'The story Tracy Jan published in the Boston Globe about a month ago on the frank and disturbing study of preschools and kindergartens in the city got a lot of attention, as it should have. I've been waiting to find a copy of the full report to link to but so far haven't. I'll keep looking.

According to Jan's story, which was followed up by a hardhitting editorial, the study by the Wellesley Centers for Women found "mediocre instruction, unsanitary classrooms, and dangerous schoolyards." The study also found that the quality of about 70% of the classrooms were not good enough to achieve the goal of closing gaps in kindergarten readiness between white and Asian children and Latino and African-American children.

A couple points from the Globe story to emphasize: The teachers in the classrooms studied all had bachelor's degrees but a fifth of them didn't necessarily have degrees in early childhood education. One school of thought in early childhood education insists on college degrees as a measure of quality. An alternative view is that teachers in preschools need to be highly skilled. It sounds like the same point but it's not. If preschool teachers can gain critical skills and knowledge of how young children learn and how best to help them learn in community college or in a special training program, then what's the purpose of insisting on a bachelor's degree? It's heartbreaking but the researchers found that many of these kids were sitting in their seats in kindergarten and preschool, being lectured to and responding to flash cards. No wonder these preschools aren't helping much.

Another point to emphasize comes from Elizabeth Reilinger, a member of the Boston Schools Committee. She commented that Boston Mayor Thomas Menino had pushed to expand preschool too quickly. Is this a problem around the country? Is the pressure so great to expand pre-k spending as quickly as possible causing the creation of poorly funded, poor quality programs that are accomplishing little?

One other observation. Yes, these were the conclusions of researchers. But couldn't journalists have made some of these same observations by visiting a lot of classrooms? A journalist who knew a little bit about how young chldren learn would have noticed that kids were sitting still too long and doing worksheets instead of engaging in purposeful, creative activities that involved a lot of conversation, right? I hope so.

One of the greatest challenges of education policy and, frankly, education journalism, is that accurately measuring education quality is very difficult. So, instead, we pay attention to what's available to us: spending, class size, teacher experience, teacher test scores, graduation rates, college-going, test scores. All of those are proxies for what really matters--the interactions between teachers and students. But how do you measure the quality of those interactions? How do you measure whether they will help children not just learn facts but understand, think, question, grow in their confidence as learners and speakers and do-ers?

I had a chance the other day to listen in to a "webinar" put on by two of the great minds on preschool quality--Robert C. Pianta of the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning at the University and Barbara Bowman, the Chief Early Education Officer of the Chicago Public Schools and the founder of the Erickson Institute in Chicago. (The event was sponsored by Pre-K Now and a link to the slides for the call as well as the slides for previous calls with experts on a variety of topics can be found here.
Bowman made the point that children have a "natural predisposition to develop" and they do so through exploration of their senses, relationships, language, play and self-regulation. But school learning is different. School learning requires what she called "decontextualized language," meaning, for example, the words for categorization of objects. School learning also involves symbolic skills, small muscle control, social skills, complex grammar, a large vocabulary, clear enunciation and other things. The point is that those who say "kids learn naturally" are right. They do develop and learn some things naturally. They're programmed to, though at different rates. School learning is different. And it requires intentional, thoughtful, planned learning opportunities and interactions. What a useful way to break down that old teaching vs. development argument! It's also useful for journalists, to help them better understand child development and schooling and how they are similar and different.

Bowman's point also leads right into what Pianta had to say. Pianta's research involves lots and lots of observations of classrooms. His observations have led to the development of a scale that measures the quality of teachers' interaction in pre-school and kindergarten classrooms with their children. Pianta says that scale predicts quite accurately how much children learn. Unfortunately, it also demonstrates that the quality of those interactions is often not very good. Pianta wrote a piece in the journal Education Next a while back. In that piece, he asserted that only about a quarter of the pre-k classes and classes studied provided students with the high levels of emotional and instructional support needed to maximize learning.

Fortunately, however, Pianta and his colleagues have developed some training tools that help pre-k teachers get better. He asserts that it is the skill and knowledge of the teachers--not their degrees or certifications--that matters. In fact, his data show no correlation between degree attainment and teacher performance. What does matter is training and professional development tied to knowledge and skill about teaching in actual classrooms. A "webinar" caller asked about that. If there's no connection between B.A. degrees and children's learning, the caller asked, doesn't insisting on college degrees for preschool teachers just raise the cost of those programs?

Advocates for higher quality such as Libby Doggett of Pre-K Now acknowledge that the evidence that children who have teachers with more formal education learn more is ambiguous. But she said in response to the caller that degrees have to be required if the teachers are to be paid a professional salary and be regarded as professionals. In other words, it's about positioning pre-k as part of the formal education system, which requires formal degrees and credentials. That may be the right strategy. But one hopes that somewhere along the line the teachers, whatever formal degrees they have, also get the kind of training Pianta is talking about.

