Dems and Reeps in Tennessee are fighting over whether to expand the state's pre-k program beyond poor kids to all kids. Alas, the plea for bipartisanship from the political leaders from both parties who gathered in Norman, OK this week is yet to be heard in TN. Gov. Phil Bredesen, a strong advocate for pre-k, said the national campaign for president is making politics in his state more partisan. Bredesen spoke last year to editorial writers at a conference organized by the Hechinger Institute in collaboration with the National Conference of Editorial Writers. He said then he wanted to roll out universally available high-quality pre-kindergarten over the next three and a half years. He started small with the pre-k program and expanded it over time to maintain high quality. The Reeps in TN apparently haven't heard that message either. They say they don't want to spend more than the $80 million the program costs now to subsidize "glorified day care." Now, were I reporter in Tennessee, I'd test Bredesen's statement as well as those of Republicans. Is the current program glorified day care or is high quality pre-kindergarten?

Jeff Solochek of the St. Petersburg Times started off the new year with a fine example of journalism that mixes perceptive close-in observation of a classroom with a sense of the broader set of policy issues that surround pre-kindergarten. Here's an excerpt that in just a few paragraphs captures the mix of fun and academics that the best teachers achieve.

Hector approaches carrying a peg board where he's fashioned the letter E. He proudly holds it up for [the teacher Brenda] Roberts to see. She offers him praise, and more. What sound does E make, she asks, kicking off an impromptu lesson. Whose name in the class starts with E? After a few more questions comes more encouragement.

"Thank you, Hector, for making that for me," Roberts says. "I love that E."

No sooner does she turn away than Ruth appears, smacking rhythm sticks together, seeking her moment with the teacher. "What sound are you making?" Roberts, ever smiling, asks. If the noise irritates her, you can't tell.

"Choo-choo train," Ruth responds.

Roberts starts dancing. "You make that sound, girl," she says, making chugging sounds as Ruth happily keeps the beat.

I'd urge reporters to look at that passage carefully. The children are certainly enjoying themselves. They're also learning skills that will prepare them to read. Those who pooh-pooh pre-k by saying "why can't we just let them have a childhood" and those who say "let's teach those kids their ABCs!" should be challenged. Clearly, those goals don't conflict.

Pat Kossan in the Arizona Republic has a nice little story about how having her kids go to pre-k has changed a parent's interactions with them. This is a good angle on early childhood education I don't see mentioned much. One of the important components of the Perry Preschool Project studies from many years ago and Head Start have been their parent outreach efforts. How do the public pre-k programs in your state work with parents?

The children's advocacy group Children Now has on its Web site a very useful overview of what's known about the effects of interactive media use on 3-5 year olds. Although much remains unknown this clearly written publication sums up what is. For reporters who are considering writing about the controversy over children who are younger and younger using computers, the review of research provides many good experts as sources and also lays out the position of a number of non-profit and professional groups on these issues.

As the attention of those wanting to run for president shifts to South Carolina, it's worthwhile to review their positions on early childhood education and preschool. Here's a link to an earlier post that will help.

South Carolina, like Tennessee, is seeing a partisan fight over whether to expand the $17.1 million pilot program serving 37 low-income school districts to higher income students throughout the state. Story from the Post and Courier gives the rundown here.

Thanks to Russo's This Week in Education just read a Q&A with David Kirp, the author of "The Sandbox Investment." Newsweek also touched down on the growing state investment in preschool here. Kirp made similar points here and here.">here and here.

Kirp's political analysis is compelling but he sometimes loses his footing and overpromises. Perhaps it was the editing of the Q&A (the media does this!) but he seemed to be saying that a dose of high-quality pre-kindergarten would solve all ills for all children. Journalists (and their editors) love quick fix, silver bullet, utopian policies but they ought to be a little more skeptical. (Not so skeptical that they assume a presidential candidate's emotions are a campaign trick, like the Queen of Nasty Maureen Dowd, but just a little more.)

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen's support of universal pre-kindergarten has gained the support of the Republican mayor of Knox County, which includes Knoxville, the News Sentinel reports. The mayor, Mike Ragsdale, wants pre-k to be offered at all of the elementary schools in the county. "It's working very well in our community, and I'd like to see it expanded to be available to anyone who wants it," he told the newspaper.

