Sue Shellenbarger, who writes the Work & Family column for the Wall Street Journal reports on new Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing more women staying home to be with their young children. She reports that about-to-be-released data shows that women from all income groups are tending to stay out of the workforce, usually for one to three years. The column notes the case of a mother and father who are teachers in Overland Park, Kansas, and who say that their knowledge about how babies' brains grow was a major factor in the mothers' decision to stop working after their twins, now 2½, and their third child, now 15 months old, were born. At home, Ms. Gunderson says, "I try to make sure everything we do together involves some kind of learning."

A University of Wisconsin study of the positive effects of pre-school is getting plenty of attention up in Canada. Last Friday the Wall Street Journal published a column that said that more women are staying home to give their children a learning advantage. But the new study suggests preschool may actually do more for many kids.

The key is you really have to look at what happens at home vs. what happens at preschool or centre-based care," lead author Katherine Magnuson, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said in an interview with Susan Schmidt of the CanWest news service. "While it's true parents can give one-on-one attention, they also run errands, talk to their friends, put (children) in front of the television.

The study, to be published in the forthcoming edition of Early Childhood Research Quarterly, assessed the skills of a sample of 7,748 children at school entry in 1998. The researchers then tested their academic progress in math and reading in the spring of Grades 1 and 3.

Connecticut Post carries a story about unfilled vacancies in pre-kindergarten programs in Bridgeport, which also has more than 900 kids on waiting lists. The story serves a useful purpose, alerting folks to the situation. The story notes that most of the unfilled slots are only part-time. Journalists should be aware that when schools or agencies offer half-day pre-kindergarten, without what are known as "wrap around" services that allow kids to be at the center all day, it's very difficult for working parents to participate.

New York has a way of putting the rest of the country in perspective, by defining extremes. Latest evidence of this is the rush of parents in affluent parts of Brooklyn to get their kids into the "right" preschools, where tuition can run to five figures. The breathy story here from New York Magazine says the "brownstone-Brooklyn baby boom is causing a sort of educational crisis," leaving parents to ask, "When did this turn into Manhattan." The story notes that one pre-k set up a lottery for it's "juice-party interview slots" and quotes a parent who says the competition is "preposterous." Sort of makes you wonder how half-day public programs that spend $3,000 or so per kid can achieve their stated aim, of closing achievement gaps.

I was traveling last week so didn't catch up with the terrific Wall Street Journal (as in funny, terrifying, depressing) story about what they called "BlackBerry Orphans," kids who are neglected as their parents compulsively check email on the devices. The story tells the story of kids trying to put limits on their parents' usage, which extends to the dinner table, while driving, during school plays, and so on.

A few parents say "BlackBerry" is in their toddlers' early vocabulary. Lucas Ellin, a Los Angeles 5-year-old, pretends he has his own, parading around the house with a small toy in his hand while shriking, "Look, Mommy, it's my BlackBerry."

Another story I'd like to see has to do with cell phone usage. When I'm out running in Manhattan or elsewhere I see parents pushing strollers or walking hand-in-hand with their child while talking on their cell phone. The time parents spend with their kids talking to them and answering their questions and discussing all that they are seeing is infinitely valuable for their development and learning. So, when these parents are out with their kids but have their minds elsewhere, they're not really doing much good. Better to let the nanny take the kids and talk to them than you, Mom or Dad, go somewhere with the kids but spend the whole time talking on the cellphone.

"The Pursuit of Happyness," the well-reviewed and successful movie starring Will Smith, is worth seeing. Education is a big theme. Chris Gardner is a smart guy who ends up homeless with his young son while he's trying to become a stock broker. He studies day and night to pass a broker's test. Gardner passed, got the job and went on to start his own bond trading firm and become fabulously successful.

In the movie, Gardner takes his son everyday to what he thinks is a good pre-school. He finds out his son spends most of his time watching television. When he confronts the proprietor, she says he can't expect to get anything more for the amount he's paying. Lots of working folks find themselves confronted by the same agonizing dilemma, knowing that this precious time is being wasted but being unable to afford something better.

The other plot point involving a current education issue has to do with that test. Many folks in the anti-testing crowd argue that a) tests can't measure all that a child knows, b) tests are inherently biased, c) some people aren't good test-takers and so on. In the hard, cruel, pragmatic world of work, however, sometimes a test is a hurdle you have to get over to get a job or promotion (think police officers, fire fighters, CPAs, attorneys, doctors, etc.). Learning to study and to do well on tests is not such a bad skill to learn in school.

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?

A guy named Don Pesci, who writes a blog in Connecticut that he calls "Red Notes from a Blue State," had a nasty reaction to Gov. Jodi Rell's plan to expand preschool and education spending. Here's a quote that captures the flavor of his condescending attitude toward anyone who puts their children in pre-school at age 3. "Pre-pre-kindergarten classes are pedagogical holding pens for the children of parents many of whom must hold down multiple jobs or work longer hours to meet their own private budget obligations." Makes working hard to make ends meet seem like a crime, doesn't it? I put these comments on the blog to remind journalists that, at least in the blogosphere but no doubt in the four-dimensional world as well, there's plenty of people who think that anything that makes life easier for mothers or their children, or that tries to use government programs to create greater opportunity or reduce disparities, excuses the importance of individual responsibility.

Argus Leader reporter Terry Woster wrote a great piece on the debate over pre-k in South Dakota. Woster reports that a bill to establish state standards for pre-k has aroused the ire of pre-k opponents. The state is helping fund a tiny pilot pre-k program in Pierre. Critics say the standards effort, and the pilot program, will drive private preschool and day care operators out of business and that the state will either have to spend more money to offer the services or parents won't have any choice but to send their kids to government programs. Woster does a fine job of reporting various views without it seeming at all like a he-said, she-said cop-out. Nice job.

By the way, the six comments on the story on the newspaper's website were quite thoughtful. And two of them said they appreciated the paper's in-depth coverage.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's an excerpt from Maria's story.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

"> Anyone who pays attention to the unfolding debate over the propriety and educational effects of public investments in preschool and child development has encountered fears of "government" brainwashing. Though not all such fears emanate from the dark imaginings of the far right, that crowd is certainly far more vocal. (Never forget that the seeds of dreaded liberalism tomorrow find fertile ground in the preschool sand tables of today!).Judge Roy Moore, (left, at a younger age), the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was ousted after refusing to remove stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments from his court room, demonstrated this once again in this Internet column.

The column is a mish-mash of references to studies and research that he misapplies and misinterprets for his purposes. In addition to the usual rhetoric, however, the good judge added a new leap of logic that I've never seen anywhere. The "founding fathers," reared in 18th century colonial America, did not go to public schools and they did pretty well. Americans back then were the "most literate and well-informed in history," he contends, and "poetry, religion, and history flourished...without support from the state." I know that many critics of public education claim, without much foundation, that student achievement has been sliding the past three or four decades. But I had no idea that the zenith of U.S. education was in the 1750s! Sure, recreating slavery, ridding ourselves of 300 years of technology and medicine, and reclaiming our true heritage as colonies would be problematic, but is there any other way to be competitive in this global economy? Let's turn back the clock three centuries before it's too late!

The Hillary Project is a website dedicated to attacking anything the former First Lady and now Senator and presidential candidate says or does. Not surprisingly, the "Project" quickly picked up former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Moore's column (see item just below) recommending a return to the educational practices of the 1750s as a way to restore enlightenment and wisdom to the Republic. Hmmmm. So, let me see if I understand the strategy of the judge and his intellectual fellow travelers: How about we use the Internet to distribute a screed arguing for going back educationally to a time before electricity....

I know these are fringe elements but the point of view that rearing children prior to school ought to be in the hands of Mommy wearing an apron while Daddy goes off to work at the big office on the train remains strongly held by more people than a journalist might suspect.....talking to these people and letting their views be examined and questioned is an important task....

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.

Sara Mead has an insightful and illuminating commentary on the similarities between school choice and universal pre-k advocates--two groups that likely would be uncomfortable rubbing shoulders at the same wonkfest. (Yes, it's a real word. You can look it up. Synonym is wonkapalooza) It's worth reading the whole thing. One insight, for example, is that both groups are committed to "redefining the boundaries of publicly-supported education--In preschool, to include younger children; in school choice to include private, charter, and other non-traditional schools."

One other similarity I'd add. School choicers want to privatize education through vouchers and subsidies for private charter management organizations. UPK-ers would prefer to have states invest preschool money in programs in public schools. But the fact that there is already a mature, mixed public-and-private school delivery system for preschool means that, inevitably, public dollars end up subsidizing private school operations. So....if public dollars can subsidize private preschools and private colleges (through loan subsidies and reseach grants), why the adamant opposition in so many places to doing so in K-12?

Story idea: As state legislatures are considering expanding spending on pre-kindergarten, examine the lobbying efforts of groups representing private preschools. You'll find they fight hard to maintain what they would call a level playing field, so that public spending on preschool doesn't put them at a competitive disadvantage.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Eleanor Chute wrote up an elegant little study paid for by PNC Financial Services Group. The basis for the study was a national survey of parents and teachers, asking them what they thought were the most important aspects of school readiness and how well they thought kids these days were to start kindergarten. Teachers thought being able to listen and follow directions and play well with others (also a trait of those who succeed in newsrooms!) were roughly twice as important as more academic skills, in terms of predicting future success. But elementary school teachers thought that very few children were well-prepared academically or socially. You can find more on the study here. PNC is paying for other research as well. More details on that, here.

PNC, based in Pittsburgh, has been a leading corporate advocate favoring bigger investments in pre-kindergarten. The company was one of the sponsors of a big 2006 conference of economists and corporate leaders in New York that drew a lot of media coverage. It's also putting its money behind the effort, planning on investing $100 million in an initiative it calls PNC Grow Up Great.

Newsweek's Nov. 12 edition has a short piece on the growth in preschool enrollments in both public and private settings, pegged to the release of a new report on participation data due out from the National Institute of Early Education Research. (on the web here. According to the article, NIEER says 69% of 4 year olds attend preschool, up from 59% in 1991. That's consistent with federal data released late last month.

Of course, Newsweek doesn't feature a free, state-funded pre-k. Rather it focuses on a $22,000 preschool in the affluent Boston suburb of Needham, Massachusetts where parents get a daily written narrative of everything their child did that day, including who he or she lunched with.

