“If we want [children] to graduate high school and go to college, we need to have them reading at grade level by third grade. That’s not a magical number. It’s what the data tells us…. We can’t wait for the third grade MCAS scores to tell us whether a child is on track or not. In fact, waiting for kindergarten is too late.”
John Bissell, Greylock Federal Credit Union, Berkshire Eagle, February 21, 2012
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Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children
Across the country, early educators face questions about how best to align early childhood programs with the academic rigor of the Common Core State Standards adopted by 46 states (including Massachusetts) and the District of Columbia. The answer, experts say, lies in developmentally appropriate practice and understanding what research tells us about how young children learn.
“We have to be careful that those standards, particularly as they extend downward, appropriately recognize these important social, communication, and self-regulation skills that are really as critical for kids’ learning in those early and later years as whether they know the alphabet,” Robert C. Pianta, the dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, tells Education Week.
For young children, this means play and art and hands-on activities. It means fostering social and emotional development and executive function as well as laying the foundation for literacy, numeracy, science and other academic areas.
“With young children, art and physical movement aren’t a frill,” Gillian D. McNamee, professor of teacher education at Chicago’s Erikson Institute, tells Ed Week. “They are the disciplines that offer resources for the expression and the development of ideas.”
According to a 2007 review of states’ policies published in the journal Early Childhood Research & Practice, all states have preschool guidelines that cover multiple developmental domains. Continue Reading »
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The Massachusetts Board of Early Education and Care last week unanimously approved a measure to align the Massachusetts Universal Pre-Kindergarten (UPK) grant program with the Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) that the commonwealth launched in January 2011. (See UPK-QRIS PowerPoint.)
The board also approved the annual report to the Legislature from the Department of Early Education and Care (EEC), discussed progress toward creating a Massachusetts Kindergarten Entry Assessment, and reviewed the goals and priorities of the Coordinated Family and Community Engagement network.
UPK grants, which were established in 2005, are designed to support and sustain quality in early education settings for preschool-aged children. The grant program currently serves about 6,400 children in almost 400 classrooms across the state. The QRIS defines tiers of quality in early education and care and out-of-school-time programs for children from birth to school age.
In public testimony before the board vote, Amy O’Leary, director of Early Education for All, a campaign of Strategies for Children, supported the proposal but sounded a few cautionary notes. Continue Reading »
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Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children
The fiscal year 2013 federal budget that President Obama released last week contains cause for at least cautious optimism, as summarized by the National Institute for Early Education Research, CLASP, the National Women’s Law Center and the First Five Years Fund. “Early education,” says NIEER, “is clearly an administration priority, though perhaps not as high a priority as we would like.”
Here are some highlights, culled from their reports:
See a table tracking federal spending on early education from Early Ed Watch, a blog of the New America Foundation. The foundation also poses a number of questions about Obama’s budget, among them questions about the Early Learning Challenge and whether funds for extending school hours could be used to expand half-day kindergarten programs to full day.
One final note. Obama’s budget is viewed more as a blueprint of his vision going into the 2012 election than as a springboard for timely action on Capitol Hill. As Birth to Thrive Online notes, “The Obama administration’s budget is only the first move in a high-stakes game that will be complicated this year by presidential and congressional politics.”
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“I work with preschoolers. They sort colored beads, sequence a story they just heard, make elaborate designs with pattern blocks, and figure out how to equitably divide cars with their friends. We know they are learning important math concepts. They call it playing.”
Kathleen Klofft, Letter, Boston Globe Magazine, February 12, 2012
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Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children
Over the last several months, I have been contributing Voices/Perspectives columns to the website of CommonWealth Magazine, a leading policy journal in Massachusetts. My latest, copied below, looks at the federal Early Learning Challenge grant recently awarded to Massachusetts as an opportunity to leverage increased state investments in fiscal year 2013:
When Governor Deval Patrick and more than 150 legislators, early educators, early childhood advocates and state education leaders gathered at the State House last month to celebrate the commonwealth’s newly awarded federal Race to the Top- Early Learning Challenge grant, they certainly had reason to feel proud.
Of 35 states (plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) that applied for the $500 million competitive grant program, only nine states were awarded funds. Massachusetts earned the second highest score in the nation and received the full $50 million over four years for which it was eligible.
Yet as critical as the infusion of federal funds will be to accelerate progress toward building a statewide system of high-quality early education and care and closing the achievement gap, it is not enough. Indeed, the Early Learning Challenge is designed to supplement, not supplant, state investments.
