Folks at Goldwater Institute in Phoenix have long been opponents of publicly financed pre-kindergarten. They're out with a new analysis that says the investment in early childhood education the state is making is a waste of money. It says that the small positive effects of full-day kindergarten fade by fifth grade. The study is odd, though. It seems to treat pre-kindergarten and full-day kindergarten interchangeably. It also does not use individual data and it is silent on the quality of the half-day pre-kindergarten programs in the state. In short, only a researcher who set out to find no effect from pre-kindergarten would rely on the study's methodology. Oh and, no surprise here, school choice is a big winner!

I acknowledge up front that this post is far beyond my area of expertise. But it is something I have some personal experience with. So, consider the source....

The story in the New York Times the other day about parents all across America going to "sleep consultants" because their children were sleeping in the parents' beds sparked a rant from me. But since I'm traveling I couldn't let off steam to my family so I'll share it here. If parents can't figure out how to teach their children to sleep through the night in their own beds, then what can they teach them? The parents in this article seemed pathetically weak and helpless and resigned to the idea that, in fact, the children are the kings and queens of the household.

Here's the prescription: starting with infancy, you establish a routine. A song, a story, a backrub and then it's sleeptime and you leave the room. You do this from the crib on. When the kid moves into their own bed you do the same. If the kid gets out of bed, you take them back once, twice, the third time you close the door. Same in the middle of the night. They eventually learn. You get to sleep in your own bed. The kid learns. No need to spend big bucks on a sleep consultant....

Missed this in February but it's worth linking to now. Fed Reserve Board Chief Ben Bernanke spoke to the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce and extolled the economic returns of high quality pre-kindergarten.

Although education and the acquisition of skills is a lifelong process, starting early in life is crucial. Recent research... has documented the high returns that early childhood programs can pay in terms of subsequent educational attainment and in lower rates of social problems, such as teenage pregnancy and welfare dependency. The most successful early childhood programs appear to be those that cultivate both cognitive and non-cognitive skills and that engage families in stimulating learning at home.

New report due out Thursday (March 8) will say that Hispanic children are underrepresented in state pre-kindergarten programs. The report from the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics says there are too few affordable seats in Hispanic communities, parents are uninformed, and there are language barriers. Journalists in cities with large numbers of Hispanic children might venture out into Hispanic neighborhoods on Wednesday and find out what parents know about pre-kindergarten and what they've tried to do to line up a spot for their kids. Or, they might talk to kindergarten teachers and principals and schools there to ask about whether children are showing up at the school door ready to learn.

Missed this coverage of a report identifying a space shortage in California that would leave one in five 4 year olds without a space on the rug if all tried to enroll in pre-kindergarten.

Good piece in the San Jose Mercury News that I missed described a program offered by De Anza College that provides free college classes for child care workers in child development. The program highlights one of the real stumbling blocks to raising the quality of child care and preschool: a lack of affordable training available to a low-income workforce and a lack of financial incentive for bothering. Good to see journalists highlighting the issue. More attention to it will be needed if the current Head Start reauthorization proposal passes. As written, the reauthorization legislation would require that more Head Start teachers have bachelor's degrees.

Remember the item a little while back about the debate over whether 4 year olds should even be allowed in Idaho public schools, for the purpose of pre-kindergarten? Well this week, the Idaho Legislature was debating a "non binding resolution to encourage" the creation of state quality standards for pre-kindergarten as a means of deciding where to spend scarce federal funds to preschools. My colleague Gene I. Maeroff notes that the Legislature voted that measure down 43 to 27. One inspiring quote in the debate over the bill came from State Rep. Lenore Barrett, Republican of Challis, who said: "In the old Russia the state owned the children for all intents and purposes and directed their education. This is not the proper role of government." Gene's comment was: "I guess they still have commies hiding under the beds in Idaho." Barrett's remark reminds me of the position of the John Birch Society on the issue.