The other article in the volume that should be of interest to journalists is by Harvard Grad School professor and economist Richard Murnane and is called “Improving the Education of Children Living in Poverty.” Despite the ambitious-sounding title, Murnane’s proposal is both more modest and less sanguine about the positive effects that can be expected. He proposes a number of changes to the No Child Left Behind law (some of which already are being discussed) that would make the law’s achievement targets more realistic and meaningful for teachers. He says the feds should provide states with strong incentives to make their high school graduation requirements better reflect the needs of the labor market and also promote interdistrict transfer programs, such as are in place in Boston, Milwaukee, and St. Louis. And, finally—and this is the big one—he says the feds must provide competitive, matching grants to districts and states to improve the quality of teaching through recruitment, compensation, preparation, and professional development. Cost? $2.5 billion a year. The piece does a great job of providing a clear, quick overview of what’s going on in education policy, context often missing from education reporting.

The word “rigor,’’ is one of the new buzz words in education, used to describe everything from stringent new graduation standards many states are adopting to advanced placement courses that give college credit to high school students. Lately, the word has crept into the pre-k lexicon with little explanation.

In Washington D.C., for example, pre-kindergarten is about to get a lot more rigorous, according to a Washington Post article.

And…what exactly does that mean?

Earlier this week, the article points out, the D.C. Council committee unanimously approved legislation that would “increase the rigor of the curriculum for early childhood education throughout the city.’’ A quick google search found the term creeping into the pre-k conversation throughout the U.S.

The Post article did a fine job of describing some of the hurdles to expanding pre-kindergarten in the District of Columbia, where about 12,000 children are enrolled and another 2,000 or so are not being served. However, it did not question, examine or explain what a “more rigorous.’’ program would look like.

Shakespeare instead of sand box play? Early SAT preparation? Pre-pre-calculus? Degree requirements for teachers? The question really should be, does the program reflect high standards? And what does that mean? What is the student teacher ratio, for example? Is there a curriculum? What are kids expected to know and do?

Journalists – and the public – should challenge words that don’t say a lot. The next time a pre-k program promises to be “rigorous,’’ find out what it means.

The New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell, whose new book on successful people, "Outliers: The Story of Success, is atop the New York Times' bestseller list, writes in this week's edition about how hard it is to tell in advance who is going to make a good teacher (or NFL quarterback.) All the usual proxies and requirements--certification, advanced degrees, cognitive aptitude--do not seem to predict classroom success, he argues. Yet, given that improving teacher effectiveness is critical to improving educational outcomes for children, Gladwell says teachers should go through a demanding weeding-out process, similar to what's used to choose financial advisors. Only those who hit certain benchmarks will be kept on.

It's a fascinating article, even if it does seem, as much of Gladwell's writing does, overly simplified and wide-eyed at ideas that are commonplace, especially to experts in the field. The best part was a passage featuring Robert Pianta, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. Gladwell reports the commentary of Pianta and a colleague as they watch videos of good teachers and weak teachers. How instructive that would be!

Go to the jump for an excerpt:

What kind of a difference can high-quality pre-school make in the lives of the poorest and most disadvantaged children? This is no small question. EarlyStories poses the concept as a reminder of what journalists must keep in mind at a time when President Barack Obama is pushing an expansion as part of his broader education agenda.

Educator and author Gordon MacInnes lays out lessons on the difference a federal role can make by examining what happened in high-poverty New Jersey school districts that have shown significant improvement by focusing on early literacy. His piece in Education Week describes how borrowing the practices of an intensive early literacy program in pre-school has led to improvements that can be seen all the way through eighth grade.

MacInnes, who devoted four decades to government service and leadership on issues related to education, poverty, and urban living is also realistic about the obstacles of establishing successful pre-school programs. Those obstacles and the political and financial fights are often the focus of media coverage.

"Expanding high-quality preschool opportunities is a much more complicated endeavor than it may at first appear," MacInnes writes. "Two major obstacles are usually overlooked: The leadership in many urban districts does not accept the connection between a quality preschool opportunity and stronger literacy; and early-childhood education is still a stepchild in most universities, state education departments, and district headquarters."

MacInnes' remarks open the door for many questions to be asked of school superintendents, even though journalists who cover K-12 school systems don't tend to focus on pre-school, unless there is a battle involved. Why nost ask superintendents exactly how they view the importance of pre-school and what connection they see to achievement later on? In districts with established programs, is anyone studying how students do later on or tracking the difference in achievement between those who have been in pre-school vs. those who have not?

Finally, if program claims that it has successfully improved early literacy, what is the evidence beyond test scores? What do successful early literacy programs look like in action? What is the curriculum, what books are used and how are the teachers being trained? What are the expectations for the children?

New Jersey journalists are likely to have taken on many of these questions while covering Abbott v. Burke, the nation’s most prescriptive and sweeping state supreme court ruling on school finance. MacInnes served from 2002 to April 2007 as assistant commissioner for Abbott Implementation for the New Jersey Department of Education, so he's clearly familiar with what went wrong and right in the quest to improve academic achievement in the state’s poorest cities.His piece this week poses larger questions that are relevant to coverage of this issue nationally, especially as it becomes a priority in the Obama administration.

