AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard wrote about a study of obesity among toddlers that got a lot of play nationally last week. Thirty-two percent of white youngsters were overweight or obese compared to 44 percent of the Hispanic children. The only factors researchers could find that seemed correlated were the weight of the mother and whether the toddlers were still going to bed with a bottle at age 3. Authors of the study included Rachel Kimbro of the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn of Teachers College. All of the children studied were poor. Only four percent of the black children and six percent of white children went to bed with a bottle; among Hispanic children, 14 percent did so. Overweight preschoolers have a five times higher risk of being fat at age 12 than do lean preschoolers, scientists reported last fall, according to the AP article.

It would take some delicate reporting. But other journalists could ask the directors of Head Start programs, pre-kindergarten programs and others what they're doing to try to help their young students learn new ways of eating. Another line of inquiry involves asking them what they're doing to help parents learn to feed their children better.

From the Beijing News comes word that inequality starts early, even in a Communist country. Here's an excerpt of a story from Xinhua news service. At an education "expo" in Guangzhou...

Zhu Jiaxiong, vice-chairman of the China National Society of Early Childhood Education, showed two photographs when talking about fairness in preschool education. One of the photos shows a well-decorated kindergarten [kindergarten is preschool in China--rlc] that cost 200 million yuan (US$25.3 million), while the other features a rural child playing in a muddy field. Professor Zhu said there are insufficient fair-priced kindergartens in the country. The vast rural areas are especially facing shortages of preschool educational institutions. The key factors that decide educational quality are good teachers and a fine teaching mode, rather than big buildings. Thus the extravagant construction of many kindergartens are used to justify high fees. Some kindergartens now charge even more than universities.

Good piece in USA Today on Wednesday about parents who want their kids to start learning many languages when they're as young as two years old. Language, we all know, develops early. And it turns out that kids can learn several languages simultaneously and manage to keep them separate and to speak each of them without an accent. Story tells about a child who is four who is fluent in Japanese and Spanish as well as English. I must say I was just a bit dubious about that claim because the girl is the daughter of the proprietor of school where the child learned those languages. The school starts kids as young as six months in a program called Baby Boot Camp, which combines foreign language with strength training, balance and coordination exercises.

You've heard adults go on and on about how kids today don't know how to just go out and "play." Play dates, TV and video games have seemingly replaced just playing in the dirt, digging up the yard, making mud pies? OK, so city kids don't have yards where they can do this. But kids in Manhattan will soon get the chance. Story on the front page of the NY Times Wednesday described plans to create a new type of playground where kids can dig in the sand, move it around, play with water and here's the bonus...the playground will have adult play consultants to help the kids learn this strange new concept of open-ended play, driven by imagination.

Here's the key quote: “Very little time is spent by kids in playgrounds if they have a choice,” said Roger Hart, who...is the director of the Children’s Environments Research Group at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. “They limit the repertoire of play to children’s physical activity,” instead of encouraging the kind of social, sensory, interactive and individual fantasy play that children need, Mr. Hart said.

What's going on the playgrounds at school or in the park? Is play part of the curriculum in elementary school? Or, are those scare stories about recess being cancelled for first graders in favor of "drills" really true?

Apropos of the NYTs frontpager on playgrounds and play, came across a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics saying that the rush-rush, overscheduled, academically stressful lives of children are preventing them from playing. The report says play isn't really playtime. In fact, "free and unstructured play is healthy and essential for helping children reach important social, emotional, and cognitive developmental milestones as well as helping them manage stress and become resilient." Reminds me of a phrase I heard once: "The work of children is play." In other words, there's lots of learning going on on the playground, in the activity areas of pre-k's, on the floor with Mom and Dad with building blocks.

The new report could be a hook for journalists to go into some pre-k's and kindergartens and see what kids are doing and asking teachers how they deal with playtime. Some might talk about the pressure to make their schools more academic. That would likely to be the case in Mobile, Alabama. Such a story could use the new report as a hook. The report is called "The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds" and can be found here.

