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.

The Honolulu Advertiser tackled an important story today, examining why seats in publicly funded preschools were not being filled. The piece got right to the point: "The state has money to help needy parents defray the costs of preschool. Now it just needs more parents to apply." The story quotes a parent who says the program makes it possible for her to send her daughter to an accredited pre-school rather than leave here with a babysitter. "I would go to some homes that just had a blank white wall, no toys and 10 kids," the mother said. "You just don't feel comfortable leaving your child there."

The piece notes that cultural resistance is a factor in what preschool experts call the low "uptake" for services. "Hawai'i continues to be the type of society that we let our parents or grandparents or aunties and uncles take care of the young," said Henry Oliva, the deputy director of the state agency that administers the program.

This is not only an issue in Hawaii. It is an issue in many mainland cities, especially those with large Latino populations. What are the programs in the cities you cover doing to make sure families know what services are available and how to access them? Are they getting the word out in Spanish-language and other ethnic publications? Are they going door to door? Does the state subsidize outreach efforts? My guess is that there are many neighborhoods where good programs are not being full utilized.

Leann Holt in the Albuquerque (New Mexico) Journal picks up on the theme the Honolulu Advertiser explored a few days ago: efforts to enroll the children of immigrants and low-income parents in preschool. It's often said that Latino immigrants are less likely to enroll their children in preschool because they prefer family care or non-school settings. But Holt reports something I've not seen elsewhere: preschool is free in Mexico and 81% of children attend.

Reporters covering pre-kindergarten often find obstacles to expansion programs, from budget cuts to lack of space that prevents all children who want a spot from getting one. Carrie Melago of the New York Daily News found another barrier this week, imposed by the New York City Department of Education: Language.

Nearly one third of the more than 1.1 million students in New York City public schools are immigrants and the proportion is rising steadily. Some 42% of New York City public school students reported speaking a language at home other than English last year.

Yet when directories and applications for a new, centrally managed pre-kindergarten process that requires parents to rank their top choices went out this week, they were posted online in English only. The action upset advocates for immigrants who worry that parents who can’t get the information won’t register their children for pre-kindergarten.

The New York City Department of Education promised to make the documents available in eight languages by next week: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Urdu. They also said their translation unit can help parents in the meantime.

While some states are pushing for all day kindergarten, Texas and Florida are jump-starting pre-school, trying out children as young as 2 and 3-years-old with the help of a $6 million grant from the University of Texas.

A piece by Staci Hupp in the Dallas Morning News noted that pre-school is "moving to the potty-training set,'' and took a look at a new project coming to Dallas that aims at training child-care workers to connect with children early to help boost their success in school later on.

Dallas is home to a fast growing Hispanic population with children younger than 5 making up the largest age group. The city also has a disproportionate population of poor children who are more likely to start pre-school developmentally behind and the hope is that starting children younger by building their vocabularies and school routines will only help them give them a better academic start.

It will be interesting for reporters to visit these early start programs and talk to some of the caregivers and teachers. What kind of structures and curriculum are in place, and how is the program being evaluated and measured? What are the expectations, and what are the hoped for -- and achieved -- outcomes? Is anyone measuring progress once they do start school, and if so, how? What constitutes success for the potty-training set?

The Washington Post picked up on an important trend that journalists covering pre-kindergarten issues ought to be aware of and to follow closely. The growing Hispanic population will continue to change the nature of and makeup of schools.In three suburban counties outside of Washington D.C. the number of children ages 4 and younger who are minorities has reached 60 percent, according to Census Bureau figures used by The Post.

Not all of the immigrants are Hispanics, but the growth of that population will force school systems to accommodate larger numbers of immigrant students whose parents do not speak English at home.

Some important follow-up questions and stories remain. Are school systems hiring much larger numbers of English as-a-second language teachers and does that include pre-kindergarten and kindergarten? What are their qualifications and is there a shortage? Are language barriers creating other issues for these children and for schools, especially with increased testing under No Child Left Behind? What other plans do local school systems have to meet and follow the needs of this changing population? Are they measuring an achievement gap between white and Hispanic students and consulting research that shows pre-kindergarten can reduce such gaps?