Sara Mead at Early Ed Watch this week put together a comprehensive blog posting that really helped frame an important debate in early childhood education.

Mead used the opportunity of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan's speech at the University of Virginia to detail some of the arguments and debate about the credentials needed for early childhood educators, an issue in many states and school districts.

In his speech, Duncan harshly criticized the country's education school as "neglected stepchildren,'' who don't attract the best and the brightest students or faculty members.

Journalists may have heard complaints about education schools before, but Mead succinctly lays out why the issue is relevant to early childhood education, noting that early childhood advocates have been fighting for more than a decade to raise credentials for educators of the youngest students. She also lays out important policy and legislative developments that could make a difference. including the Early Learning Challenge Grants that are now before Congress as part of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act.

"Research documents the tremendous amount of learning that takes place in children’s earliest years, as well as the importance of nurturing, consistent and stimulating caregivers to children’s development during this time.'' Mead wrote. "Yet childcare and preschool teachers often earn less than parking lot attendants or hotel maids, and many also have correspondingly low education levels."

Journalists can and should ask for the background and credentials of the early childhood teachers in the districts they cover, and find out if there is a debate about their degrees and credentials. What do they earn? How do salaries compare with those of K-12 teachers? What kind of background and experience do they bring to their positions?

For years, the term "school readiness,'' has centered on how literate young children are when they enter school for the first time, based on both their familiarity with numbers and related concepts. A new study from Madhabi Chatterji, Associate Professor of Measurement-Evaluation at Teachers College, found that early supports outside of the home can play a critical role in determining how ready a child is for kindergarten.

Chatterji, who is director of the Assessment and Evaluation Research Initiative at Teachers College, focused her research on the Chemung County School Readiness Project, a community collaboration that’s providing child and family services and has a goal of cutting by half the percentage of children in this southern Finger Lakes region of upstate New York county who come to school unprepared.

Factors known to help a child in kindergarten include having a mother who is at least college-educated, with exposure to informal educational experience and some pre-school. The study aims to develop a comprehensive measure of school readiness based on a number of factors, ranging from a child's health to their social and emotional adjustment. According to Chatterji, the results could be used "to build awareness among parents about the need for comprehensive education,'' along with the role county services might play.

EarlyStories is curious about other county and grass roots collaborations aimed at helping little learners get ready for school.

Just how much math are little children capable of learning? For years, it seemed educators and scientists did not believe little brains could handle much math at all before the age of five. But now new research is showing they can, according to an interesting piece in the New York Times. EarlyStories immediately wondered what kind of impact the research might have on the way math is taught in pre-schools across the U.S.

The story pointed to new studies from the world of neuroscience showing that preschoolers can perform far more complicated math problems than initially thought. It noted that about a dozen states are using a program that helps the youngsters develop their frontal lobes, and that the new findings are fusing the fields of brain science and education for the first time, The story also described how a program in Buffalo already has a track record for teaching early math.

Herbert Ginsburg at Teachers College has also done some groundbreaking work on teaching math to young children, another terrific resource for journalists trying to figure out what -- if any -- math is being taught in pre-kindergarten and even kindergarten classrooms. The article also pointed to the interesting work that Sharon Griffin is doing with Number Worlds, a research-based math program for young children.

Journalists don't usually venture deep into the world of education research when covering pre-school issues, but there is clearly a rich world to tap and ask about when visiting classrooms. What sort of math, if any, is being taught, and why? Do the teachers have any sense of what the children could be capable of learning? How do school officials explain the math curriculum, or the lack of one?

Every now and then, EarlyStories runs into a piece of journalism that attempts to answer what could be perhaps the most important -- and mysterious -- question about the U.S. education system: What makes an effective teacher? It's a question with implications for students of all ages and sizes, and it matters from the minute they enter a classroom.

At a time when journalists who cover education are focused intently on Race to the Top applications and impending deadlines, it's critically important to stop and think about how children are being taught and what they learn. And that's exactly what Amanda Ripley's illuminating story in the The Atlantic this month does.

In clear prose, Ripley explains why the question of what makes good teaching is so important at this point in time.

"Parents have always worried about where to send their children to school; but the school, statistically speaking, does not matter as much as which adult stands in front of their children,'' Ripley notes. As states are competing for money, they must also "try to identify great teachers, figure out how they got that way, and then create more of them."

Along with the politics of covering the Race to the Top grant program, it's important to really think about how teaching might be improved and examine the most recent rsearch and data. Reporters covering early childhood education rarely focus on the topic of teachers and teaching, and indeed the credentials and qualifications required are often different.

Regardless, the questions Ripley raises and examines thoroughly are the right ones. Properly trained, effective teachers are key to improving the quality of education in the U.S. How are we going to get there?