That was the headline on an editorial in the Pasadena (CA) Star-News the other day. (except without the question mark.) I know that the longitudinal study of the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program showed that the Ypsilanti kids in that high-intensity program more than four decades ago were less likely to get involved in gangs later on. But gangs are killing people in Los Angeles and surrounding areas in the here and now. (See recent frontpager in the New York Times.)

I worry about overpromising. I was asked to give a talk this week about media coverage of pre-kindergarten at Yale University's Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy. Over lunch, Dr. Zigler, the father of Head Start and perhaps our most important scholar in this field, agreed that he was worried about overpromising as well. He's a huge believer in universal pre-kindergarten. But he also says that what happens in one or even two years of preschool doesn't end a child's poverty, completely change the family dynamics, or ensure that he or she will remain healthy and attend a high quality elementary, middle, and high school. End gangs? That seems like a big burden to shoulder a preschool with.

(I'll share more of my conversation with Dr. Zigler soon and look for an interview with him as well.

Now for a dose of juicy and satisfying voyeurism of the rich. So many of Manhattan's superrich who send their kids to the superexclusive preschool at the 92nd Street YMCA on the Upper East Side use chauffeured vehicles that they have to double- and triple-park outside the school in the morning and in the afternoon. Folks not familiar with the city's geography would not know that many of these cosseted children live within 10 to 15 blocks of the school. The problem's become so bad the Y's director has sent out a letter threatening the harshest possible treatment--she will consider telling the super-exclusive kindergartens these children apply to that their parents don't play well with others. Horrors!

We know all of this because the New York Times devoted a lot of reporting time to figuring out who owned those big black cars parked outside the school. (This is the same school that Wall Street analyst Jack Grubman crowed had admitted his twins because he'd inflated his rating of a particular stock that was of interest to his boss, Sanford Weill.) This is a variant on a story that appears frequently in the New York media. Striving, image-conscious, nouveau-riche Manhattanites do whatever they can to get into a handful of expensive preschools because they think the schools will guarantee their kids a quick-trip to the Ivy League and we make them look silly in the bargain. Old story. Easy target. But beyond its obvious entertainment value, does it matter?

New research into the lives of children seems to debunk the widely held idea that parents are harming their children by pressuring them to participate in too many activities. A trio of researchers from Yale, the University of Michigan, and the University of Texas found that, in fact, children benefit academically, socially, and developmentally from participating in activities. Joseph L. Mahoney of Yale says we should worry less about the 60 percent of children who participate in activities and more time worrying about the 40 percent of children who do not.
Study can be found here.

Seems to me, this would make a good weekend, Lifestyle section story that goes against the grain of common wisdom. Those highly pressured, stressed out kids who just want to kick back? Actually, they like being busy. (Someday we might see a study that finds that learning doesn't stress young children out either!)

This forward-looking story from an Iowa television station tells us why the eligibility criteria for Head Start matters. The story says that a recently enacted hike in minimum wage in Iowa will make some families ineligible for Head Start. This is certainly a thread that journalists ought to be pulling to figure out the implications of the current minimum wage debate in Congress.

Story the other day in the New York Times on a hearing on child poverty and how to address it. Brookings child and family policy luminary Ron Haskins was there. So was Columbia's Jane Knitzer, who co-authored the National Center on Child Poverty report on what pre-k programs should look like if they're to help poor children catch up. The story also said the Democrats were likely to pass Head Start legislation. Ed Zigler told me the same thing the other day.

Down in Tennessee, on a blog called TennesseeTicket, there is this nice description of children and learning and the role of society:

Children at this young age do not see learning as a “required” activity. They just do it. All one needs to do is provide access to the materials and information, and they set about having fun soaking up the knowledge. It is for this reason that pre-K learning should be seriously considered as a common goal. Yes, there is a strong argument that the primary responsibility of a child’s education lies with the child’s parent(s), but that stance could be (and is) used to argue against public education in general. If we accept that the society, through its state, has an interest in a well-educated populace, then our provisions wisely include measures to address this motherlode of time-sensitive learning capacity.