News of population shifts and trends is a great starting point for a host of important stories and follow-up.

New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein may have sounded all the right notes when he pushed to provide equal access to gifted programs for all city children and revamped testing criteria for the sought-after program.

Instead, the number of children entering the city's gifted classes dropped by half this year -- and were less diverse than they were a year earlier, according to the stories in both the New York Times and the New York Daily News.

Data released by the New York City Department of Education show the number of white students in citywide gifted programs jumped from 18 percent in 2007-08 to 52 percent in 2008-09 -- exactly the opposite of what the new policy was supposed to accomplish.

Klein defended the city's efforts, nothing that his program led to more outreach and more testing of students, although he did not specifically say what he would do next. Journalists covering this story should press for answers.

What happened in the nation's largest school district shows how important it is for journalists to ask for data and follow-up. The data the Department of Education released -- and the New York Times analysis of it -- clearly shows a program that failed and is a reminder of how numbers tell a story.

Had the press failed to follow-up -- and simply reported the Department of Education's rhetoric and promises -- the public might not have learned that nearly half the year's new gifted students are white. That's a significant unintended consequence of a program intended to equalize access to gifted minority students in a system where just 17 percent of the kindergarten and first grade students are white.

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As educators and policy makers sort through the meaning of the slimmed down compromise stimulus, journalists are trying to figure out the meaning in their own communities. How much of what was promised was cut? What will any new money be spent on? Who is setting the priorities?

A few good resources -- beyond speaking to school officials, Head Start operators and other early childhood education providers -- can be found on the Ed Money Watch blog.

Economist Steve Barnett of the National Institute for Early Education Research has also weighed in, and it's likely that schools of education are watching the developments closely.

Early Stories had a chance to listen to one of the top experts in the U.S. this week,
Sharon Lynn Kagan of Teachers College, Kagan emphasized that what matters about the stimulus spending is the quality of early childhood education it may be providing money for, from child care to pre-kindergarten. The vast majority of existing programs are mediocre, she noted.

"There are very, very few high quality programs and those are the ones that produce the high effects that we tout in the research literature,'' Kagan said.

NIEER has some quality markers. Most states now have early childhood education standards. The National Assn. of Early Childhood Education has its guidelines. So does Head Start. Kagan noted one element of quality that concerns her greatly. Only 36% of Head Start teachers and 30% of child care workers have a bachelor's degree. She also worried that, as these programs expand, the teachers they hire will not have the background and training they need. "Those coming in often are less qualified than those leaving," she said.

Margaret Ramirez of the Chicago Tribune did an admirable job of reporting on the many challenges Latino families face in gaining access to early childhood education.

Ramirez started her story in a place few education reporters have been venturing lately -- a Head Start program, a key place to be at a time when the federal stimulus package is earmarking billions of dollars to grow Head Start programs and as President Barack Obama has expressed concern about the achievement gap that leaves African American and Latino children behind.

The story described how Latino families with young children are less likely to enroll in early childhood education programs, facing barriers from language to transportation to a shortage of slots. And she noted that as a result, Latino children are often lagging in critical math and reading skills once they enter kindergarten.

Ramirez took a look at both the reasons for low attendance among Hispanics in pre-school programs along with the fractured landscape of early childhood education in both Illinois and the U.S. It's the kind of story worth doing in many communities that are home to fast-growing Latino populations. The number of Hispanic students in the nation's public schools nearly doubled from 1990 to 2006, accounting for 60% of the total growth in public school enrollments over that period, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, an excellent source for journalists. And those numbers are likely to continue climbing -- making it all the more important for journalists to find out if schools are ready for the influx.

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.

EarlyStories spends a lot of time observing and commenting on the way journalists cover early childhood education. It's a tough area for many who are consumed with the demands of the K-12 beat and may not realize how much the early childhood landscape is changing. That's one reason the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media is hosting a webinar on June 24th. We will explain the main federal programs in early childhood education and describe how the Obama administration hopes to expand and fund them.