Back in 1995, Walter Gilliam of the Yale Child Study Center published a report documenting the problem of expulsions from preschool. The concept was so eyeopening--we usually associate expulsions with kids like the drug corner kids featured in the fourth season of HBO's brilliant show "The Wire"--it generated lots and lots of headlines. Now Gilliam has put out a new report that focuses on what can be done to help preschool teachers better cope with the needs of disruptive young children. The report, which was supported by the Foundation for Child Development, suggests reducing the size of preschool classes, bringing in mental health professionals as a resource, and giving teachers time for breaks may all be helpful.

Was glad to see that many newspapers picked up on the follow up report. Read stories in The Courant of Hartford by Arielle Levin Becker, the Plain Dealer of Cleveland by Angela Townsend, the Los Angeles Times by Carla Rivera, and Lori Higgins in the Detroit Free Press.

Smart editorial in the Washington Post applauds legislation that would add 125 pre-k classes in the district. But the editorial also, rightfully, urges advocates and city council members to focus on quality and choice as well as quantity. D.C. has a higher percentage of its 3- and 4-year-olds in preschool that any jurisdiction. Those children may not be getting much out of the programs, though. The new bill is built to make sure community centers--which often feel threatened by a significant expansion of public spending on preschool--continue to get their share of the pie. It does this by limiting how many of the 125 new classes can be placed in charter schools, which are very popular with D.C. parents, or in regular public schools. The bill also restricts the training of the preschool teachers to the University of the District of Columbia. These are just the right issues for journalists to raise.

I must have been too busy shopping just before Christmas to follow the back-and-forth over the accuracy and fairness of a report in the Dallas Morning News on the early evaluation of a Texas program to raise the quality of Head Start and public and private preschool programs. The newspaper said the evaluation of the first 18 months of the now five-year-old program found that it "has yet to deliver on the investment." That language seems harsh, given that the evaluation report said its design and timing limited its power to make such statements that early in the program. Most of the evaluation had to do with implementation, rather than quality, questions. The evaluators wrote a letter to the Texas Education Agency disavowing the newspaper's conclusion. In fact, the report found that with one year of training provided through the state-funded program teacher performance improved significantly and those who received two years of training improved even more. Although the report acknowledged it was not possible to tell whether overall student performance improved the evaluators did detect gains in three important literacy related skills: rapid letter naming, rapid vocabulary naming, and phonological awareness (an understanding that words can be dissected into discrete sounds).

As journalists, we love rendering judgments, which is an important oress function. But good evaluations are tools for improving programs, as much as they are tools for rendering judgments. It's important that we not overinterpret such work--mistaking recommendations for improvement for fatal flaws. In addition, it's important that we step back and look at what is actually being evaluated. If a report looks at the first 18 months of a program that's operated for almost five years, and if the program today is dramatically different (it served 1,600 students in 03-04 and 27,000 today), caution is warranted.

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley picked up a couple of important endorsements for his plan to triple state spending on pre-kindergarten. Riley, a Republican, is meeting resistance from his own party in the state and Republicans are dragging their heels in South Carolina and Tennessee as well. The Head Start association and the organization of private providers in Alabama are both on board with Riley now. Why is this signficant? The reason is that Head Start is often wary of pre-k proposals, because they tend to be better funded. And the private providers usually balk because they fear losing their paying clients to a free service. For example, Gov. Phil Bredeson in Tennessee told the Hechinger Institute last spring that one of the biggest hurdles he faced in expanding pre-k there was the private providers group.

The tension between these groups can be found in just about all the states that are expanding their pre-k spending so it's worthwhile for journalists to pay attention to the compromises that result. In some states, such as Massachusetts, these groups have found common ground. That's interesting too.

Editorial writers in Mississippi in recent weeks have been pushing for increased spending on statewide early childhood education, noting that while Mississippi has the highest percentage of working mothers with children, it’s the only Southern state that doesn’t provide state money for pre-kindergarten.

A Jan. 5 editorial in the Clarion-Ledger noted that many pre-K programs in the state are “purely custodial, not educational,’’ and complained that too many children in the state are already behind when they start.

The Clarion-Ledger editorial urged lawmakers to approve the Quality Education Act of 2008, which doesn’t ask for statewide pre-k but calls for a continuation of a pilot program they consider “a modest step toward quality.’’

Like the Clarion Ledger, The Daily Journal of Northeast Mississippi also noted its support for a statewide advocacy organization of 36,000 known as The Parents Campaign which supports a $5 million increase to develop effective learning programs in child care settings and help improve the educational content.