Bridget Gutierrez, who is writing the Get Schooled blog on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website, noted that although kindergarten is offered in public school systems all around Atlanta and the state provides free pre-kindergarten for 4-year-olds, a third of children get to first grade without having attended either one. Gutierrez was commenting on legislative proposal to lower age of mandatory education to five.

The Get Schooled blog gets lots and lots of traffic. This entry had 64 comments. Many along the lines of "the government is taking away our children" or "destroying families" and lots of use of the word "indoctrination." Somehow I suspect that those who worry about such things are not exactly spending a lot of time talking to their kids, nurturing them, playing with them.

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....

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).

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

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.

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.

The coverage by the New York Times and the Associated Press of the newest report from the nation's longest running study of child care got picked up by news organizations everywhere. The report gave top billing to the positive effects of high quality care on vocabulary although it also acknowledged a slight increase in problem behaviors among fifth graders, apparently correlated with the amount of time they spent being cared for outside the home.

The Associated Press produced a Sunday story follow-up that also was widely carried. This is a story any news organization could have done. Why do it? Try, survival? A blog called World Views posted a four paragraph excerpt from the Times' first day story. At last count, the item had attracted 65 comments. Many of the comments are thoughtful and even anguished considerations of the tradeoffs facing families with children needing two incomes.

The Times carried six letters in response to the story. Here's an excerpt from one:

We live in a country in which most women work outside the home and are also responsible for child rearing; ours is also one of the only developed countries with no national policy on maternity leave. It is no surprise, then, that we have no coherent philosophy for day care.

As money is poured into studies, American day care continues to morph into an increasingly unstable structure, one with no real foundation or plan.

By the way, Sharon L. Ramey, the Georgetown University professor who was one of the authors of the child care study, and her husband, Craig T. Ramey, have produced a wealth of research on early childcare education that journalists should consult. Here's one article that is a great, readable summary of a lot of research.

Here is a list of what the Rameys call: Essential Experiences in Early Learning Years:

What are the crucial experiences needed in the early years of life? Does early caretaking or experience really affect brain development? Are these effects important or lasting? In recent scientific articles and books for parents, we have summarized a vast body of scientific evidence in terms of seven types of experiences that are essential to ensure normal brain and behavioral development and school readiness:

1. Encourage exploration.
2. Mentor in basic skills.
3. Celebrate developmental advances.
4. Rehearse and extend new skills.
5. Protect from inappropriate disapproval, teasing, and punishment.
6. Communicate richly and responsively.
7. Guide and limit behavior.

Greg Toppo of USA Today directed me to Emily Bazelon's thoughtful analysis on Slate last week of the study of child care. (I refuse to use the term "day" care. It's children being cared for, not "days.") She spoke with one of the authors who pointed out that in the sample of children studied there was a correlation between amount of time children spent in child care prior to age four and a half, the quality of the care received by those children, and the very, very slight increase in problem behaviors observed in the fifth grade. Those who were in child care for more years received, on average, lower quality care and had more problems. Bazelon astutely reminds us that infant care is not only the most difficult to do well and the most expensive to offer but also that infants benefit least from the group interactions that characterize good child care for slightly older children. (All of this reintroduces the question that many private child care centers have about publicly funded preschool: the older kids in such centers subsidize the infants. When the older kids are siphoned off by free programs, that makes the economics of private child care for infants even more tricky.) Here's a quote:

It's useless to rail at the press for leading with the bad news and for ignoring the researchers' caveats that no cause-and-effect conclusions can be drawn from their data. Still, coverage like this feels designed to twit working parents. And it turns out that in the case of day care, the headlines and the stories really were alarmist—even wrong.

Bruce Fuller, the author of "Standardized Childhood" just out from Stanford University Press offers this measured and thoughtful response to my entry a few days ago about his book:

I’m miffed by friend Richard Colvin’s instantaneous commentary on my new book, Standardized Childhood, just out from Stanford University Press, coauthored with Margaret Bridges and Seeta Pai. Richard ends his blog-spray by admitting, “I confess I haven’t read the book.” [Disclosure: the rules of evidence or substantiation in the blog world remain a mystery to me.]