We'll ask and try to answer:

· What will an infusion of money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) mean for states and districts, and how will it influence what early education programs and policies look like?
· What sorts of new and developing partnerships between K-12 systems and early childhood care providers are on the horizon as superintendents and school officials clamor for programs they believe will assist their test scores later on? How can journalists assess the quality of such programs?
· How will investing in Early Head Start and Head Start expand access to quality child care for children from working families?
· What kind of training will be offered to early childhood workers and how can journalists assess if it is any good? What kinds of credentials must they attain?
· Is the federal investment sufficient to stave off cuts to existing pre-k programs and to reinvigorate plans for pre-k expansion?

This webinar is scheduled for one hour and is completely free. Apply online

Journalists who are covering early childhood education these days find themselves watching two distinct trends that often diverge: cutbacks in long-planned pre-kindergarten expansion due to state's economic woes, and a new federal involvement in the lives of children from birth to five. Understanding and covering these dual trends will require some explanation, and that is one reason the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media is hosting a webinar on early childhood education on Wednesday.

President Barack Obama has proposed spending $10 billion annually to support early childhood investments. How will his agenda change the early education landscape from birth to age five, and how does it connect to the larger K-12 world?

Journalists must keep an eye on the unprecedented new federal funding coming to states and districts through stimulus funds, which could drastically re-shape early education programs and policies. What will this mean for communities and at risk children across the U.S.?

Speakers include former Chicago Tribune editorial writer Cornelia Grumman of the First Five Years Fund and Scott Palmer, a partner and co-founder of EducationCounsel LLC, an affiliate of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough.

Sign-up on the Hechinger website.

EarlyStories spends a great deal of time commenting on the way early childhood education is covered by journalists, and pointing out new ways to think about the issue and get inside classrooms for visits. Now there is a new guide available with a wealth of resources all in one place: "Covering the Pre-K Landscape: New Investments in Our Littlest Learners,” the newest publication from the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media. The 20-page publication includes guidance for covering all aspects of the rapidly expanding pre-k landscape, from Head Start to state-sponsored pre-k programs.

Barbara Kantrowitz, staff editor for the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, edited the guide, conceived by the Institute's director Richard Lee Colvin and written largely by longtime former Education Week assistant editor Linda Jacobson, along with Karen Springen, formerly of Newsweek and Hechinger Institute staff.

Kantrowitz notes that the guide is important because education reporters for years neglected coverage of preschool in favor of k-12 or higher education issues. But in the last decade, early childhood education has jumped to a prominent place on the national agenda with huge increases in state and federal spending for the littlest learners. The Obama administration is accelerating that trend, by allocating billions for Head Start and other programs that reach young children. Suddenly, preschool is on the front pages. What brought about this dramatic change? And what’s the wisest way to spend the new federal dollars?

A major message is the importance of skepticism when covering preschool. Policy makers and advocates often cite studies showing that every dollar spent on preschool returns as much as $17 in savings on future social services. The guide points out that much of this research was conducted on high-quality programs and many preschools today do not meet those same standards. There’s a useful list of things to look for in assessing whether a preschool is doing a good job (and signs that the school is failing its students). The publication also includes a rundown of experts and research studies to guide further reporting. The publication was funded with a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

To request a copy, email Hechinger@tc.edu.

EarlyStories was an early admirer of Sophia Pappas, a Teach for America recruit whose blog about her pre-k classroom in New Jersey provided tremendous insight into the lives of children. Pappas now has a new book based on the blog, entitled "Good Morning, Children,'' about her experience, and it's well worth reading.

A lot of what is written about pre-kindergarten is framed around academic research, policy debates or budget battles. The book allows Pappas, now a graduate student pursuing a master in public policy at Harvard University, to describe the lives "of the 14 incredible four-year-olds,'' in her class and what they learned, from sharing space to solving problems. The blog, and the book, showed first hand the impact that early childhood education can have and why it matters. In Pappas words, "...I gave my students and their families a voice in this country's discourse on how best to serve our youngest and most impressionable learners."