A blogger in San Francisco who is a parent described the application process to that boutique city's preschools:

My defeat has all to do with the horribly broken, outrageous and utterly unfair preschool application process and school system in San Francisco. I kid you not that we were asked to attend open houses, tours and interviews (it was mandatory that both parents be present) all during the work day (I took many mornings and even a few days off work to accommodate these requests), write essays about how our child and our family are a good fit for each school, explain our toddler's behavior, temperament and unique qualities, write about our two year olds separation anxiety, explain our theories on structure and discipline, give a list of referrals that the schools could call to question, put forward our interest in fundraising and volunteering, attach a family photo and pay between a $50 and $200 fee per application (and we pay taxes for a subpar, lottery enrollment, public school system).

New Mexico Lieutenant Gov. Diane Denish, one of the strongest forces behind the start-up of the pre-k program in her state in 2005, now wants the number of children served to be doubled.. Illinois Gov. Rod Blagovich wants to increase the state's spending on preschool by $70 million, opening up 12,000 slots. Some legislators in Missouri will be proposing expansion of state-funded preschool to all disadvantaged children. Finally, a consortium of colleges, the city of Tuscaloosa, the Mayor's office, and the Tuscaloosa school system are working on a citywide pre-k program. Editorial in the Tuscaloosa News says that, "In the long term, Tuscaloosa will be a better community thanks to this program."

According to the National Institute of Early Education Research, Alabama in 2005 ranked 37th in the percentage of its 4 year olds served. The state also cut its per-pupil spending on pre-k every year from 2000 tto 2005 and the elimination of federal child care funds available to poor working women were cut. Whenever journalists report on a new program or purported expansion of state spending on pre-k, it's important to say what the state is already doing. A doubling of 2% of the 4 year olds served may look better than it is, especially if the funds aren't doubled as well.

Edward F. Zigler has been a leading national authority on child development and early learning for more than four decades. He was part of a small group of advisers who created Head Start and then became its first director. Today, as growing numbers of policymakers embrace pre-kindergarten as an important source of education opportunity, Zigler, an active scholar and prolific author at 77, continues to play a central role in shaping the nation's thinking on early learning. When I spoke to him recently for a Q&A that is posted on the Web site of Education Sector he decried the poor quality of much of the child care in this country, gave a strong endorsement for Head Start, argued that pre-kindergarten ought to be universal, offered in regular public schools, and start at age 3.

Showing that he's stilling willing to court controversy, he said that, "The catastrophe for kids, the catastrophe for families, is the big split between child care and education. Education is looked as the state's responsibility. Child care is thought of as a family's responsibility. But we wind up with the kids in our schools. We don't know how to change. The Right Wing will fight anything that makes the lives of mothers and children better."

You can read the entire interview here Download file

The Associated Press in Georgia notes that the state failed to keep data that would allow it to evaluate the long-term effects of the state's pre-k program, which is one of the oldest in the country. The lead of the story is punchy and to the point: "Fourteen years ago, Georgia launched a publicly funded pre-kindergarten program that later became the first in the nation to offer free classes to all 4-year-olds.Educators promised better prepared students and eventually lower crime rates when students got older.But don't ask state officials for data on how many of those students graduated from high school and went on to college this past fall. They didn't keep track." The whole story is posted here.

This is a question journalists in any state that either offers pre-k now, is expanding pre-k, or is thinking about offering pre-k. Does the state have a plan for gathering long-term data? Big promises are made about the positive effects of pre-k. But will it be possible to show whether those promises are being kept?

The fourth annual report from the National Institute on Early Education Research came out this week and it generated some good stories around the country. Nancy Zuckerbrod of the Associated Press gave a good overview, touching down in Virginia to review the program there. Natalia Mielczarek at The Tennessean in Nashville used the report as a starting point to report on Gov. Phil Bredesen's addition of $70 million to the state pre-k program the past two years. She also went out and talked to parents and teachers and visited classrooms. The Montgomery (AL) Advertiser carried a short Associated Press story. The Columbus (OH) Dispatch's Catherine Candisky used the report to explain the complexities of the program in her state and a proposal by Gov. Ted Strickland to put a little bit more state money in.