I took note earlier this month of the intense focus of toy makers on making toys educational, to lure in parents who are predisposed to think the hunt for the best college begins in the womb. Latest entry on this theme is the story in the New York Times this morning on digital toys for the younger and younger set. Seems today's toddlers aren't satisfied with toy phones and cameras and computers, they want the real deal. The story quotes a woman from the San Francisco Bay Area who returned digital toy telephones because her twin year-old daughters preferred real cell phones. Gee, Mom, how can I text my posse during naptime if you only let me have a toy phone? "They know what a real cellphone is, and they don’t want a fake one,” the mother is quoted saying. Computers for toddlers are designed to help them learn "computer basics" but to what end?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

NY1 focused yesterday on the plight of one school that offers half-day prekindergarten classes for its neighborhood, but lacks the funding to expand the program into full time (all day) pre-K services. The article nicely touches on the major issue facing the pre-K programs in NYS – funding. While in 1997 the universal pre-K program was heralded for its expansion,inventiveness and rally cry to provide Pre-K to all of NYS children, by the 2001 budget, funding had dried up significantly and the programs were stalled. According to a 2004 census, there were over 400,000 4 year olds in NYC, but only 48,000 were in a pre-K program, and the majority of those children were in half day pre-K.

It's good to see more personal stories on the lack of pre-k and its effect on the community, and this will hopefully lead to more questions...and more action.

NY Times national writer Kate Zernike published a funny, smart review of a new book called Parenting, Inc. by Pamela Paul that examines the phenomenon of well-off parents and the multi-billion dollar industry of doo-dads, devices, and distractions that are marketed as must-haves to anxiety-ridden new parents.

Pushed by a host of factors — the guilt and exhaustion of working parents, the dispersion of family networks that once passed knowledge from generation to generation, the pressure of admissions from preschool to college, and a culture that worships all things celebrity (including its offspring) — we are intimidated or bamboozled into buying all sorts of goods and services that we not only don’t need, but that may harm our children. Slaves to legions of professional advisers and predatory entrepreneurs, we are rendered unable to recall the advice Dr. Spock issued our parents: Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

Here's a link to a Salon Q&A with author Paul.

Not sure how widespread this phenomenon is outside of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. One would see $800 foldup strollers in pockets elsewhere--Chicago's Northshore, Boston's best suburbs, Orange County, California, Palo Alto for example. So, beyond an opportunity to caricature the rich (though secretly envious), I'm not sure how journalists can turn this trend into education stories. I guess it just shows the vast, vast gulf there is between Head Start parents on the one hand and those who send their privileged children to the preschools that charge more than many colleges on the other.

(Locked out of pre-school in New York City?)

New Yorkers of means have long been willing to subject their tykes to interviews, tests, and endless tours to secure a spot in prime private programs like the 92nd Street Y, where tuition for 4- and 5-year-olds is $23,000 this year.

Lately, a few new obstacles have been thrown into the mix for those who don't posess the money,connections and savvy for private programs.

Those seeking a saner route -- such as securing a spot in a public pre-kindergaten for an equally coveted spot in a kindergarten with a gifted and talented program -- may find themselves out of luck.

New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein last year said he hoped to equalize opportunities for gifted kindergartners by expanding and improving the testing process for admissions.

And it has expanded -- almost 24,000 kindergarten and first-graders took such examps this year compared to about 8,000 last year, according to a story in the New York Sun, which has been closely following his efforts.

The Sun revealed that Klein will now allow parents to opt out of kindergarten testing that would have cost the city about $1.5 million, at a time when schools are facing steep budget cuts and the city is experiencing a $99 million budget deficit.

Opponents who hated the testing program and argued that such tests were both inaccurate and potentially damaging cheered, but elsewhere in the city there is more admissions angst..

Parents trying to get their toddlers a spot in a public city pre-kindergarten are also running into roadblocks, according to Insideschools.org, a project of Advocates for Children of New York, which has been tracking problems and complaints.

Rejection letters are already out -- and being disputed by parents whose children have been shut out, even of their neighborhood programs where older siblings attend.

City school officials are apparently investigating all complaints.

(Poll finds deep concern with quality of education, preparation in U.S.)

At a time when many states are debating or having difficulty financing publicly funded pre-kindergarten, some troubling -- but hardly surprising -- news about U.S. education was revealed in a poll released by the Associated Press and carried in USA Today and other newspapers on Friday.

Half of Americans surveyed found U.S. Schools are doing only a fair to poor job of preparing students for college and the workplace, even though education ranks behind only the economy and gas prices as a top issue for Americans.

Another half said the U.S. education system is falling behind that of other countries, and six in 10 said the quality of American schools has declined in the past 20 years.

The AP survey of 833 adults and 854 parents, financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and conducted by the consumer information company Knowledge Networks, follows a poll of kindergarten teachers in 2004 that found kids who did not attend quality pre-kindergarten arrive at school unprepared.

National survey by the advocacy organization Pre-K Now shows strong voter support for a greater federal investment in state pre-kindergarten programs.

(Budget cuts can lead families toward crowded, ad-hoc quality child care options)

A story in today's Newsday did a great job of illustrating how painful New York State's budget cuts are for the working poor, who depend in many cases on subsidized day care so they can hold onto their jobs.

Reporter Michael Amon found a particularly telling anecdote: a single mother who earns just $300 a week as an animal caretaker at a shelter and will no longer get assistance with the $150 in child care costs for her 6-year-old daughter. The key quote?

"It seems like it would be easier for me to just quit my job and go on welfare, because I can't afford the day care,'' a mother in the story tells Amon.

The situation Amon described is one increasing numbers of families across the U.S. are finding themselves in, as fuel and food costs rise and state budgets are slashed. While the program in Suffolk County is the only one to freeze the program as a result of $51 million in state child care fund reductions, many others across the state are being forced to make reductions.

Reporters covering early childhood issues and state budgets alike should find people to illustrate the impact of reductions and cuts on both the state and federal levels.

Such stories - especially if they come with an explanation of why cuts were made, and what the consequences are for families who seek alternative, and often substandard child care -- are important to help the public understand what happens to our youngest children during tough times.

The Patriot Ledger of Quincy earlier this year did a great job in a three-part series of explaining how and why parents make such decisions and balance finances around child care in Massachusetts -- and how and why they, and the programs they choose, often fall short.

(Siblings shut out of pre-k can now attend the same school as their big brothers and sisters)

It's been a long haul for New York City parents whose children have been shut out of pre-kindergarten -- in many cases, from the same schools their older siblings attend. That's led to months of anxiety, soul searching, protests and letter writing campaigns. It's also led to a resolution, according to the New York Daily News.

Daily News staff writer Carrie Melago, who has done a fine job keeping tabs on this difficult story, reported today that the New York City Department of Education has decided to honor its commitment to place siblings in the same school where parents wanted them to be. It's going to be costly for the city -- they'll have to spend $1.4 million on additional paraprofessionals to staff what will now be larger pre-kindergarten classes of up to 20 kids.

The DOE's policy calls for giving preference to highly coveted pre-kindergarten seats to those with siblings in the same school. For unknown reasons, that did not happen in many cases. The kids who were accepted for the spots that were supposed to be earmarked for siblings will not be sent packing -- they will just be in larger classes, but with additional staff.

In a city where the average price of renting a two-bedroom was $5,265 in March (caveat: that figure is for Manhattan, not the other four boroughs, and is in a doorman building) and where parents scramble to identify and find places for their children in decent public schools, the pre-k mess added even more worries. Private pre-kindergarten in the city can cost upwards of $23,000 a year.. The admissions process can involve securing letters of recommendations for toddlers, long waits just to get applications and multiple interviews.

In New York, It helped to have the press keep the pressure on education officials by asking repeatedly how the issue would be resolved.

(The trends in child well-being are well worth watching, as they reflect larger social and economic changes.

While studies are often just a starting point for journalists, it was surprising to find so little coverage of the new Duke University ">study of children's well-being underwritten by the Foundation for Child Development.

The study, released at the New America Foundation in Washington D.C. last week, found that progress in American children's quality of life has stalled after an eight-year upward trend -- and that a worsening economy is likely to negatively affect U. S. children for years to come. Areas to watch range from infant mortality rates to publicly financed childcare and health and education programs.

One interesting finding -- the eight year upward improvement trend may have been related to a post 9/11 sense of common purpose in the country. Another important -- and somewhat frightening -- trend to watch will be the many ways an economic downturn may worsen conditions for children.

The study is an excellent starting point, and hopefully will spur coverage and original reporting about these trends throughout the U.S. One mention came in a Houston Chronicle blog item. The study raises critical questions and introduces data that should be localized by journalists.

At the very least, much of the data can be incorporated into important stories on everything from birth rates and infant mortality to pre-school enrollment -- which, by the way, improved according to the report.

Stories about the insanity of Manhattan parents who become distraught when there aren't enough $30,000 a year kindergarten spots for their offspring always make good headlines and copy. I certainly did my share of them over the years as a reporter covering New York City, and The New York Times weighed in on the trials of the under-5 set today.

But I wish just once a reporter would take the time to truly explain WHY public education options are shunned (class size? teacher quality? facilities? student population? after school programs?) and why-- and if -- the private schools provide a better education. What curriculum do they use? How qualified are their teachers and what kind of training did they receive? How are children evaluated? Are methods for teaching reading and math much different than what is offered in public school, and if so how?

There are some obvious advantages that private schools like the Mandell School, highlighted in the Times for its efforts to expand; have -- for example, a ratio of five teachers for each student, impossible to achieve in a public school

The story says the school focuses on "teaching to each student's strength and weaknesses,''' although there was no explanation of how that might work.

One reference point the Times managed to include -- the private school competitive chaos impacts only a very small percentage of parents in a city where some 1.1 million students attend pubilc school vs. 150,000 in private. But these stories would be so much better if tthey are more than a glance at the concerns of the wealthiest Manhattanites.

Why not use the opportunity to ask some probing questions about what makes private education so much different than public school? If there is such a rush to expand private school in the city, a question is begged -- what choices exist in the public school system that are driving this trend at a time when Wall Street revenues and bonuses are falling? Are all the reforms promised by New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein disappointing parents, or are many scared off by stories of how hard it was to get into a public pre-kindergarten this year?

Winnie Hu's story in the New York Times over the weekend highlighted a barrier to universal pre-kindergarten that's not often discussed: reluctance of local school districts to participate. The front-page story reported that a third of the states nearly 700 school districts do not have programs and that only 38% of the state's 4-year-olds are being served.

School district leaders quoted said state funding, which according to the National Institute on Early Education Research yearbook amounts to only about $3,500 per pupil, is inadequate. Space is a problem. Contracting with private providers to offer the services requires administrators to oversee the programs---a cost that would come out of the district budget.

But the piece also highlighted another issue that's gotten little attention from journalists: many affluent parents think school district pre-k programs are remedial and will do little to help their kids. As the superintendent in the affluent Bronxville district in Westchester County said, parents there prefer to send their kids to private programs. A map
of the counties around New York City showed that about half the district's on Long Island applied, about a third in Westchester, and only a few in Dutchess County (a horsey county to the north) and none in Putnam County (just north of Westchester.)

Journalists in other states where district's apply for state pre-k funds, such as Wisconsin, Tennessee, Illinois and New Jersey, might well find similar patterns.