Stephanie Banchero of the Chicago Tribune is staying right on top of an important political and financial battle in Illinois that could shut some 30,000 children out of preschools. Like many financially strapped states, Illinois is facing difficult budget choices, resulting in an $180 million cut in the State Board of Education budget earlier this week. The state's popular and highly regarded early childhood programs took a huge hit, Banchero noted -- losing a third of its $380 million budget.

What will that mean?

"Without high-quality early-childhood programs, low-income children will arrive at kindergarten unprepared and will struggle throughout their school years to catch up," Diane Rauner, executive director of the Ounce of Prevention Fund, told Banchero.

Reporters throughout the U.S. are doing story after story about painful budget cuts that are causing wholesale elimination of programs and forcing educators and lawmakers to make difficult choices. The situation in in Illinois is far from settled, as Banchero pointed out, with education advocates pressing lawmakers to restore the cuts.

In these tough times, it's a good idea for journalists to closely examine some of the programs that may be eliminated and try to help explain their value to the public, who will be clamoring to preserve everything from arts programs to foreign languages -- and of course, early childhood education. Each has some value, and many will be unsustainable. Advocates are likely clamoring to let the public and lawmakers know how important the programs they support are and journalists will have to document, explain or illustrate value with the help of anecdotes, examples, research, interviews and visits whenever possible.

EarlyStories often pushes journalists to spend time visiting early childhood classrooms and to see the area as a rich source of story ideas. Sometimes it takes a little jump start to see the connection, and that's why it's an excellent idea to apply for the Journalism Center on Children & Families conference in September "Ladder of Success:Covering Early Childhood Learning.''

Competitive fellowships are available that include travel subsidies, and the 20 journalists who attend will have a chance to hear from some of the top experts in the field. Topics will include the debate about who should attend public preschool, how to train early childhood teachers and ways of educating immigrant children. Experts include Ellen Galinsky, Gene Steuerle, Margaret Freedson and Joan Lombardi.

It's a great chance to get out of the newsroom and come back with ideas, sources and perspective on an issue that is gaining increasing importance due to President Barack Obama's agenda of unprecedented federal involvement and investment in early childhood. Anyone with questions can call 301-405-8808.

Journalists who wonder how early childhood education fits into the larger K-12 landscape have a great opportunity to learn more about this critical topic. The Journalism Center on Children & Families in Maryland has extended the deadline for its September training conference and fellowship, entitled "Ladders of Success: Covering Early Childhood Learning."

The conference features experts including Ellen Galinsky of the Families & Work Institute and Gene Steuerle of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. It takes place Sept 13-15, 2009 (Sunday through Tuesday) at The Inn & Conference Center and the University of Maryland in College Park, Md.

The two-and-a-half day seminar will encourage 20 journalists to examine the best way to fix the country’s underfunded and fragmented early childhood system.

Sessions will include:

Born Learning: A look at the science of early education

Economic Reality: Funding early education during a recession.

Leveling the Learning Field: One out of every five children in the United States is the child of an immigrant. How do communities address the needs of immigrant families and their young children?

Early Intervention: For many children, learning the alphabet and counting comes before they start their formal education. But many children struggle with these early concepts because of limited exposure to learning or because of undiagnosed disorders in cognition or learning.

What Works: Where to find pre-k programs that are thriving in at-risk communities?

Ready to Learn: in 2005, only 31 percent of fourth-graders read at a ‘proficient’ or better level. What do young children learn in early education that helps prepare them for lifelong success? How do programs successfully link early learning to the early grades?

For details and an application, visit at www.journalismcenter.org

EarlyStories has pointed out early and often how little credible journalism exists about Head Start, even though investing in the program is part of President Barack Obama's early childhood agenda.