Surprisingly, though, none of the stories picked up on this element of the report:

Total state spending for prekindergarten was nearly $3.3 billion, an increase of 13 percent from the previous year. However, inflation-adjusted spending per child declined in 25 of 37 states (Florida was new). In other words, real spending per child declined in twice as many states as it increased. Worse yet, nominal spending per child (that is, without any adjustment for inflation) declined in 14 states. After adjusting for inflation, funding per child fell to the lowest level since NIEER began collecting such data. In 2001-2002, states spent $4,171 per child in today's dollars; last year they spent $3,482 per child.

Given what states are spending, and given that that amount is decreasing in real terms, it seems irrelevant and even a bit misleading for NIEER to assert that "high quality" preschool has returned "$17 for every $1 invested." That figure is based on a long-term study of a boutique program in the 60s that was unlike anything that exists today.

I’ve been holding off on commenting on last week’s NY Times’ frontpager that conflated controversies over the implementation of the federal Reading First law with attempts to stoke the flames of the mostly settled “reading wars.” But I’ve kept my powder dry long enough. Alexander Russo, who blogs at “This Week in Education” on the Education Week site, is thrilled that the story made it into the Times because he sees it as vindication that this is the “BIG STORY” he thought it was all along. Russo, who though he lives here in New York sees himself as an inside-the-beltway mover and shaker, got all het up about what he considered to be a big, hot, dripping scandal involving politicians and bureaucrats in a whirlwind of audits, investigations, hearings, and conflicts of interest. That is a story. It’s just not an education story. Whatever the outcome of all of that activity, the central issue is not what’s the science and pedagogy of early reading. The central issue is actually federalism and education and the limits of policy issued from Washington D.C. That’s a topic for a wonkapalooza at a fancy Washington, D.C. hotel or the American Enterprise Institute. And Mike Petrilli over at the Fordham Foundation entered into that discussion just yesterday with this post. But it’s not really something that most parents of children learning to read care too much about.

The New York Times story was set in Madison, Wisconsin, which has long been known in education circles as a redoubt for the true believers in whole language. Whole language emphasizes to students the value of context and intuition in learning to read. So, the story opens with a kid who encounters the word “pea” and reads it as "pumpkin."

My earlier post on coverage of the new National Institute on Early Education Research report noted that journalists hadn't picked up the "mo' money, even mo' kids'"angle. Should have checked USA Today's coverage before I said that. Greg Toppo was all over it. See how he handled it here.

Toppo also noted the existence of a new website called savvysource.com, which offers parents a way to judge the quality of preschools in their communities. Toppo quotes the site's founder as saying it is "kind of a combination of Zagat's and Craigslist" for parents of young kids.

Follow-up: Look for letters in newspapers around the country from pre-k supporters. The advocacy group Pre-K Now which, like this blog, gets support from The Pew Charitable Trusts sees the AP story on the NIEER report as a hook for supporters to write to newspapers and demand more money to be spent to raise program quality.

That Associated Press story from last week providing a national wrapup of the growing state investment in pre-kindergarten based on the latest NIEER report continues to have legs. Each day my Google alert for pre-kindergarten turns up two or three uses of the story. It was just posted on CNN.Com here.

Shows how even in this local, local news world, at a time when news gurus are talking favorably about the contributions of average joes and janes with a computer and a cell phone camera, and are predicting the demise of Mainsteam Media, an old school news organ like AP can have a big impact.

The Washington Post's Valerie Strauss broke the story Sunday that the Democratic Congress is likely to vote to end the National Reporting System, the test that's been given twice a year to a sampling of Head Start students to measure the effectiveness of the program. The story does a good job of explaining a difficult but essential concept of testing--that assessments need to be field-tested to determine if they measure what they're supposed to measure. Concerns have been raised in many quarters about the validity of the National Reporting System. Even the Bush Administration, which pushed for the assessments and which wants the tests to continue, acknowledges the problems.

One of the most vocal critics has been Sam Meisels of the Erikson Institute, and Strauss quotes him in her story. Meisels, who is a member of a national task force on accountability convened by the Pew Charitable Trusts, has twice spoken at Hechinger Institute events about his concerns. He illustrates his criticisms with a description of a test item that he argues is developmentally inappropriate and contains a distinct class bias.