I missed last Friday's Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by two policy analysts for the libertarian Reason Foundation that was headlined "Protect Our Kids from Preschool." But it's getting all sorts of attention in the blogosphere. (Sara Mead at Early Ed Watch hasn't weighed in yet. Like the rest of the world, she must be on vacation.) Just Google the headline and you'll get dozens of hits.

I'm trying to track down the research the Reasoners cite that they say shows preschool can be harmful for kids. I'll report back when I've read it.

The Journal blog called "The Juggle" excerpted the op-ed and set off a torrent of responses. Most comments on preschool articles elsewhere in the blogosphere are predictable, negative and positive. Negative comments are along the lines of: "Don't let the government brainwash your kids! Kids should be at home with their mothers! Mothers should quit their jobs and give up on frills!" Positive comments tend toward philosophizing about how good, caring societies spend money on children and education. Most of the comments here are thoughtful. The writers share the experiences of their children in preschool, which are positive. They also share how they decided to send their kids to preschool.

The authors of last week's Wall Street Journal anti-preschool opinion piece hung part of their analysis on research conducted by scholars at Stanford and U.C. Berkeley that included Bruce Fuller, Susanna Loeb, and Russell Rumberger. Here's a link to the actual paper, which found that the social skill development was slightly slower in children enrolled in preschool at least six hours per day. Here's a link to the actual paper.

Fuller sent this message regarding the Reason Foundation op-ed:

The study with Stanford's Susanna Loeb shows distinct gains from preschool centers for children from low-income families in terms of cognitive skills displayed in kindergarten. Very small gains for children from middle-class families were observed, which is consistent with other work by NICHD researchers and by Katherine Magnuson at U.Wisconsin. What's worrisome is that we found that after about six hours a day in a preschool center, a slow-down in children's typical rate of social-skill development was observed. The NICHD study of early child care and adolescent development found that this negative effect persists at a very small level of magnitude into the fifth grade. It's a small effect and one that is not clinically troubling (although it is statistically significant). It does suggest that preschools have lots of room to improve social skills, and that obsessing on preliteracy skills, or tightly aligning preschool "curriculum" with elementary curriculum and standardized tests may distract from social-developmental activities.

The authors of the WSJ commentary captured the meaning of our research, but they failed to emphasize the positive benefits of preschool centers for children from low-income families, and they failed to recognize that the slow-down of social development largely disappears by the end of elementary school, based on what we know empirically to date. My book, Standardized Childhood, details how this one-sided emphasis on narrow cognitive skills is playing out in parts of California and Oklahoma.

The New York Times' Tamar Lewin wrote about the Fuller et. al. research as well as two other studies of similar issues back in 2005. Here's the link (free login may be required).

Lewin put it in perspective with this quote from Jeanne Brooks-Gunn of Teachers College: "It isn't that these kids are more likely to have clinical levels of behavior problems...You're getting a slight uptick, but it's still in the normal range." See more from the article after the jump.

Roaming around the WWW in search of links to the Reason Foundation Wall Street Journal commentary I came across a Kindergarten, Pre-Kindergarten, and Head Start thread on a blog that was new to me: "Jerry Moore's School Talk" Jerry seems to compile full-text news coverage on a wide variety of education topics on the blog, without comment.

One of the articles he posts is an Aug. 29 Wall Street Journal piece on a British study that attributes significant advantages in early grades math performance to having attended preschool. The study is also interesting in that it attempts to isolate the
relative impact of various influences on children, such as a mother's education, father's education and so on. Interesting stuff.

Last night's hour-long comparative look at American education on PBS added to the growing renown of Harlem Children's Zone president and CEO Geoffrey Canada. The documentary had some scenes from the preschools HCZ operates and quotes Canada saying that his goal is to have the children who attend "on grade level" when they enter kindergarten. In his video on YouTube Canada talks about the need to take care of Harlem children from birth on, "at every developmental stage." Here's a video of Canada talking about the work of the HCZ.

Who Should Be Eligible For Pre-Kindergarten? Tune in to Hechinger Webinar November 12 at 1:30 p.m. EDT

The troubled economy is taking its toll on the middle class in many ways, including the cost of pre-kindergarten for the many who are not eligible for publicly funded programs.

Doug Besharov, American Enterprise Institute

Speakers will include Albert Wat of Pre-K Now, who is working on a major report on what the organization calls the "middle class squeeze." The report – which will be released during the webinar -- will analyze the financial challenge many families face in accessing and paying for high quality pre-kindergarten education and include case examples of actual families across the country.

Participating journalists will have an exclusive chance to speak with Wat, and hear expert

commentary and ask questions of Douglas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute and William Gormley of Georgetown University.

Reporters can sign up on line here

William Gormley, Georgetown University

A good place to read more on the topic comes in Jay Mathews' Washington Post piece this week.

As U.S. voters go to the polls and anxiously await the outcome of Tuesday's presidential election, Learning Matters , the production company covering education issues, is offering some expert advice to the next leader.

While education has not been top of the agenda in this historic campaign, Learning Matters posed a question to expert educators, parents, students and policy makers: What must the next president do to fix our country's education system?

There are some fascinating answer available at a click, ranging from Teachers College early childhood professor Sharon Lynn Kagan to author and scholar Mike Rose of the UCLA Graduate School of Education.

For more clarification on where Senators John McCain and Barack Obama stand on education you can also listen to the Oct. 21 debate between his education advisors or read the transcript..

High quality pre-kindergarten has become something of an elusive luxury for middle class parents, caught between rising prices, the housing crisis and stagnating wages, according to report released by Pre-K Now during a Hechinger Institute Webinar on Wednesday.

The report provides a great starting point for rich and worthwhile stories journalists should be telling about the hard choices middle class American families are making as they struggle to pay mortgages and credit card debt and worry about holding onto their jobs.

Families earning too much to qualify for state-funded programs but not enough for higher quality private schools in some cases are choosing substandard care or keeping their children out of pre-kindergarten altogether, said the report’s author Albert Wat, a policy analyst for Pre-K Now.

Middle-class families and their children need and would benefit from voluntary, high-quality pre-k indergarten programs funded by their states but they often don't have access to them, notes the report, which calls for states and the federal government to expand such programs. Wat found that the average middle class family of four, living in a state with a public pre-k program, spent about 29% of their income on pre-kindergarten for their two children.

"Middle class families are feeling increasingly pessimistic about their financial situationn,'' Wat noted during the webinar, which will be available on the Hechinger Institute's website.

The webinar also offered views from William Gormley of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, the author of a study on the benefits of Oklahoma's early childhood programs. Gormley's study found students experienced substantial gains and that the negative effects of family and environmental risk factors can be lessened by a strong preschool program.

Douglas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute, , pointed out that emphasizing the needs of the middle class can divert attention from the most needy children in the U.S. He said the federal government help poor children by strengthening federal Head Start programs.

The report comes at a time when 80 percent of Americans believe it is more difficult to maintain their standard of living than it was five years ago, and some twenty percent think their children will have a lower standard of living than they do.

Rising expenses and declining incomes are leaving more Americans in debt, although many still earn too much to qualify for state-funded pre-k programs.

The report's recommendations include a phase-in plan to expand pre-k to all children, using factors other than family income to define eligibility, creating full-day programs to meet the needs of working families and extending eligibility for voluntary pre-k to three year-olds.

The story Donna St. George of the Washington Post wrote just before Christmas serves as a powerful reminder about ways parents are sacrificing their children's education and safety in this troubled economy.

St. George found more children are being left home alone because their parents can no longer afford child care, and documented a spike in complaints about unregulated and informal day-care providers that operate illegally.

The trend St. George reported in the Washington D.C. region and surrounding suburbs is one every journalist who covers early childhood issues can examine in the communities they cover. Good sources include social service commissioners and child care operators who might report a new rise in vacancies among parents who can no longer afford to pay. St. George found more examples of children left alone from housing code enforcers who in one case found a kindergarten student hiding in a closet.

Families of all income levels are experiencing difficulty,as Albert Wat points out in "The Pre-K Pinch,'' an excellent resource for journalists.

St. George followed up with yet another powerful story a few days later: child welfare workers are also seeing a marked increase in child abuse and neglect cases in the worsening economy.

An important new federal research report out today looked at 500 research studies to conclude, just as most parents would, that knowing the alphabet, the sounds of letters, the colors and other basic nouns (car, tree, house, man) and being able to write one's name when a child goes to kindergarten predicts how well children will read later on. The six-year study also found that kids who can write individual letters when asked to do so, who can remember what they've been told, and who can break words down into their sound components do better, too.

The panel's report is careful to say that its conclusions are limited by the limitations of the studies it reviewed and more research is needed on critical issues. Even so, the report raises some interesting issues that go against conventional wisdom.

--The highest impact teaching methods involved a teacher teaching a child a literacy-related skill either one-on-one or in a small group. Letting children do art or play in the kitchen area or other activities are what get more attention from preschool teachers and experts. "Many of the high-impact instructional strategies involved activities and procedures different from those typically seen in early childhood classrooms," the executive summary of the report said.

--Experts often talk about the importance of having classrooms that are "language rich" or literacy rich." The panel found few studies that looked at how much that mattered. Not that it doesn't. But the panel could not find much of a research base for it.

--The report's authors also say that the learning patterns of poor kids and better-off kids are the same. Again, that finding goes against other research that has found that poor kids need focused, more teacher-directed instruction.

There are certainly other views on these issues. Deborah Stipek at Stanford, Susan B. Neuman at the University of Michigan, and the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia are sources I'd consult in writing about this important report.

As always, of course, get out into preschools and Head Start centers to talk to them about this.

Could cookies, milk and sandbox play give way to a regime of veggie sticks and jumping jacks?

Paige Parker of the Oregonian notes that food and exercise regimes may be the last thing on the minds of parents looking for day care. But perhaps they shouldn't be. One third of 2- to 5-year-olds enrolled in a state nutrition program in Oregon are overweight or obese in a state where about 53 percent of children younger than 5 are in child care settings, Parker reports.

Oregon officials have come to believe they can reduce obesity rates by targeting the way children eat and exercise outside of their own homes. A statewide obesity prevention task force is recommending the upcoming Legislature require state agencies to develop standards for healthy eating, along with the amount of time spent engaged in physical activity or in front of a screen while in child care settings.

Part of their thinking may have been influenced by a study of South Carolina children that found kids in child care settings were sedentary, on average, for 42 minutes of every hour.

They engaged in a little less than eight minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity each hour -- the equivalent of one hour of heart thumping activity for an eight-hour day, says Stewart Trost, one of the study's authors and now an Oregon State University professor.

Nationally, 26 percent of children that age are overweight or at risk of being overweight, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2006. So it is worthwhile finding out if any other states will follow Oregon's example. Journalists have been on top of the trend of public schools providing healthier lunches for students in elementary schools and beyond, but are any other states trying to put their youngest charges on a diet?

The presidential pre-school watch can officially begin.