Busy education reporters pay more attention to pre-kindergarten, in part because such stories often involve statehouse debates and are either part of budget stories or can go into the K-12 mix. But Head Start gets left out a lot, and that could be because journalists don't know much about the national program that promotes school readiness "by enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social and other services to enrolled children and families."

Kudos goes to the New America Foundation and its Early Ed Watch blog for its seven-part series that contains a great deal of helpful background, and could be a terrific starting point for journalists who want to delve into this critical issue.

The most recent entry looks at the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Law, which former President Bush signed into law in December 2007.

This fall, as the economic downturn continues, journalists are starting to notice cut-backs and closings of Head Start centers. Bringing more background and understanding to the stories will be enormously helpful as the issues and debate continues to unfold. The background is a great starting point for visiting centers and finding out what value they add -- or don't add -- in a given community, as well as providing context and understand about the national agenda.

Teachers College professor Herbert Ginsburg recalled a story on Tuesday about a very young child who walked into a day care center and gave the teacher an urgent command:

"Teach me something."

The teacher asked the child what it was they hoped to learn, and got the reply: "You are the teacher, tell me!"

Ginsburg described the incident before a packed audience at Teachers College during a discussion about a new National Academy of Sciences report that calls for a major national initiative to improve early childhood mathematics education.

The story underscored a major point in the report: Young children are capable of learning and often want to learn a lot more math than they are offered. Low income children in particular have few opportunities to learn math and teachers aren't adequately trained or prepared to teach them, Ginsburg said as he walked through the reports findings. He also showed several videos of low-income chidren using a calendar to count by two, even without any direction.

"We need to think about how we teach and what we teach,'' Ginsburg said. The report notes that the amount of time and attention devoted to math needs to be increased in all preschools, and suggested that training of teachers must be dramatically improved so they have the confidence and the background to teach early math.

One reality check in the discussion came from Sharon Lynn Kagan , the co-director of the National Center for Children and Families at Teachers College who also served on the National Academy of Science panel that produced the report.

Kagan pointed out that nearly half of young children in the U.S. are in family day care settings where there is even less of a chance they will be exposed to early math concepts.In addition, early math plays a low priority in any standards that do exist for early learning in the U.S. and little is known about the teaching of math at the pre-school level.

There is hope that some states will revamp and revise their early childhood standards and curriculum, she noted. "It may be limited to a given number of states but it will be a great opportunity for them."

A full copy of the report -- which is a terrific roadmap for story ideas -- can be found here.

EarlyStories, like much of the world, has been struck by the heartbreaking photographs, images and stories about the lives of children after the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

Today's New York Times recounted how the country's children -- who represent 45 percent of the population -- have lost parents, homes and schools and suffered grave injuries. They have nowhere to sleep and little food. The Wall Street Journal reported on the challenges facing an AIDS clinic that must rebuild; it included an interview with a woman who lost two of her children and described some of dire shortages the tragic country needs just to get through each day. And the Associated Press also focused on the plight of children.

The press is playing an important role here by bringing attention to the needs of newly orphaned and gravely injured children, including providing lists of resources on how to help.

Early Ed Watch is taking on a critical and vastly undercovered issue in a series of blog posts on dual language learning in early childhood. The blog hopes to address ways that both policymakers and educators can improve dual language education in the U.S.

"The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that by 2030 Latino children will constitute 25 percent of the total student population." a recent post notes. "As of 2007-2008, approximately 26 percent of children enrolled in Head Start Pre-K programs speak Spanish and are classified as dual language learners. And, beyond the booming Latino population in the United States, other immigrant populations are growing too, posing a challenge to teachers in the early grades who provide these students with their first exposure to school and, sometimes, their first exposure to the English language as well."

Think of all the challenges these statistics recognize. Early childhood issues get little coverage in the media, and even less space is devoted to how immigrant children will be prepared in U.S. schools as their numbers continue to grow. The list of questions posed in Early Ed Watch are ones journalists across the U.S. should be asking of educators and policy makers. The blog raises lots of good ones.