The book offers readers a concise historical tour, illuminating the age-old debate around how elites and institutions eagerly push to define the inner nature and proper upbringing of other people’s children. Sure, it takes a village. But the pivotal question moving forward is, who gets to call the shots across America’s diverse villages, and what are the ethics and evidence on the proposition that what’s best is a more homogenous way of raising and instructing young children are best?

Earlier feminist and child care movements stressed options for parents and children. But now influential born-again preschool advocates [disclosure: who are financially supported by the same national foundation that pays for Colvin’s blog site] have converged on a singular remedy: free preschool, preferably attached to public school bureaucracies, for all families, no matter how rich or poor.

Journalists, local activists, and state policy makers – as this movement unfolds – must wrestle with key issues. First, in the context of No Child Left Behind many kindergarten teachers are under enormous pressure to drill-and-kill information into children’s heads, to pump-up their test scores. The book takes readers into several preschool classrooms where teachers now feel the same pressure. So, let’s get clear on the risks and potential benefits of attaching three and four year-olds to public schools in the present environment of top-down accountability.

New report from the University of Albany, SUNY draws on data from the 2000 Census to conclude that immigrant children “account for 20 percent of all children in the United States, and their numbers are growing faster than any other group of children…The proportion of children in immigrant families falls below 5 percent in only 11 states, and that proportion rises to 10 percent or more in 22 states and the District of Columbia…” The report says four of five of the children are U.S. citizens and three out of four are fluent in English. “At the same time, children of immigrants are less likely to be enrolled in preschool programs, putting them at a disadvantage when it comes to the cognitive aspects of school readiness and English-language fluency.”

Would like to see a story out of a neighborhood with many immigrant children about the quality and availability of preschool. Often, such preschools need to put a lot of effort into recruiting immigrant families. Those efforts, too, are worth a story.

Oh, it's so painful for me to realize, now that I'm middle-aged, how much I missed as a child. Just think how much I could have accomplished, how much happier I'd be, had I been as lucky as 3-year-old Elliott Baines of Guttenberg, N.J. Alexander Russo linked the other day to a story in the Wall Street Journal that reported on the adventurous travel vacations families are taking their young children on to give them enriching experiences. Little Elliott, for example, "has already cleared customs in Israel, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, France and Canada. His parents...say they believe the experiences are shaping Elliot's personality even at this early age. For instance, when Elliot and a group of children were pretending to fly in their gymnastics class, other youngsters said they were going to Florida, while Elliot said he was en route to Paris." All my family ever did was drive one time from Ohio to the East Coast to visit family friends, and we weren't even allowed to stop at the Mystery Spot along the way.

But, seriously, articles such as these are what I like to call "rich porn" and are a staple of the Journal, the Times, Vanity Fair, and other publications aimed at the elite. Those of us who spent our childhood catching tadpoles and playing baseball with kids in the neighborhood instead of flying off to Thailand to ride bikes through the jungle love to be voyeurs observing the lives of people with so much money it skews their judgment of what's important. A little skepticism about whether such trips actually put kids ahead of their peers, and a little context as to how few families actually take such vacations would be nice. But that would make such stories far less entertaining.

I missed this when it first came out but Sara Mead of Education Sector has put together one of her typically smart, dispassionate, let the chips fall where they may discussions of the evidence. This time her focus is on the overselling of the importance of the birth to age three window for brain development. It's a paper that all journalists interested in child development and education should read. Brains keep developing and learning throughout life. Plus, trying to hard-wire intelligence by sitting toddlers in front of a screen to watch a video runs against what we know about how young children learn best--through social interactions with those who love them and make them feel secure. Mead's analysis doesn't mean that what goes on early isn't important. It certainly is and the body of evidence showing the value of such programs as David Olds' Nurse Home Visiting Program is building. But it does mean that later investments are also crucial and that there isn't the trade-off between zero-to-three and pre-k and kindergarten that some people pose.

'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.