The eyes of advocates, educators and many others are now upon President-elect Barack Obama's choice for education secretary as he initiates an early childhood agenda.

Chicago Schools Chief Arne Duncan made it clear that preschool expansion is among his priorities at a Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

Duncan said he wants to build on the successes of Head Start and Early Head Start and that he believes investment in early childhood is needed because "too many children show up at kindergarten already behind."

Before Duncan faced the Senate, the New America Foundation posed some excellent policy questions that will be useful for journalists to watch closely in the coming months.

The Senate hearing was hardly a grilling; Duncan received a warm reception and lots of applause throughout the hearing -- where his own pre-schooler read and drew.

The faltering economy is causing states to pull back on school funding promises, and outraged parents in South Florida are resorting to dramatic tactics -- including a mock funeral on YouTube -- to call attention to their priorities. In the video, children dressed in black place violins, books and soccer balls in a coffin with a headstone reading: "Here lies our dreams.''

According to a Miami Herald article, the parents are trying to send a strong message of protest to officials in the state that ranks 47th in the U.S. in education spending (per $1,000 of personal income) and has endured a nearly 16 percent cut to the education budget.

Florida is hardly the only state where shrinking state tax revenues are threatening education budgets. Planned pre-kindergarten expansions are threatened throughout the U.S; In Maryland alone, state funding for local schools could plunge by $69 million next year, according to the Baltimore Sun.

Early childhood advocates all over Florida are also concerned about more cuts to preschool funding, a Florida Times-Union story notes.

Just about every education journalist in the country will be reporting on this trend over the coming months. It's worth taking a look at how other states are handling their fiscal problems, from headline grabbing protests to potential solutions.

In the past, working parents had to rely heavily on word-of-mouth to learn the reputation of child-care homes and centers. In many instances they still do, but some states are now providing an online record system that in the best cases provide details on problems that can range from discipline to cleanliness and safety measures, according to an article in the Washington Post that looks at what both Maryland and Virginia are doing.

Twenty-two states now post online inspections and complaint records, and Early Stories would love to see newspapers delve into these databases and publish the results, which could go a long way toward helping working parents make the best decisions -- and could push providers to clean up their acts.

First Lady Michelle Obama made it clear she shares her husband's priority of expanding early childhood education programs on a symbolic first visit to the U.S. Department of Education.

She told employees: "I am a product of your work,'' the department's website proclaimed on Tuesday.

Obama chose the Department of Education for the first of her planned federal visits, according to CBS News, where she noted to applause that early childhood education programs would be preserved.

"....All of you know here the importance of investing in early childhood education, and imagine what we can do with millions of dollars of more investment in this area,'' she said. "We can expand opportunities in low-income districts for all students, and particularly for students with disabilities.''

The visit comes at a time when the Senate is debating President Barack Obama's $885 billion stimulus plan.

Early Stories took David Brooks of the New York Times to task recently for railing against Head Start without detailing what it is about the program he dislikes. Over the weekend, a more persuasive Times opinion piece by Douglas Besharov detailed why he believes Head Start has not filled its promise.

As the House and Senate debate different versions of the $800 billion plus economic stimulus package that could see Head Start losing the $2.1 billion originally earmarked for the program, it's important for the public to ask hard questions.

Besharov, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland,says that Head Start as it is managed now is failing children, although he pointed out that Head Start programs and centers differ widely. So
what does a truly effective Head Start program look like and what kinds of statistics are available to measure it? Who is keeping track?

Besharov acknowledges that there are some "really good,'' Head Start centers and urges the centers that are less than successful to follow their example. He also notes that this is difficult to do because Head Start advocates in 2007 "persuaded Congress to eliminate the program’s new National Reporting System, which would have measured how well individual centers were doing.''

That leaves education journalists, who are busy covering K-12 systems and rarely visit Head Start centers, with a large and largely unfilled responsibility to try and find out what is happening in their own communities.

How are the Head Start graduates faring down the line? Do teachers in K-3 and beyond note any kind of differences among the children who have been through such programs? How do they measure their academic success? Are any local studies or research available?

As the political and financial support waivers and the arguments continue, these questions will remain relevant and well worth asking. In the meantime, journalists tracking the early childhood provisions can check out the different versions in this excellent chart.

Steve Barnett of the National Institute for Early Education Research says Besharov is way off in his claim that Head Start costs $22,000 per child. He says the cost is $8,000. A fact sheet on Head Start from the Administration for Children and Families, which runs the program, says it costs about $7,300 per child.

Linda K. Wertheimer of the Boston Globe reports that a number of districts in Massachusetts are reconsidering plans for full-day kindergarten classes. Fifty of the state's districts do not offer the classes. Of those that do, more and more are charging parents for the extra time. In fact, the average fee has gone up 10-fold in four years, from about $300 to about $3,000. Massachusetts is one of the most affluent, high-tax, high-spending states in the country, a state whose students score well on both state and national tests. But it charges some parents for full-day kindergarten. This is a puzzle that just doesn't fit together in my head.

For journalists nationally, you should ask whether states are planning to cut back on these classes. We already know states' pre-kindergarten classes are feeling budget pressure. Now it looks like kindergartens are as well.

EarlyStories applauds journalists for looking into the connection between education and the economy, and it's natural that the New York Times would want to see how private schools and the parents who pay for them are faring. What new financial struggles might be emerging for the many formerly flush Wall Streeters and other now hurting professionals who once lined up eagerly to pay more than $30,000 a year for kindergarten?

Unfortunately, the lengthy article contained almost no description of how private school differs from public school (described as "unthinkable,'' in one particularly memorable passage). Private school is viewed as as "a marker of educational values, religious identity, social standing or class aspirations."

It's possible that such stories make fascinating reading, but at the same time EarlyStories expects a lot more. It's not exactly news that some families can no longer afford hefty tuitions, even if it may be comforting to pick up the newspaper and read about the money woes of others. What parents and the public really want to know is why the education at private schools merits such soul searching and angst, to the point where one unnamed (naturally) parent declared that her decision to choose private school amounted to "financial suicide.''

How big are class sizes at private schools compared with their public counterparts? (sometimes half as big). Are the teachers trained any differently? Are they hand-picked by the principal? Is their quality (a well known key to effectiveness) higher and if so, how is it measured? Is it the fields, facilities, sports and arts programs that draw parents to private school? Are new charter schools and other efforts to provide competition having any impact on private school enrollment? Also, what are the private school children learning, especially at a younger grade, that makes the education superior (if in fact it does) or at least so coveted?

Why not visit a public and private school kindergarten and ask to see the curriculum. How is it different? How do assessments differ? Can the backgrounds of the teachers be compared? Private school teachers often don't need to be certified and the schools can hire young, recent college graduates who don't have master's degrees. What kind of support and training do private school teachers get and how do they differ? How do parents view the quality of the education in both settings?

To the Times credit, the story did point out that of the more than three million families with at least one child in private school, almost two million of them have a household income of less than $100,000. Some are struggling just as mightily with tuition bills of less than $4,000.

Still, private school should not be seen entirely as a class entitlement issue, particularly as the recession economy blurs the lines. It's far more important to thoroughly compare and evaluate how such schools differ from public offerings. Cash-strapped families really want to know what their dollars are buying.

The social class issue, however, cannot be ignored. When asked about the financial struggles of parents and the additional requests for aid, George Davison, the headmaster of the Grace Church School, told the Times: “We’ll say, ‘You can’t really go to Vail this year and ask for financial aid.....And they look surprised and say, ‘But we already paid for the tickets!’ ”

Will long promised public preschool expansions survive the recession? That's one of the questions John Mooney of the New York Times posed and attempted to answer in an excellent piece that ran in the regional section. The story is a model for journalists who should be looking closely at planned expansions to see if they are in peril.

At a time when President Barack Obama is pushing preschool and early childhood education as part of his $787 billion stimulus plan, cash-strapped state officials are waiting to see how much money they will get and how they can use it. New Jersey is among the 38 states that provide public programs and already serves more than a quarter of all its eligible students. Under an ambitious expansion, the state had planned to provide all day-programs for low-income 3-and 4-year-olds by the fall, but it's unclear if they can proceed.

Other states planning pre-kindergarten expansions may also be scaling back, and are unlikely to ask for more taxpayer funding. The National Institute for Early Education Research has been keeping track, as has Pre-K Now . In addition to closely watching and examing state budgets when they are released, there is no substitute for visiting pre-kindergarten classes, like Mooney did. Visits will help journalists explain any progress teachers and parents see in the children, and provide a chance to observe what kinds of learning activities are taking place.

It's also worth noting, courtesy of the excellent Early Education Watch blog, that even programs that offer big gains for young children have been cut out of school budgets. Chicago's Child Parent Centers, for example, are now serving fewer than half of the original numbers of children, notes Lisa Guernsey of Early Education Watch.

Sometimes, it takes a video to explain why after school programs matter so much. This clip comes courtesy of TASC , or The After School Corporation, which works in New York and across the U.S. to "enhance the quality, availability and sustainability of comprehensive, daily after-school programs.''

The adorable video is filled with drawings from children in after school programs, and includes a rendition of New York City officials, including Schools Chancellor Joel Klein as Spiderman:

(Clockwise from top left corner, Joel Klein, NYC Commissioner of Youth and Community Development Jeanne Mullgrav, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott and Mayor Michael Bloomberg)

The video It was shown to an audience that came to honor financier and philanthropist George Soros in New York City earlier this week. It brought home how important such programs are for working parents -- and how much they truly mean to children who would otherwise have nothing to do and in many cases no supervision after school.

As education journalists examine President Barack Obama's stimulus plan it's important not to leave out what happens when class is out. After school programs are known to provide academic, emotional and social support for at-risk students, and provide a lifeline for working parents. Obama has said he wants to double spending on the main federal support for afterschool programs, the 21st Century Learning Centers program, "to serve one million more children."

The new promises and pledges come at a time when after school programs, from art to music to sports, are being cut in school disticts throughout the U.S., a story many newspapers are already following.

Journalists should visit after school programs, where children could be engaged in learning new sports, playing music, or creating art. They will learn quickly that some are better than others. Some schools and districts offer programs that are nothing more than babysitting and extra work for teachers, while others provide real instruction in skills from music to robotics. It's important to ask who is monitoring and evaluating the programs.

There are also many different kinds of different funding streams for programs. which often run in partnerships with foundations and nonprofits like TASC, founded in 1998 by Soros and the Open Society Institute (OSI) . Their $125 million investment helped build a network of daily after-school programs for New York City public school children that served 140,000 children last year.

The stimulus money may provide districts with more opportunities to expand existing programs, if deemed a priority. Who will get the contracts and who will insure that programs are high quality? What else might be cut to make way for after school programs? As existing programs are slashed, what is happening to the children who once depended upon them? Are more children being left home alone, a trend that Donna St. George of the Washington Post documented?