The smaller steps are being considered a year after Mississippi’s Republican Gov. Haley Barbour told the Associated Press that he did not see Mississippi having a statewide, 4-year-old, state-funded pre-kindergarten program in the near future. The Southern Education Foundation, headed up by Lynn Huntley , an ES (EarlyStories) education hero, last year came out strongly in favor of universal pre-kindergarten in Mississippi last year as well.

Mississippi is ranked 48th in the nation in per pupil spending and 48th in student achievement; over 60 percent of Mississippi children are at risk of failing or dropping out of school due to poverty, The Parents Campaign notes on its website.

The editorial writers don’t have to look far to notice other ways Mississippi is falling behind in its approach to early childhood education. Neighboring Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, a Republican, has announced a plan to triple state spending on pre-kindergarten, and Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, invested $80 million for the state’s voluntary pre-kindergarten program during the 2007-08 school year.

The very able Liz Willen, associate director of the Hechinger Institute and a former award-winning reporter for Bloomberg News, and the tech-savvy and creative Zaira Zafra, also of the Hechinger Institute, will begin gracing EarlyStories with their presence. More views the better, I say.

A new research brief on the Web site of the Foundation for Child Development highlights an important issue that suggests a number of good questions to be asked. The report is from the Association for Children of New Jersey and is called "Embracing the Big Picture: The State of New Jersey's Road Toward a PK-3 Continuum." The piece describes an emerging effort in New Jersey to ensure that what happens in kindergarten for children builds on the high quality pre-kindergarten classes the state offers in its poorest school districts.

I know, sounds boring. But research on pre-k effectiveness often shows the gains made by 5-year-olds fade after several years and many say the reason is what happens in the early grades. There's a lot of meat here. The increases in state pre-k spending around the country are not all going to public schools. Depending on the state, the money pays for classes in churches, community centers, private pre-k centers as well as in public schools. Do the state-funded classes do a good job of preparing kids for kindergarten? Do the educators in the local school district even talk to the pre-k providers? How about when the pre-k is in a public school. Does the building principal coordinate with the director of the preschool? Does state policy require any coordination? Is there any effort to help 5-year-olds make the transition to kindergarten? Any visits to a kindergarten in the spring? Do the pre-k teachers provide any information about the preschoolers to their kindergarten teacher?

Effective school districts pay a lot of attention to making sure kids' transitions--from elementary school to middle school, from middle school to high school--are smooth. The teachers at the next level should know something about the new students they're welcoming. Ineffective ones don't pay much attention and so what happens at each level does not necessarily build on previous teaching and learning. When it's a transition from a setting outside the school district to one inside the school district, paying attention to this matters even more.

(Virginia Governor Tim Kaine during State of the Commonwealth address Jan. 9)

David Harrison of The Roanoke Times did a good job Sunday pointing out the obstacles to expanding pre-kindergarten programs in Virginia.

These are issues well worth exploration by reporters. Harrison found problems filling slots and finding space for pre-kindergarten classes in two areas of Roanoke and Roanoke County, and noted that it meant state money had to be left on the table. The issue is particularly important in Virginia because it comes at a time when Democratic Governor Tim Kaine is pushing to make preschool available to an additional 7,000 children over the next two years, at a cost of $56 million.

In his state of the state address on Jan. 9, Kaine noted that children who attend high quality preschool “are more likely to finish school, find good jobs and are less likely to commit a crime.’’ Kaine has already taken a step back from campaign promises to provide pre-kindergarten for all, after facing skepticism among Republicans in the General Assembly and state budget problems.

Kaine instead said he would focus on the neediest children in the state. Virginia now provides preschool for almost 19,000 Virginia low-income children. But Harrison found that some school districts can’t afford to pay for their share of the costs, or don’t have enough room for all the children who are eligible. Another district has problems getting parents of high-risk 4-year-olds to fill out the paperwork and come to the sites for screening.

Harrison went beyond making a few phone calls and told his readers why pre-kindergarten matters by visiting a classroom, watching what took place and interviewing parents. One father delighted in the fact that his son came home from pre-school and asked to be read to. It’s an example that gives readers a clearer sense of why early childhood education matters to parents rather than simply covering what the politicians have to say.