Joel Waldfogel, a business prof at the Wharton School, bases a commentary on Slate on the James Heckman/Dmitri Masterov analysis of the economic returns of preschool from high quality programs serving the disadvantaged. He says government programs are needed to make up for the weakness of many families, which makes them unable to function as caregivers and nurturers of children. He concludes:

A sales problem remains: These programs invade the traditional province of the family, and in Heckman and Masterov's conception, they would target disadvantaged populations that are disproportionately minority. Wanted: a credible and sympathetic pitchman. Paging Barack Obama

Obama, the Illinois Senator running for president, has yet to announce his position on expanding the federal role in pre-kindergarten. Hilary Clinton, the New York Senator and presidential candidate, though, supports phasing in a $10 billion federal fund to match new state investments in high quality preschool.

Poor Paris Hilton. It was heartbreaking seeing her sobbing through the window of the police car as she was taken to jail in Los Angeles County again. Maybe she didn't go to preschool...(Photo from New York Times)

Advocates for universal pre-school have to be careful about overselling. And media skepticism should help the advocates avoid that. Police chiefs seem particularly prone to this behavior. In Pennsylvania, where there's $75 million in new preschool monies being debated by the Legislature, the state's police chiefs have been among those leading the charge. A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story the other day quoted Pittsburgh Asst. Chief Paul Donaldson saying, "Quality pre-kindergarten programs are our most effective weapons in fighting crime." Really? More so than community policing?
The story also said the $75 million would generate a 17-to-1 return on investment, which is a figure that's tossed around far too easily.

Such statements have to be qualified and journalists have to do it--if the advocates are unwilling to do so. The 17-1 figure is based on the return over more than three decades from a program called the Perry Preschool Project that lasted for five years back in the 1960s. So, for Legislatures worried about balancing a budget today, the returns will accrue long after they've left public service. Also the program that would be expanded in Pennsylvania is not like the Perry Preschool, which was of much, much higher in terms of quality and cost. [See Update below] Plus, the Perry Preschool was aimed at very disadvantaged kids. It wasn't a universal program available to all. A universal program would not get rates of return anywhere close to these. Finally, it's true the Perry Preschool reduced crime but it didn't eliminate it. Those who went through Perry Preschool were, on average, likely to be arrested fewer times, not that they were not likely to have been arrested.

UPDATES: I checked out the Pennsylvania Pre-K Counts website. The state program looks to set quite high programmatic standards, relative to other states. Also, the new money that Gov. Rendell is pushing IS targeted to disadvantaged children. Still, the program wouldn't measure up to the Perry Preschool, which cost in 2007 dollars about $15,000 per child and had one teacher (trained in special education and early childhood development) for every seven children. (Pennsylvania requires one certified teacher and an aide for every 17 children.) It's true that most of the cost-benefits from the Perry experiment came from a reduction in crime: in fact, about $13 of the $17 return came from that source alone. A good, clear, dispassionate analysis of the economic returns of preschool programs can be found here. It's something every journalist who covers these issues should keep close as a resource.

A story in the Philadelphia Tribune, which targets the city's African American community, illustrates the dangers of overselling the crimefighting powers of pre-k. House Republican leader Sam Smith and Democratic state Rep. Dwight Evans are sparring over just that. Smith has been saying Philadelphia has had Head Start and pre-k and still had more than 400 homicides last year. Evans and the city's police commissioner are saying spend more money on pre-k to cut crime. The story did a decent job of catching the back and forth. But the murders are happening now. An investment in pre-k will pay off but not next year or even for the next 10 years. Five year olds don't commit murders.

Hartford Courant reporter Hilary Waldman produced a fascinating, compelling story in yesterday's paper that was based on a....research study! But the story about a study of the effects of putting mental health consultants in pre-kindergarten classrooms was anything but dry. The spine of it was the story of a three-year-old boy named Terrence who was described by his teachers as a "human tornado," wreaking fear and destruction in the classroom. His teachers sought help and a state-funded program supplied a consultant, who helped them develop strategies for how to help Terrence learn to adjust socially.