As Georgia mulls spending stimulus money, an advocate weighs in to try to keep the focus on the state's children, whom she says stand the most to gain.

Lauren Waits, policy director for Voices for Georgia’s Children, examined in a piece for the Daily Citizen how the stimulus money might be spent to directly improve the lives of children. Waits describes different ways the money can help, noting that the stimulus would provide Georgia with $82.8 million to subsidize child care for low income working families in a state that has never been able to serve all of its eligible families.

"These new dollars can help eliminate waiting lists for services and expand the eligibility level so more parents can be assured of safe, healthy environments for their children while they go to work,'' Waits wrote. The remarks come at a time when Georgia's Governor Sonny Perdue has said he might turn down hundreds of millions of dollars in federal economic stimulus money because he says it might not be in the state’s long-term interest to accept it.

I hope ABC News doesn't try to pass off its Friday night special, co-produced with the Reason Foundation, as journalism. One of the segments of the ABC special is on universal preschool, which the libertarian Reason Foundation opposes, loudly and often. That's fine. We like a plurality of views in America. Otherwise, how could Rush and the many far-right ideologues dominate talk radio? But how does a legitimate news organization, assuming that ABC News still is one, co-produce a report with a foundation like Reason that has been one of leading voices battling universal preschool?

The ABC report is based on videos produced by Reason.tv, which is an arm of the Reason Foundation. The videos are part of what Reason.tv calls "The Drew Carey Project." Yes, Drew Carey the comedian. I guess that if Al Franken can be a U.S. Senator, Drew Carey can be a cranky commentator. The main voice in the video is Reason's Lisa Snell.

Here are the reasons Snell and others give for opposing universal preschool:

1. Family day care providers will be put out of business. The person who makes this argument runs a family day care and says that she doesn't have time to get a bachelor's degree.
2. Universal standards, that would come with universal funding, would cause children to "lose out on the magic that is preschool."
3. Non-profit operators would lose out, because they couldn't compete with free, high quality preschool.
4. Choice and competition has given us successful day care operations and preschools and the government support would upset the preschool free market.
5. As she's argued many times, Snell says that if universal preschool worked so well then Oklahoma, which has one of the most successful such programs, would have higher school level test scores.
6. She also says that, if government funding were good for education, then the K-12 system would be more successful. That it is not, in her view, means that government spending will ruin preschool too.

It's a hodgepodge of ideas that celebrate unregulated markets, privatization, competition and so on. Haven't we been trying those ideas for the last 30 years? Early childhood education sector is probably the sector that has embraced these ideas the most. And one would have to be slavishly ideological to argue that it's worked out well so far. Much of the child care in this country is so bad that it's actually harmful to kids. Many family preschools are run by people with little or no formal education. Kids spend lots of time watching TV. Many state-funded preschools offer very poor quality as well. And, despite the bad quality, parents don't have a choice. They have to work. They need to have a safe place for their children. They hope that it is at least somewhat educational. Some private preschools are great, of course. So are some child care centers. But there aren't enough of them and middle-income families often can't afford them.

Edward Zigler, the Yale eminence grise of preschool and childcare, speaks in the Drew Carey video in favor of providing high quality preschool. He says studies find that the average quality of day care in the U.S. is between poor and mediocre. He says that getting kids ready for school is the nation's biggest challenge. He doesn't disagree that many public school need to improve. But he doesn't think that excuse should be used to refuse to help children get ready to succeed academically.

In the interests of full disclosure, the Pew Charitable Trusts, which supports universal preschool, has been a supporter of the Hechinger Institute. The Hechinger Institute does not endorse universal preschool. It does endorse, however, high quality journalism. And this is not journalism. And ABC News, and Stossel, shouldn't claim that it is.

EarlyStories blogged yesterday about ABC News' partnership with a libertarian foundation to produce a so-called "news" report that, guess what, espouses libertarian anti-government ideas. The item was based on a Reason.tv video on the same topic. The program segment (to air tonight) mainly features Mia Levi, the operator of a string of private preschools who is worried about having competition if the government supports preschool. Levi advertises herself as one of leading opponents of universal preschool in Southern California. (Here is the response from Pre-K Now, which advocates for universal preschool. Download file

Here is a link to one of those schools, the Manhattan Academy in Manhattan Beach, California. Manhattan Beach,
for those who aren't familiar with it, is a very affluent beach town in Los Angeles. A place where small homes sell for seven figures. That's her market. Her school is preschool-to-sixth grade. Not surprisingly, enrollment tails off after kindergarten, because, despite her comments in Stossel's report about failing public schools, the schools in Manhattan Beach are terrific. It's hard to sell a product for $12,000 or more per year when parents can get a much better product--i.e. the public schools--for free.

Here are some comments about the Manhattan Academy
posted by parents on the Web site Greatschools.net:

Individual teachers are great while they last. Director is very difficult to work for or deal with. Parents have no input and those who complain are troublemakers. Lots of drastic staffing changes happen at school year end, but parents can't comment or question, and those who dislike the way the school does things can just leave, since there's a pre-school waiting list.

Frightening turnover. Wonderful teachers/staff disappear suddenly leaving parents and kids stuck with an administration that cares only about $$. They put on a good show, until they rope you in, then forget you're paying the bills. Parents & staff jumping ship as fast as they can. Almost no kids left beyond upper primary (kindergarten).

The teachers at this school are dedicated and the curriculum is good, but unfortunately the school is run as a business first and educational facility second. Parent participation is not always appreciated by the directress.

Diane Flynn Keith, a homeschool advocate who runs an anti-public school listserv and an online site for homeschoolers, reported in a message to her listserv that the ABC producer for the Stossel show had contacted her and asked her to put together parents who would oppose universal preschool. She said the producer contacted her again today and asked her to stir up her base to have them comment on the Good Morning America version of the show . Here's what she wrote in her message:

just spoke to the producer and she tells me that they've
already received "a ton of negative feedback" on the ABC
website. She wrote, "Some positive feedback would be great!"
She said the more feedback - the more likely ABC would be to
revisit the subject.

The comments on the Good Morning America segment show that her base responded. Most of the comments on the site that support the show's conclusions say things like: the government wants to brainwash your kids and turn them into socialists, the government ruined K-12 and it will ruin pre-k, public pre-k programs will do nothing but test kids to death. One comment jumped out, though: "Most of the people commenting on this have never been in a good pre-kindergarten and have no idea what they're talking about."

Visit any preschool and you are likely to hear lots of praise and encouragement from teachers. The children, pleased with themselves, may smile in return.

Turns out, all that praise may not be such a great idea.

In fact, it might be furthering a new generation of narcissists, according to a BBC news report.

Carol Craig, chief executive of the centre for confidence and well-being in Scotland, recently warned educators that they are praising children too much, an idea she said had been imported from the U.S.

Craig told educators at a conference that "an obsession with boosting children's self esteem was encouraging a narcissistic generation who focused on themselves and felt entitled.''

EarlyStories remembers visiting a preschool where the instructor pointed out to parents that merely praising children for, say, drawing a beautiful picture of a castle wasn't terribly helpful. Instead, the praise should be targeted and specific; ie, "I like the way you drew that flag on top of the turret.''

That made some sense at the time. Craig is more about keeping educators on track as educators; they are not, she said recently "surrogate psychologists or mental health professionals.''

EarlyStories became curious about the whole issue of praise in the classroom and decided to see what some U.S. experts have to say. It would be interesting to hear what early childhood educators in the U.S. think of Craig's views.

A recent television report scratched the surface of the many issues journalists ought to start exploring when looking at the planned expansion of the federally funded Early Head Start and Head Start.

The story reported on the lack of qualifications of Head Start teachers in Orange County, Florida and noted that many teachers involved in Orange County's Head Start program may not be qualified. The story also cited recent test scores showing that Head Start students were falling behind others in the state and nation "in all the critical areas that help prepare them for elementary school.''

It did not delve into what will be a critical issue in the coming years as Head Start teachers will be asked to be certified with at least a bachelor's degree. The issue comes at a time when Head Start should face scrutiny by journalists and the public after President Barack Obama pledged an expansion of Early Head Start and Head Start using $5 billion in federal stimulus money.

EarlyStories has noted that few journalists bother to visit Head Start centers and report on their quality or effectiveness. A recent conversation with W. Steve Barnett of NIEER yielded some excellent questions and points journalists might think about when covering Head Start.

Barnett, Co-Director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University, suggested that reporters take a look at the extensive research available on Head Start, including a study by Westinghouse Learning Corporation and Ohio University, which concluded that Head Start produced few sustained educational benefits.

The study, Barnett noted, had "numerous methodological flaws and has been roundly criticized.''

Other studies are quite mixed; Barnett said the best long-term studies suggest "modest positive benefits across a wide range of outcomes including mortality and health."

Barnett urges journalists to take a look at the ongoing Head Start Impact Study, a nationally representative randomized trial that he said provides the most rigorous evaluation to date of Head Start’s effects.

Initial results from the study released in 2005 found very modest gains from participating in one year of Head Start, "with the largest impacts on parent reports of their children’s literacy skills and receipt of dental care,'' Barnett said in an email to EarlyStories. He added that while the results may be strong enough to justify the cost of Head Start on purely economic grounds, "even the most generous assessment of the results finds that the impacts on language and mathematics are disappointing and compare poorly to the impacts of other large scale preschool education programs as the programs providing the rationale for Head Start."

Barnett wants to know why the federal government has released no further findings from the study -- a question journalists may want to pose. He added several more good questions. For example, it how much of the Head Start budget is spent at the center level and classroom level and how much goes to particular aspects of the program’s mission such as: education in the classroom, health related services, and services to parents?

The Orange County story did not attempt to answer this questions, but it managed to create a dialogue in the community about what qualifications Head Start teachers -- who in this case earned little more than $13 an hour -- should have. In addition, it raised questions about the value of the program and the quality of what learning is -- or is not -- taking place.

EarlyStories has been keeping a close eye on coverage of the stimulus package these days. There's no shortage of news to follow; for example, Head Start and Early Head Start centers will soon get some of the $2.2 billion in promised funding to expand their services.

Yet in Alaska, one of just 11 states with no publicly funded pre-kindergarten, Republican Gov. Sarah Palin is poised to reject almost half of the federal stimulus money available. And this week, the once vice-presidential candidate got some unwanted attention about an early story of a different kind when Palin's teenage daughter's ex-boyfriend boasted that the governor likely knew the teenage couple -- who have a baby -- were sleeping together. The interview -- to be aired on Monday -- came during an appearance on the Tyra Banks Show, not usually a source for EarlyStories.

Just last month, Bristol Palin told Fox News the abstinence preached by her mother "is not realistic at all,'' and said she wished she had waited 10 years before having a child.

So why bring all this up, when the presidential election is long over? For this reason: Alaska's educators and advocacy community are pushing hard at the moment for the state to improve its early childhood offerings, and some were hoping that stimulus money might be used.