The teacher giving the test shows the child four line drawings--including a wine decanter, a trophy "cup," an ice bucket, and a vase. The testgiver is supposed to ask the kid which of the drawings is a flower "vahz," pronounced to rhyme with "oz." Meisels likes to quip that he's probably used each of the objects as a vase. But he also objects to the preferred pronunciation. Meisels talks about a test item that shows four drawings of faces and the child is asked which one shows "horrified." It's difficult, he says, for a child to distinquish between afraid or angry and "horrified." Sounds like Congress is starting to listen to Meisels and others, who include Edward Zigler.

This op-ed column by a former president of the American Bar Assn. includes particularly compelling descriptions of why and how well-prepared and skilled pre-kindergarten teachers matter. Some of the insights here would be useful to those reporting on the Head Start reauthorization bill, which in its current form would require more of the teachers to gain college degrees.

A blog written by a mother in Arkansas notes that her five-year-old in preschool was assigned "homework" to practice writing her name. The teacher even sent home stickers for the mom to give as rewards for a good job. Feature story idea for a slow day: talk to pre-k teachers and parents about whether they assign "homework" and, if they do, what types of assignments?

The Education Writers Assn. Web site has a new "issue brief" by Linda Jacobson that looks at the pros and cons of locating publicly funded pre-k in public schools or centers. The "brief" has some good experts and background information and notes that teacher unions have pushed for locating public pre-k in the schools, anticipating that teachers will be better paid and will be union members. But the brief notes that school-based programs often are limited to just the school hours, making them inconvenient for paretns. It also notes that one critic, Bruce Fuller of the University of California, Berkeley, doesn't want pre-k in schools because he fears they'll be too academic and focused on getting kids ready for kindergarten. Head Start "grandfather" Ed Zigler, in my recent interview with him, strongly favors having all pre-k in public schools.He also wants schools to offer pre-k all day and also after school, to serve working parents' needs.

Rena Havner's story in the Mobile (AL) Press-Register has been getting lots of traction on blogs and websites. The story, which was a follow-up to the NIEER report on the quality of state preschool programs, noted that while Alabama was one of two states to get a perfect score according to the NIEER scale, the state's program doesn't serve very many kids: only 1,080 statewide.
"We've got this great quality program, but we were dead last," said Criss Hopson with the Montgomery-based Alabama School Readiness Alliance, which is lobbying the state to expand its preschool program. "For the children that are receiving the instruction, that's great, but it's not going to be enough to make a huge societal impact."

Joanne Jacobs picked up on the item I posted the other day about the pushback in Congress that may lead to the demise of the Head Start National Reporting System. I noted the criticisms of the technical quality of the test, which has led many experts to say that it doesn't answer the questions it was intended to: in other words, how well are Head Start programs helping children develop skills they need to be ready to learn to read.

You can read a dispassionate overview of the NRS here. One of the criticisms of the test is that it does not evaluate Head Start's performance in helping children develop socially and emotionally. It turns out that the NRS this year is adding an assessment of those domains. Information on that can be found here.

The anti-test position of the National Head Start Association can be found here. The far right opposition to the test is here.

Others have taken positions in favor of the keeping the test. The Fordham Foundation's Checker Finn offers a rousing and rhetorically edgy defense of the test here. In a strange way, Finn and Head Start icon Edward Zigler aren't that far apart on this. Both think that Head Start should help kids get ready to succeed in school.

I'll repeat that I'd like to see a story done this spring that tells me how the NRS actually works in practice, by going out and observing the administration of the test.

Over the past few years University of California Prof. Bruce Fuller has become the "bete noir" of the national movement pushing universally available, voluntary, publicly funded preschool. (Full disclosure: One of the major forces behind the movement is the Pew Charitable Trusts, which is an underwriter of this blog, although my ideas are my own. Full-full disclosure: Bruce is a friend from my California days.) Fuller was the go-to guy for reporters in California looking for someone to criticize the California Preschool for All initiative, which voters defeated last June. His op-eds were near-ubiquitous as well and many in the UPK movement heap a good part of the blame for the measure's defeat on Fuller, as well as on the press, which spilled a lot more words covering an alleged scandal with initiative-backer and actor Rob Reiner than they did on the substance of the measure.