The details in the story, the national context, the clear explanation of how the research was conducted and the human drama it captured--all were impressive. The article shows how richly visiting classrooms and making connections with real teachers, kids and their parents pays off journalistically. Journalism such as this will always find an audience no matter the "platform"--print or digital.

Florida newspapers, television stations and bloggers all reported on the release of the state's so-called accountability system for the mostly private pre-kindergarten programs that get public money. Leslie Postal in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel came closest to calling the state accountability system what it is: a mess. As she points out, the state set an artificial limit of 15% on how many schools can be low-performing. That means, in reality, that 15% of the schools will be labeled substandard no matter how they do and schools that may be weak against an objective set of standards, but not as weak as others, will get a seal of approval. But there are two even bigger problems with the so-called accountability system: 1. It doesn't take into consideration the characteristics of the kids served or the size of gains they made. Not surprisingly, as Postal notes, "low performing" preschools had more poor, disabled, and Spanish-speaking kids. 2. It tests kids in kindergarten and attributes their performance to the preschools. What about the rapid development of kids that age? What about all the other influences in a child's life that are more significant?

Sure, we all want all kids to be the same. But can 540 hours (which is what the state pays for) of relatively low-quality preschool really make it so? Florida's preschool program satisfied only four of 10 quality criteria established by the National Institute of Early Education and Research and the state spends only $2,163 per child on the program (when part-year attendance is taken into consideration.) The effect of this so-called accountability system will be to discourage these private schools from accepting the very kids who need help the most.

The CBS affiliate in Tallahassee got right to the point. The Gainesville Sun did not take note of any of the shortcomings of the rankings. The Gradebook, the education Web log of the St. Petersberg, noted that the system was unfair but that so was life. The state says it is holding preschools accountable. Journalists should hold the state accountable for at least acknowledging that their accountability system is "low performing."

It's a long journey from kindergarten to high school graduation and even longer to adulthood. Those of us who think a lot about how kids get off to a good start on life's road sometimes forget about the bumpiness and dead-end exits along the way. Starting off in the right direction with a smooth-running vehicle full of gas does not mean one is assured of arriving at his destination safe and sound. Three good stories over the weekend are good reminders that, as important as it is to give kids a proper start, it doesn't necessarily assure them of a smooth ride through school or life.

Erin Einhorn and Carrie Melago of the New York Daily News worked backwards from interviewing a young man about to graduate from a New York high school who is headed to Carnegie Mellon to major in physics. They tracked down his kindergarten teacher, still in the classroom, and she led them to the class of children identified as gifted that she taught in 1994. Their story shows that pregnancy, violence, family instability, large, impersonal schools, uncaring teachers and many other unforeseen bumps in the road can make the ride rocky even for kindergarteners who are bright and ready for school. One girl who overcame the violent deaths of both of her parents to make it to graduation with the help of an iron-willed grandmother had this to say: "You have to have family support," she said. "You have to have a good relationship with teachers. You have to have motivation within yourself. ...And you have to have hope." Part three of the series is here.

Dale Mezzacappa, the veteran education writer for the Philly Inquirer who took a buyout sometime back, returned with a terrific profile of a class of 112 6th graders who had been guaranteed a college education by a rich Connecticut investor. George Weiss spent millions, mentored them, gave them tutoring, jobs and contacts and more. Now, 20 years later, Mezzacappa fills us in on where they ended up--and the news is mixed. Less than two-thirds of them graduated high school (twice the rate of other poor African Americans in Philadelphia from that year) and 20 earned bachelor's degrees.

Sara Rimer of the New York Times had a front-page profile that looked at the friendship of two very different girls, who became one another's support system through high school. Their friendship helped them get to graduation with good
grades and glowing recommendations--despite trials rivaling those of Job. Again, the point's the same: a great preschool experience is certainly a good start--a full tank of gas in a car that runs, as it were. But teachers, friends, resilience, luck, opportunities, family stability and so much more are required along the way.

(By the way, all three have audio, slide shows and other stories that add to the printed stories. At the NY Times site you can watch the commencement address given by Queen, one of the two girls Rimer profiles.)