Alaska superintendents are lobbying legislators to reverse her decision to reject $172 million for Alaska's schools. Much of the money was designated for poor schools and children with special needs. Some educators had also hoped it would be used to expand pre-kindergarten offerings for low-income children in Anchorage, along with those with special needs.

Palin -- who called education "near and dear to my heart,'' while on the stump with Sen. John McCain - did not attend a summit meeting in Alaska last November on early childhood education, and her budget proposal this year called for only a state-funded pilot program to serve some 500 pre-kindergarten children, nothing more. Alaska has also fared poorly in the way it pays teachers.

Palin also exposed a bit of hypocrisy when did not hold back her criticism of President Barack Obama for his gaffe in "Tonight with Jay Leno,'. Palin, the mother of a special needs baby who once pledged to look out for special needs children, let it be know that was "shocked,'' by what she termed his "...degrading remark about our world's most precious and unique people.''

For the record, Obama compared his bowling score of 120 with being "like Special Olympics,'' and quickly apologized.

Both Democrats and Republicans have disagreed with her decision to turn down stimulus money in tough economic times, as have many Alaskans.

Some supporters have said they admire Palin's courage in turning down money they fear could expand government. It will be interesting to keep an eye on what happens to Alaska's education budget and to any of its limited pre-kindergarten programs as the stimulus story continues to unfold. Journalists should pay close attention, even as the more sensational story of Palin's unmarried daughter, ex-boyfriend and illegitimate grandchild grab the spotlight.

EarlyStories knows this much about Brooklyn: Certain neighborhoods are known for "stroller gridlock,'' a term that sometimes carries derision from those who cannot cross a street or find a spot in a local restaurant without tripping over the toddler set and their gear. As more and more families in recent years have decided to raise their offspring in New York City, the baby population of Brooklyn has exploded. A somewhat alarming piece in the New York Daily News found that the under five set in the popular Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope has grown by 35 percent since 2000.

It follows that the well educated families who chose this leafy, artsy neighborhood bordering the lovely Prospect Park would naturally want to send
their children to pre-kindergarten, hopefully to one of the better known public schools nearby.

As the neighborhood and its schools continue to grow more popular, the Department of Education in New York City has struggled to find a way for supply to meet demand.

The result? Enormous anxiety and one pre-k where 263 little applicants vied for just 18 spots. Nearby schools had spots for fewer than one in six pre-kindergarten applicants.

There is no question of support for public pre-kindergarten in this neighborhood, where there is also a shortage of spots in private nursery schools. More than 400 families signed a petition requesting an early childhood center, aware that the problem extends to kindergarten, according to the Daily News. Schools in the area are at 93 percent capacity.

The Department of Education told the Daily News they hope to add full-day seats, but were waiting to base decisions "on the availability of space and the demand from parents who apply this year."

EarlyStories understands the need to find space, but clearly the Daily News story -- and the many parents who signed the petition -- document the demand.

The downturn economy is taking a toll on grown-ups, with a confluence of stressful events: rising unemployment, a housing crisis, income cuts and an overall sense of fear that is permeating everyday life. But how are children faring? EarlyStories was reminded why journalists should be paying closer attention, after reading Bob Herbert's column in the New York Times this week.

Herbert didn't speak to any children for his column, nor did he focus on any particular family. He wrote rather broadly and stated some obvious facts that really could be the starting point for taking a closer look at the lives of children in just about any U.S. community: "Official statistics are not yet readily available, but there is little doubt that poverty and family homelessness are rising, that the quality of public education in many communities is deteriorating and that legions of children are losing access to health care as their parents join the vastly expanding ranks of the unemployed," Herbert wrote.

He went on to describe the efforts of a Dr. Irwin Redlener, a pediatrician who also is a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and president of the Children’s Health Fund in New York. Redlener is headed to Detroit this week with a medically equipped mobile operated by the Children’s Health Fund that will provide free health and dental care to children whose parents cannot afford to pay for care. Just imagine the stories he will hear along the way.

It's important for journalists to delve into the health and well being of children in these tough times, along with covering local school news and pre-k battles. What kinds of stories are teachers hearing? Have requests for free lunch doubled and even tripled? What are schools doing in particularly hard hit communities to help the many newly laid off families along with those that have struggled in poverty for years? And how are children faring? Are they displaying signs of stress, and are schools dealing with more discipline issues, more children coming to school hungry, angry and stressed? Are they looking for these signs and providing any kind of help or assistance?

Journalists who spend time speaking with and listening to children and their families right now will find some terribly sad -- but important-- stories, just waiting to be told. EarlyStories would like to hear them.

Stories about the insanity of finding the right nursery school spots in New York City have become more than legend; now they are the stuff of movies: Nursery University, a movie about the frenzied nursery school application process in Manhattan, is out in movie theaters this week.

But from the Christian Science Monitor comes yet another harrowing tale, one of Tokyo's nursery schoolers doing worksheets and attending special classes to win a seat in the best primary school.

According to the story, "many parents are ever more relentlessly seeking competitive advantages, especially as the economic downturn makes competition for jobs more intense."

The story quantifies the competition: "For the class entering Tokyo's Keio Gijuku Yochisha elementary school in 2008, for example, there were 2,468 applicants for 144 spots. In recent years, applicant numbers at Keio have steadily increased, up 10 percent over 2006."

And it includes a telling detail: what the mothers wear to the interviews are apparently as critical to getting in as a child's cognitive abilities:

"The school's counsel reaches beyond the merely academic," the story says. "In one corner of a classroom are enlarged photos of "winning" suits mothers wore to elementary school interviews and the names of the schools where their children were accepted. The mothers and children are clad in dark-colored garb, with what look like black Italian handbags and matching shoes. Fukuda says that many families custom order their suits so they won't look identical."

Of course, like many of the stories done about the insane competition for prestigious schools, this one mentions little about what the children actually learn or study once they get in. What's the quality of the education everyone is vying for? How are the teachers trained? What methods are used to get these little children to learn? If the right suit is worn and the kid gets in, what knowledge will they gain and how will that help them later on in life?

While New York City parents fume and fuss to find room for their toddlers in either publicly funded or private pre-kindergarten programs, suburban areas outside of the city are actually wondering where all the little ones have gone. A weekend piece in the New York Times found preschool administrators used to long waiting lists are now instead concerned about dips in enrollment.

“Normally, we have phones ringing off the hook from parents inquiring about the school,” Linda Jo Platt, the director of the Community Nursery School in suburban Westchester County told the New York Times. “This year, the phones have been dead.”

Quiet times for suburban pre-kindergarten program provide a stark contrast to the frenzy in New York City, where the population of children under the age of five is booming as more parents decide to raise city kids. Earlier this month, EarlyStories noted the struggle the New York City Department of Education is can't make the supply of quality public pre-school programs meet the demand. And the movie Nursery University depicts a city of scrambling parents, doing whatever it takes simply to get an application to a coveted private nursery school.

So what is happening in these leafy hamlets outside of Manhattan, and why will spots go unfilled? Parents reading The Times piece and waiting anxiously for a city spot might be tempted to pack up and move to an area where they could secure a spot with little more than a phone call and a checkbook. But, alas, it isn't so easy in this faltering economy, as the Times story noted. The slow real estate market is halting the usual piplline of parents with young children to the suburbs as many cannot sell their city apartments. And with more parents unemployed, parents are seeking scholarship money for full-day childcare programs in increasing numbers, The Times pointed out.

It will be interesting for journalists throughout the U.S. to examine this trend and see how enrollments outside major cities are doing, especially as some states are poised to offer more free slots as they expand public pre-kindergarten programs.

Moving to a neighborhood with a fine and reputable public school in New York City can be enormously complicated. Not just because of the cost, although it's difficult to find a decent family sized apartment in Manhattan near a good public school for under $4,000 a month in rent. The real difficulty has become getting in -- and no, we aren't talking about the same old tired competition for the $30,000 plus kindergarten.

We are talking about public schools in neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, TriBeCa and the Upper East Side that have become so popular and coveted that even people who specifically rented or purchased apartments directly across the street from them are finding themselves on waiting lists. Many of these schools are bursting with more than 28 children in a class and some of the buildings house middle school students several floors above.

EarlyStories has been watching and commenting on this trend for months, and the New York Times is really picking up on it now that parents anxiety has morphed into full blown fury. According to the Times, not the first news outlet to report the story, "middle-class vitriol against the school system — and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — is mounting."

All of this comes at a bad time for Bloomberg, who wants state lawmakers to renew mayoral control of the city school system after it expires in two months. In addition, the mayor is seeking an unprecedented third term, staking some of it on his education record and what he says is a turnaround of the largest school system in the U.S.

For more than five years, journalists in New York City have noted the trend of a growing middle class seeking to raise their children in the city instead of fleeing to suburbia. With competition and cost putting private school out of reach for many, it's natural that parents would turn to public schools and seek out those with the best reputations -- which are often in desirable neighborhoods, or have the effect of making a neighborhood desirable.

In the next few weeks, rallies, letter writing campaigns and protests will heat up in New York City and the mayor and Department of Education will be pressured to find spots for these families.

There is likely one group applauding this trend -- suburban realtors with lots of inventory on hand in areas outside Manhattan with fine public schools.

Universal Pre-K for all? Not so fast, says Chester E Finn Jr., a former assistant secretary of education and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

At a time when politicians from President Barack Obama to governments are pushing the concept that all American children should receive at least a year of government funded pre-school and being applauded for their position, Finn is urging skepticism in a new book, entitled: "Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut."

"For all its surface appeal, universal preschool is an unwise use of tax dollars,'' Finn writes this week in the Washington Post. "In a time of ballooning deficits, expansion of preschool programs would use large sums on behalf of families that don't need this subsidy while not providing nearly enough help to the smaller number of children who need it most. It fails to overhaul expensive but woefully ineffectual efforts such as Head Start.''

Finn's views are likely to be challenged and questioned in the coming weeks -- as they almost always are. Yet it's important for journalists covering pre-kindergarten to be aware of arguments against universal pre-kindergarten when reporting on both the new federal and state push for early childhood education expansion. The story of pre-k should not be told entirely from the viewpoint of advocates and politicians.

As EarlyStories often points out, there is no substitute for visiting existing programs and looking for research on their impact. If none is available, journalists can ask kindergarten and educators in early grades what they've noticed about students who have been enrolled in pre-kindergarten programs vs. those who have not. Also, what are the costs associated with universal pre-k and who is monitoring the quality? Who benefits the most? And given the financial bind many states are in, what will other education programs have to be sacrificed to expand pre-K?

More than half a million children school-aged and younger are suddenly stranded at home due to swine flu concerns, leaving parents who in many cases are already experiencing financial hardship scrambling. On very quick notice, they must find alternative child care settings or leave children home alone because they can't miss work. As the New York Daily News pointed out, parents who work in hourly-wage jobs or who are off the books are hurt the most because they can't easily take time off.