Katy Murphy of the Contra Costa Times writes a blog called "The Education Report" about happenings in the Oakland (CA) Unified School District. The hook for an item she posted on full day kindergarten was a letter written by a parent whose son attends a public elementary in the (very) pricey neighborhood of Montclair, up in the hills above the city. The parent wrote a letter asking the district to let Thornhill (and other schools, if they wish) out of the district's policy to offer full-day kindergarten. There is a strong class angle to this. Families in which both parents work, or who don't have transportation, and many others welcome full day kindergarten for the academic boost it is meant to provide. But some affluent parents, whose children have rich and varied learning opportunities, and in which mothers (or fathers) don't have to work, don't see the need for it. (Kindergarten teachers, by the way, often oppose all day classes.)

I used to cover the Oakland schools many years ago and I know that many Thornhill children are "flats" children (black and Hispanic) bused into the mostly "white" and "Asian" hills. If those children were sent back down the hill on a bus, to homes where no parent is home during the day, it would create quite a burden. I went on the site GreatSchools and found this comment from a Thornhill parent: "The school is not economically diverse and does not at all embrace cultural differences. If you are not a montclair stay at home mom, you and your child will feel like the bused in outsiders. The classist, superior attitudes are ever present."

Many of these pre-k issues cut along class lines. It's a good thing for reporters to keep in mind.

I completely understand why the story of expelled preschoolers won't die. ABC News did a version of it earlier this week. But many of the stories go too far and, guess what, sensationalize it. A few years ago a Yale researcher was gathering data about various early childhood settings and discovered a small but significant number of kids kicked out of preschool. Followup interviews revealed that behavior problems were involved. The latest round of stories are hooked to a recent report the same researcher, Walter Gilliam, did proposing some solutions.

This ABC piece, in particular, suggests that these expulsions are rising dramatically. But there
(ABC Photo)
is no longitudinal data to show any change over time. Plus, the stories don't differentiate between examples of serious emotional or developmental problems and kids who, while difficult, are essentially normal kids throwing an occasional or maybe not so occasional tantrum.

The ongoing coverage has had an unfortunate side effect: blame is cast variously on society, TV, diet, lax parents, vaccines, mothers who work, or pre-kindergarten itself. (Peruse the more than 100 comments on the ABC story and see for yourself.) In our stories we ought to be more clear about the nature of some of these kids' problems and not feed these meanspirited but predictable generation-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket reactions.

Missed this big New York story in the Daily News last Thursday. Seems that a week earlier a 5-year-old boy threw a tantrum in a Queens elementary school, was taken to the principal's office, and then was handcuffed by the school's safety officer and taken to a nearby psych ward. The child's babysitter was at the school before the child was sent away by ambulance but the security officer wouldn't let the 68-pound kindergarten student go. The boy suffers from asthma, has been diagnosed as having A.D.D. and has speech problems, according to his mother. Schools chief Joel Klein the next day said he was troubled by how the incident had been handled but he wasn't prepared to condemn it.

Our society has, for a long time, feared adolescents and teen-agers because of their unpredictability. Are we now afraid of kindergartners and pre-kindergartners? (By the way, as of Sunday the original article had drawn 337 comments on the Daily News' Web site. Disturbingly, quite a number blame parents for failing to control their children.)

Dennis Rivera and Jasmina Vasquez (New York Daily News photo)

I admire the way Jay Mathews, the Washington Post's education columnist and reporter, takes on the real stuff of education and does so in a plain-spoken, non-wonky, real-world way that is always interesting. Good example is a column he did focusing on Levin and Belfield's new book (see previous entry). A book on the
economics of education sounds daunting but Jay lays some of the important ideas out quite well. He notes, for example, that Levin and Belfield calculate that providing the equivalent of the Perry Preschool Project from 40 years ago to 100 children would produce an additional 19 high school graduates.

Teachers College Prof. Henry Levin and Clive Belfield of Queens College (formerly of TC) are getting attention for "The Price We Pay: Economic and Social Consequences of Inadequate Education," an interesting book they edited that tries to calculate the costs to the economy of school failure. It's worth checking out because part of it tries to find interventions that actually work and then tries to figure out if they are cost effective. (Of course that calculation gets into all sorts of non-quantitative stuff like values, one's philosophy regarding the role of government and society's obligations to its members.) For example, the economists calculate that offering preschool the quality of the legendary Perry Preschool Project of 40 years ago to 100 children would produce an additional 19 high school graduates. But the study concludes that a high school reform program called First Things First provides far better bang for the buck.