists before children enter first grade. Therefore, to achieve its ambitious goals NCLB must do a much… more