Now is the time to leverage this exciting federal investment with increased funding of high-quality early education and care in the state’s fiscal year 2013 budget. Continue Reading »
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Photo: Stephanie Arnett ©2012
More than 400 early educators and advocates, many of them dressed in red, gathered at the Massachusetts State House yesterday to urge legislators to include funds for increased compensation and other line items related to early education and care in the fiscal year 2013 budget.
Speaker after speaker noted that early educators are meeting the call for increased quality in early learning programs. “We’ve been there saying we need strong regulation. We’ve been there for every major reform,” Karen Frederick, executive director of Community Teamwork, Inc., in Lowell and president of the Massachusetts Association for Early Education & Care (MADCA), said in opening remarks. “We said teachers need CDAs (child development associate certificates). Our teachers embraced that and got CDAs. They said you need associate degrees. And we went and got associate degrees. The field has embraced every initiative. Now it’s bachelor’s degrees. And you’re embracing it.”
Yet increased compensation has not followed the increased education and training. Early educators working in programs serving low-income children subsidized by the state’s Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) have not received a raise in five years, organizers of Advocacy Day noted. The average early educator earns $23,500 a year, and the Advocacy Day coalition is seeking funds to increase the average annual salary to $25,100.
The issue is one of the most challenging in the movement to create a statewide system of high-quality early education and care. Continue Reading »
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New York Times columnist Michael Winerip counts himself among the legions of Dr. Seuss fans. So he celebrated the 75th anniversary of the publication of “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” – Dr. Seuss’s first book – by visiting the real Mulberry Street in Springfield.
Dr. Seuss, nee Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-1991), is arguably Springfield’s most famous native son. “Mulberry Street” is the first of his 44 published children’s books, of which, Winerip notes, 600 million copies have been sold. With such works as “The Cat in the Hat” and “Hop on Pop,” Dr. Seuss’s playful use of language took learning to read many steps – many fun steps — beyond “Dick and Jane” and “See Spot run.”
“I planned to reread several Seuss books for the visit, including ‘The Sneetches,’ but could not find our copy. It turned out that one of my 21-year-old twins, Adam, had taken it with him to college,” Winerip writes.
“Dr. Seuss books aren’t primarily schoolbooks. They’re read-to-your-children-in-bed books. Christin LaRocque, a librarian at the Central branch in downtown Springfield, says Seuss books need to be replaced more often than any others — they wear out or disappear. Dr. Seuss is good for most anything that ails a child. To paraphrase Sylvester McMonkey McBean: He’s heard of your troubles, he’s heard you’re unhappy, but he can fix that all up, he’s the Fix-It-Up Chappie. Ms. LaRocque’s theory on why kids love Dr. Seuss: He’s very silly.”
Alas, Dr. Seuss would probably be sad to learn that 60% of third graders in his hometown are not proficient readers. They miss a critical benchmark that strongly predicts their chances of success in school and life. A citywide Read! campaign seeks to turn this around through school reform, supports for high-quality early education, partnerships with public housing, family engagement and summer programming.
The path to literacy begins at birth, as does the path to ensuring a bright and prosperous future for Mulberry Street and the rest of Springfield.
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Photo: Associated Early Care and Education
Today we offer our monthly congratulations to the center- and school-based early education programs in Massachusetts that earned accreditation or reaccreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children in January.
To those who earned accreditation or reaccreditation, NAEYC offers a marketing and communications tip: Spread the word to your local newspaper or other media outlet. Accredited programs can find a news release template in their program record. It’s a great way to publicize your accomplishment and draw attention to the importance of high-quality early learning settings.
NAEYC accreditation is a widely accepted proxy for quality, and Massachusetts boasts more NAEYC-accredited programs than any other state in the country. Programs applying for state-funded Universal Pre-Kindergarten grants must be accredited by NAEYC or another recognized organization. The Department of Early Education and Care also includes accreditation in the standards for the state’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS), Continue Reading »
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“Many problems of education are very complex, and the right solutions are not immediately apparent. In contrast, reading for every child is dead simple. Solutions are known. Wouldn’t it make sense to focus attention on this critical, solvable problem?”
Robert Slavin, Hopkins Center for Research and Reform in Education, “No More Excuses: We Can Get All Children Reading,” November 14, 2011
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Eye on Early Education focuses on the twin goals of ensuring that Massachusetts children have access to high-quality early education and become proficient readers by the end of third grade.
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