The New America Foundation’s Early Education Initiative has issued an issue brief with some advice for the new 112th Congress. The dozen ideas include calls for aligning early education with the K-12 system and effective use of data. Here is a summary from the foundation’s Early Ed Watch blog:
- Think PreK-12, not K-12.
- In grant competitions, favor states with effective early learning strategies.
- Use School Improvement Grants to expand full-day kindergarten and high-quality pre-k.
- Build stronger links between principals and early childhood programs.
- Encourage the use of valid and reliable observation tools to measure teacher effectiveness throughout the PreK-12 system.
- Promote high-quality traditional and alternative teaching programs to recruit talented individuals in STEM to become pre-k and early elementary school teachers.
- Fund research on young children and digital technology.
- In rewriting Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) sanctions, give credit to elementary schools that show evidence of using student data to improve instruction in the early grades.
- Target elementary absenteeism.
- Support the ability of effective charter schools to offer high-quality pre-k programs.
- Recognize the connection between the prosperity of families with young children and the economic future of our country.
- Channel funding to effective programs.
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.
This is a comment, – an important quibble-on this list. I think we should stop using the term “pre-K” to describe the early learning years in the sequence birth to 12. I learned this from a teaching case that describes the efforts of two organizations: Ounce of Prevention Fund and the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago. They wanted to merge to create a vision to build a model of public education for children and their families that begins a birth and creates success in school, college, and life.” They found, however, a disconnect among the words they used to create their common vision. Early childhood education and K-12 have been 2 separate silos. They needed words to create a seamless transition from one silo to the next. “Pre-K”appeared to legitimize the separate silos. Their final wording for their merged vision was “Our mission is to align and create instructional approaches and academic and social supports, to accelerate student learning while honoring and building upon the strengths of the families we serve.” A term like”early learning” or”early education and care” would better describe what happens in the years before kindergarten.
In response to Gwen Morgan’s suggestion: I agree but the structure needs to change in higher ed, particularly in state-funded institutions, to foster the perception and vision of the stated mission your quote describes.