The sudden and mysterious spread of the virus is exposing the lack of back-up care and safety nets for families throughout the U.S. With schools closed amid fear of spreading disease, alternative child care settings aren't easily arranged. In Texas, children were fighting cabin fever earlier this month while their schools were being disinfected.

Some 14,000 New York City children are home this week and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked companies to show some flexibility and allow parents to take time off if they can; he's said that decisions to close schools must be weighed with inconvenience to families.

Texas families have been scrambling as well, with many schools closed for two weeks. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has urged teachers and parents to continue learning at home, via a series of government websites described here.

The National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies compiled resources for families, but the emergency situation many find themselves in now won't be solved by a web site. It's not entirely clear that closing schools will stop the spread of flu, but one thing is clear: once schools are shut down, working parents have to find instant child care solutions for as long as the doors remain shut.

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.

At a time when early childhood advocates are hailing a new federal investment in pre-school education, the economically depressed state of Ohio may be poised to roll back public programs due to state budget cuts.

Journalists covering the story or watching this state will have their work cut out for them, because the picture is confusing and changing quickly. In February, news organizations were reporting that Ohio would receive some $83 million to Headstart and preschool programs.

But just last week, the Associated Press reported the early childhood programs in the state would be cut by $244 million in the two-year budget plan approved by the Ohio House.

Sen. John Carey, Republican chairman of the Finance Committee, told the AP that the state did not get any stimulus money for early childhood education and that the state could not afford them.

So what is happening here? Journalists have to continue to take notice and sort out the fiscal realities from the budget posturing and politics. The Akron Beacon Journal published an editorial earlier this month lamenting cuts that will stall the agenda of Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, who has pushed for universal all-day kindergarten. and initiated other early childhood initiatives.

The Plain Dealer is following GOP efforts to slice $1 billion from the state's $56 billion budget this week, while early childhood advocates are speaking out against the cuts. Pre-school programs can prevent dropping out in years to come, and help lead to lower arrest rates and higher incomes for years to come, they maintain. As budget negotiations continue this week, the picture may change yet again for early childhood education in the state.

Journalists are about to start hearing a lot more of the phrase "The Race to the Top.'' It's important to start examining what this phrase means, because it could start taking on a life of its own the way "No Child Left Behind,'' did and creep into the lexicon of education reporting without explanation.

The term has been used by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to describe $5 billion in the stimulus bill aimed at backing new approaches to improve schools and push states to raise their standards and reward top teachers. According to the Democrats for Education Reform, it represents "a historic opportunity to establish clear reform priorities and to back them up with significant resources to bring change to America's schools.''

So what would it mean for pre-k programs? DFER posted an issue brief this week that is a helpful guide for journalists trying to understand the new federal investment in early childhood education (which is also the subject of a webinar the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media will hold on June 24; sign-up here.)

The brief, written by Sara Mead, who writes the excellent Early Ed Watch blog, calls for states "to enact policities to encourage the creation of pre-k charter schools to deliver high-quality early education to 3-and 4-year-olds,'' and gives several good examples of how such programs would work and what states can do.

This is a relatively new idea and one worth watching and asking about. The brief provides examples of existing programs that get little coverage, including The Accelerated School in Los Angeles, KIPP McDonough 15 in New Orleans, and dozens of charter schools in Washington, D.C. that she believes provide high-quality learning and help improve outcomes for disadvantaged children later on.

Mead also notes an important trend that many journalists who are covering pre-k battles in their states are familiar with. Even though states have more than doubled spending on pre-k since 2002, "the current economic downturn and state budget shortfalls threaten this progress; nine states have already announced cuts to their state pre-k programs and more are likely to do so in the coming weeks,'' the brief notes.

The state of Georgia spent more than $216 million on a program to help low-income children get ready for kindergarten, and yet state auditors cannot find any proof that the program is working, according to a story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The program in question is aimed at “at-risk” children -- a number that applies to about 40,000 of the 78,000 children enrolled in the state's pre-k program and whose families qualify for welfare or other similar programs.

That story raises questions about the audit and its methods in Georgia, which in 1995 became the first state in the country to provide pre-k to all four year olds in the state who want to participate.The story notes that state auditors could not evaluate how effective the program is because it did not track how well the children served in the program performed in kindergarten.

The study follows yet another inconclusive study by Georgia State University researchers in 2005-06, although other studies have described many benefits and Georgia is still considered a leader in early childhood education.

What is happening in these programs? Along with auditors, journalists need to ask questions about the quality of programs in the state. Why aren't children being tracked more efficiently to yield answers and what kind of research is needed to make sure answers are forthcoming? According to Pre-K Now,
Georgia served some 74,000 four-year-olds during the 2008-09 school year. What difference will it make to children now that the state is requiring all teachers to have a child developement associate certificate>? How will programs that serve poor and needy children be evaluated in the future so lawmakers, taxpayers and the general public understand more about how they are working?

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.

It's difficult to imagine just how much parents of children with disabilities depend on programs that help their children integrate with their peers. A quote in the Chi-Town Daily News of Chicago brought it home, from a father describing how Rebecca, his four-year-old daughter with Down syndrome, interacts with her classmates in a public preschool program:

"The key thing comes when she interacts with other kids," says Harry Hoynes, Rebecca's father. "They learn patience, and that other kids their age are different, too. They come to these wonderful understandings at the age of 4 and 5."

The reporter thought to interview Rebecca's dad to illustrate what might happen to pre-school programs where disabled children learn alongside those who are not, and whose programs could be cut under a proposal in the Illinois General Assembly. The state faces a $9 billion deficit.

The reaction to the cuts?

"Most of us who work in early childhood education, and all of the human services, are deeply distressed," says Barbara Bowman, director of early childhood education at Chicago Public Schools. "People don't realize how much of a blow this is going to be."

Bowman was a logical person to seek out for comment. In addition to her longstanding role as an award-winning childhood education expert and author, she is a co-founder of the Erickson Institute , a top graduate school for training child development experts.

But EarlyStories applauds the journalist at Chicago's nonprofit online newspaper for also finding Rebecca's father, and reminding the public that when such programs are cut -- a trend that can be found throughout the U.S. in this struggling economy -- the consequences are real and painful for children and their families.

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 keeps a sharp eye out for trends and issues in early childhood education, but every now and then comes across something we hadn't really thought about before. In this case, we stumbled upon a column and almost dismissed it as a cute and folksy item in a local newspaper. But then the idea moved beyond heartwarming and made a lot of sense: senior citizens, with children long grown, pushing for an investment in early childhood education as a way of looking out for future generations.

The author, Shirley Caudill, is a former newspaper editor/publisher and longtime freelance columnist who has lived in Kentucky for 40 years, and belongs to an organization called "Seniors4Kids. She makes the following argument in the Times Tribune:

".....the first five years are imperative to give a child a heads-up in the learning process..so that our youth will be prepared to compete in the adult world. We don’t want the next generation to remain low on the totem pole in education. A head start is so important!"

If more senior citizens felt this way, journalists wouldn't spend as much time as they do covering school budget battles where taxpayers without kids or whose children have grown consistently vote down school budgets.

For more on Kentucky's pre-school program, check out Pre-K Now or NIEER., both of which post detailed profiles of the state's pre-kindergarten progress.

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.

Rhode Island, the smallest state in the U.S. is about to launch a small pre-kindergarten program for low-income children. It will be the first of its kind in a state that is one of just 12 in the U.S. that don't offer public programs. A story in the Providence Journal of Rhode Island notes that the tiny state is starting small: just four to six classrooms taught by qualified teachers.

The Journal included an interesting quote that goes to the heart of pre-kindergarten education: Quality counts. Larger states with free programs have run into questions and concerns about the quality of their offerings for years.

“Quality is everything,” Robert G. Flanders Jr., chairman of the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, told The Journal.. “We are not just talking about daycare, but a quality preschool environment where learning takes place according to certain standards. So it’s terribly important that any program we initiate has quality factors built in and has certified instructors who have the appropriate skills to deal with early learning, and not just people who are good babysitters.”

It will be interesting to watch efforts in Rhode Island, a hard-hit state economically that managed to find $700,000 in the state budget for the program.

Jennifer Jordan of The Journal raised all the right questions in her solidly reported story. But it would be interesting to see stories and hear from journalists who have uncovered quality issues in their state programs. How is success measured? What works and doesn't, and how will the state keep track of progress and problems?

EarlyStories would love to see (and post) some examples.

While EarlyStories is pleased to see attention focused on the Harlem Children Zone and Geoffrey Canada's efforts to combat poverty with education, it would be nice to see some other examples of early childhood programs that work. Do they not exist, or are education journalists too caught up with other stories to visit them? What research is available on such programs?

Here's why it's important:President Barack Obama has said to be a great admirer of Canada's model, and he hopes to replicate it in 20 cities, according to a front page article in the Washington Post. A closer look at just about every aspect of Canada's quest can be found in Paul Tough's excellent new book, "Whatever it Takes,'' which should be required reading for anyone who is covering early childhood issues.

The Post piece laid out Canada's approach, which starts in the womb and includes programs "that begin before birth, end with college graduation and reach almost every child growing up in 97 blocks carved out of the struggling central Harlem neighborhood,'' according the the Post story.

The U.S. Department of Education is poised to offer applications for grants that could expand the program in 20 cities, in so-called Promise Neighborhoods. Some $10 million in the 2010 budget has been set aside for planning.

It will be interesting to see what other kinds of programs emerge from this and whether the Harlem Children's Zone can be replicated or emulated elsewhere.

Depression seems to be a big media topic lately, and not just the economic kind. The New York Times Magazine in May featured a front page article by Daphne Merkin entitled: "A Long Journey in the Dark: My Life with Chronic Depression. The Today show just featured a segment on anti-depressants. And now comes a new study reminding us that pre-schoolers also get depressed.

Dr. Joan Luby of the Washington University School of Medicine found that depression among preschoolers is a real disorder, and that preschoolers with depression were four times as likely to develop a major depressive order.

"Our study is the first available, to our knowledge, to follow-up and describe the 2-year course of preschool major depressive disorder in a large systematically assessed sample,” Luby was widely quoted as saying. The study, published in n the latest issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, got a lot of play and made for some alarming headlines.

EarlyStories would like to see some follow-up. The study, for example, did not examine how depression is treated in children, or address any controversy about medication. It said little about what course of action teachers should take when they see children who exhibit symptoms of depression.

At least one article about the study voiced some skepticism: University of Massachusetts psychologist Lisa Cosgrove said she is skeptical about the accuracy of labeling preschoolers as depressed, because diagnostic tools for evaluating mental health in children so young aren't as well tested as those used for adults.

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

At a time when many states are having to scale back on long-planned pre-kindergarten expansions, Oklahoma is taking advantage of $15 million in stimulus funds to help support three new early childhood centers, according to published accounts.