Fuller is just coming out with a book from Stanford University Press called "Standardized Childhood" in which he develops more fully his arguments against universal pre-kindergarten. He says public money is better spent on services for the poor, preschool teachers don't need to have college degrees, universal pre-school advocates are in bed with the teachers unions and that state-funded preschools "corral" toddlers into "standardized preschools" and subject them to "stultifying drill-and-kill" lessons that destroy their childhoods. On the one hand, he says that preschool won't close race-and-class-based achievement gaps. On the other, he says preschools don't benefit the middle-class. I'm confused.

What's so curious to me is that the rhetoric of Fuller, who is himself politically progressive, is almost indistinguishable from that of such far-right voices as the John Birch Society, which says here that pre-k will "gobble" up children; the "free-market" oriented Heartland Institute, the Pacific Research Institute, the Goldwater Institute, the Cato Institute and others. Fuller is worried about what he calls the "brave new world" of child-rearing, conjuring up an image of government bureaucrats marching kids into school not long after they're out of diapers to drill them on the ABCs. That's not much different from the Connecticut blog called "Red Notes from a Blue State" that referred to pre-schools as "pedagogical holding pens." Or the anti-preschool crowd in Idaho that fears some government “nanny state.” Oddly, Fuller also sounds a lot like the "unschooling" crowd, that says children should be allowed to develop at their own pace and time, freed from annoying school work.

The other part of Fuller's argument that mystifies me is his apparent antipathy toward placing pre-kindergartens in the public schools. Fuller's always been a skeptic about school choice and charter schools, saying that the marketplace doesn't always serve the needs of poor families who do not have sufficient information to make good choices. Here, though, he argues that families make good informed judgments when they put their children in the preschool in the local community center or the church down the street or even to leave the children with an aunt or grandmother.

I confess I haven't read the book. But I've heard Fuller speak about these issues a number of times. And, from the publicity materials, it seems that he's repeating his views here.

Important new research out from the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina. From a press release:

Contrary to conventional wisdom, English-only pre-kindergarten classrooms may not help native Spanish-speaking children become better prepared for school. According to research by FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Spanish-speaking children had better social skills when their teachers spoke some Spanish.

“Many early childhood programs are moving toward a system that may isolate children who are learning English, leaving them at risk for social and language problems,” said an author of the study, Gisele Crawford, a research associate at FPG. The study will be published in the April issue of Early Education and Development.

“Programs that have the potential to mitigate the achievement gap between children from different racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups may be doing just the opposite. This study suggests that, too often, iniquities already are present in early educational experiences between non-English speaking and English-speaking children,” Crawford said.

Why is this important? One word: Demographics. Twenty percent of children in the U.S. aged zero to eight are Hispanic, 90% of them American citizens. Here's more information from the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics.

Maria Glod of the Washington Post did a nice job over the weekend of reporting on the efforts of pre-school programs to get Latino parents on board with the fact that these programs are supposed to be educational. The story drew on classroom visits, interviews with parents, experts, policy makers and research. Similar approach could be taken to reporting on the research that's the focus of the next post.

Here's an excerpt from Maria's story.

Latino children nationwide tend to start kindergarten knowing less about letters and numbers compared with their non-Hispanic white peers. Many never catch up. Improving early childhood education is one of the best ways to narrow the achievement gap, educators say, citing such programs as the family book club. But many Latino families face economic, linguistic, educational and even cultural barriers.

"It's partly about parents not understanding the American system," said Eugene E. Garcia, an Arizona State University administrator and chairman of the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics. "Hispanic parents think school is good and education is good. They just don't have the tools they need."

About 40 percent of Latino 3- and 4-year-olds (and 5-year-olds not yet in kindergarten) are enrolled in pre-kindergarten programs, compared with about 60 percent of white and African American children, according to the District-based advocacy group Pre-K Now. In addition, a new report from Garcia's task force noted that Hispanic mothers generally read and talk less to their children compared with white parents. Hispanic families also tend to have fewer children's books at home.