Oklahoma is is indeed facing tough fiscal times. Gov. Brad Henry has noted that state revenues are declining, but has pushed for the early childhood programs with the help of the Kaiser Family Foundation and matching funds from the Tulsa Public Schools.

Oklahoma has long been thought of as a leader in early childhood education, especially the state's emphasis on enrolling disadvantaged children. It will be interesting to see what kind of impact the early childhood education centers will have on education in the state in the years to come.

Henry is making some pretty big promises, and the press -- along with researchers -- are going to have to do a lot of follow-up work to get a sense of both the quality and the impact the new centers will have in Tulsa and beyond.

"They will be the first of their kind in the nation," Henry said during his annual state-of-the-state speech to the Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce this week, according to the Tulsa World. "Tulsa will continue to be a leader in early childhood education."

What kind of a leader remains to be seen.

EarlyStories is keeping a close eye on efforts to bolster early childhood education in North Dakota, one of only 12 in the U.S. that does not offer any state-funded programs. The state has long resisted the idea, so any conversation around the concept brings out advocacy groups in force.

That is what happened last week at a summit organized in Bismarck by the Head Start State Collaboration Office, according to an article in The Bismarck Tribune.. The story pointed that out only about 8,725 children out of some 40,000 children in this rural state are enrolled in either a nursery school or a special program such as Head Start.

Those are very small numbers, so it will be interesting to see what could change as a result of these early conversations. Will North Dakota continue to resist funding programs at a time of unprecedented federal interest and involvement in an early childhood agenda? Will it embrace President Barack Obama's belief that what happens in the early years pays big dividends for education later on?

It's particularly interesting to watch what is happening in North Dakota, a state where kindergarten teachers backed a proposal to require youngsters to be a bit older when they enter first grade. If they get better preparation beforehand, will the age matter as much?

Tough economic times have made the concept of back-to-school shopping particularly painful for needy families. That's why it was at first heartwarming to read a New York Daily News story about a $200 gift to New York families who receive food stamps or welfare, courtesy of billionaire philanthropist George Soros. The gift was supplemented with $140 million in federal stimulus funds.

The News story interviewed parents who are plenty grateful for the cash, and who were planning to buy backpacks, school supplies, notebooks and clothing they could not otherwise afford. The money is intended to be a grant for children ages 3 through 17, and it comes with no restrictions.

But EarlyStories stumbled across one troubling quote from Ana Barcos of Corona, Queens, where according to the story some 200 people waited outside a check-cashing business.

"Times are really tough right now. The situation is bad with money. So it's easy to want to use the money for other things," Barcos said.

How can anyone be sure just how the money will be used?

Critics have complained that money should be used instead to create jobs or reduce property taxes, but EarlyStories wonders instead why the money wasn't instead doled out as gift certificates, to make sure the littlest learners come to school prepared with the supplies they need to learn.

Press attention on President Barack Obama's early childhood education agenda focused much on a perceived expansion of Head Start, the national program that promotes school readiness and also provides services such as health and nutrition to enrolled children and families. But in these increasingly tough economic times, with states locked in budget battles over federal and state resources, some Head Start programs are in big trouble, according to an excellent article in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

EarlyStories has often noted the lack of attention Head Start gets from journalists. When any early childhood program that families depend upon shut down or reduce their hours, the press should take notice. A quote in the story from a father named Nathanael Pomiabo -- worried that his son would lose out on all that he gained by attending a Head Start program -- summed up the importance instantly:

"I see the difference in him," said Pomiabo, 31. "It's all changed how much he's learned and how much he wants to learn."

The waning days of summer have made at least one expert nostalgic for more play time. Stuart Brown, founder and president of the National Institute for Play, (yes, there is such a thing) blogged in the New York Times about the importance of play, and he particularly lamented the amount of time spent in front of electronics:

"Physically engaging play is actually more fun than the virtual sort, and the enlivenment one gets from it can transcend the allure of sedentary life in a two-dimensional, electronic world,'' Brown wrote.

The whole concept of play is ripe for exploration in the post No Child Left Behind Era. It's always interesting to hear the shifting views of educators. Also, in a time when schools are being forced to make budget cuts, playground time and sports can suffer. What will the impact be on learning? And what do schools consider play -- is it just free time, or purposeful, part of the learning experience of early childhood activities? Are big changes in store for playtime? Do parents want their children to have more playtime or less so they can learn more? All these questions can be incorporated in back to school stories.

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.

Colleen Wixon explored at a very important issue this month when she examined what happens to children who don't attend pre-school -- in many cases because of the economic situation they find themselves in. Wixon's story in the Indian River Press Journal of Vero Beach, Florida, laid out the many reasons why children who skip preschool are behind socially once they enter kindergarten, and described how the hard-hit Florida communities she covers are feeling the impact of the economic downturn.

"Non-working parents are keeping their children home. Preschools and day care centers are seeing a decline in enrollment. Many day cares and preschools along the Treasure Coast are closing because of that declining enrollment,'' Wixon reported. Those facts alone are newsworthy, but she also reached out to experts who could help families understand just why and how early childhood education is important before the start of kindergarten.

The lag in pre-school attendance in the Vero Beach area comes at a time when more than 300 families are on the waiting list for subsidized child care in one of the counties Wixon covers; in another 800 families are on a list.

EarlyStories believes it is more important than ever for journalists to explain what should happen in a high quality pre-school so that parents who are strapped economically can make the best choices and understand the consequences -- and the choices.

It would also be useful for readers to hear from kindergarten teachers on their experiences.
Do they notice a big difference in students who have been to pre-school vs. those who have not? And what difference has Florida's free, voluntary prekindergarten made in terms of school readiness?

Every now and then, EarlyStories stumbles across an early childhood story that truly stands out. A piece by Sara Carr last week in the Times Picayune of New Orleans is a great example for many reasons, including solid writing and reporting that included a great deal of context. The story described in detail the plight of many parents attempting to find a decent education for its little learners in a city still recovering from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina.

A quote from one frustrated parent summed up the situation perfectly: "The low cost of living in New Orleans is all well and good, and works fine if you want to own a dog, " a parent told Carr. "But it's not so great if you want to send your child to prekindergarten."

Carr described how some 1,300 New Orleans children are languishing on a wait list for the federal programs Head Start and Early Head Start in the city, and how early childhood education has managed to take a backseat and become "the Achilles heel of the educational-reform effort in New Orleans,'' according to one professional.

Carr also did a masterful job of summing up two major trends -- and a major dichotomy -- in early childhood education. One is a willingness among states to invest in prekindergarten programs and a recognition that it can help students later on. The second involves the harsh economic reality of a recession that is forcing many states to scale back planned expansions.

Carr's story has another unique context, as she points out: Post-Katrina New Orleans is "widely considered the nation's school-reform capital of the moment.''

Journalists who write with context and authority tell better and bigger stories, and that is what Carr did. It's worth the extra effort.

Diane D'Amico of the Atlantic City Press in New Jersey went where few journalists venture last week, when she took a close look at New Jersey's state nurse family partnership program. The story notes that by age three, children from low-income families "are lagging behind their middle- and upper-class counterparts in vocabulary development," and describes a program that is attempting to reach younger children.

It showed how a nurse with the program worked with a young mother throughout her pregnancy, encouraging her to graduate from high school and providing tools and tips, including a book, to help the mom give her baby a jump start on learning.

The issues D'Amico points out are timely, in part because President Barack Obama pushed an agenda that included an emphasis on early education. The higher education bill the House of Representatives passed in September includes $8 billion over eight years for the Early Learning Challenge Fund -- aimed at improving programs for infants, toddlers and preschoolers, D'Amico points out.

Journalists should be on the lookout for ways this money will be spent. D'Amico wrote about the state's nurse family partnership program, and Family Success Centers that provide various services; she even attended a Baby Bounce program at the Atlantic City library. Similar programs exist or may be starting throughout the U.S.

EarlyStories suggests reaching out to see what kinds of new programs or money might be available for youngsters, even before the enter pre-school. Who are the funders? What is the agenda and the reach? Are families taking advantage -- is there a documented need, or waiting lists? The EarlyEd watch blog is also a terrific resource for following early childhood policy and funding developments.

From one of the new websites aimed at covering education came a comprehensive and well reported piece that put together the many challenges facing early childhood education in Pennsylvania, specifically Philadelphia. The Notebook describes itself as "an independent voice for parents, educators, students and friends of the Philadelphia public school system."

The story by Dale Mezzacappa, a former longtime education reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, described the many obstacles to getting more young children into pre-kindergarten classes in the city and the state, along with providing a progress report that detailed many state developments.

Despite an increase in quality and access, Mezzacappa wrote, "early education options in the city remain a confusing hodgepodge. While spending for child care subsidies has gone up, less than half the eligible low-income families actually get them, and thousands are on waiting lists."

The lengthy, well reported piece reminded EarlyStories of what is missing in education coverage, as beat reporters struggle in many cases to cover both multiple school districts and higher education at the same time. Too often, important developments and stories about what happens even before children enter a classroom are neglected.

Mezzacappa's piece contained important information about an array of programs and services, described lengthy waiting lists for slots and detailed confusion and uncertainty that exists around early childhood education. She performed an important public service -- one that is more needed than ever as newspapers cut back on education coverage.

One of the country's top experts on early childhood education made an interesting observation during a discussion of equity in after school programs this week: Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, the co-director of the
National Center for Children and Families noted at a forum sponsored by the Campaign for Educational Equity that after school programs have a lot to learn from what has happened with early childhood programs in the U.S.

Brooks-Gunn, the Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development at TC, found similarities while working on study of after school programs that "remind me of early childhood education, like a time warp.'' Both are moving toward improving quality as well as "continuous improvement.''

The packed forum at Teachers College included observations by TASC (The After School Corporation) and prompted an interesting discussion of how and if after-school programs can level the playing field for disadvantaged youth -- especially because their participation in such programs is so low.

The forum came during a week after school programs or the lack of them has been in the news, due to a report by the After School Alliance , which found that some 15 million children are alone and unsupervised after school, and that the parents of some 18 million would enroll their children in after school programs if they were available.

EarlyStories enjoyed the discussion, especially because it prompted an opportunity to think about where early childhood education has been and where it is going in the U.S. After school programs, like early childhood education, can play an enormous role in the lives of children, yet neither issue gets the attention it deserves from the media.

Remarks made at the forum also led to the re-discovery of an important resource for education journalists and others trying to get a helpful overview and handle on early childhood issues: a June 2009 report entitled "American Early Childhood: Preventing or Perpetuating Inequality?"

The report is authored by Brooks-Gunn' colleague, Sharon Lynn Kagan,, who is also the Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Early Childhood and Family Policy at TC and with Brooks-Gunn co-directs the National Center for Children and Families.

A re-read of Kagan's report served as a reminder of why what happens in the early years is so critical right now. The report spells out both important historical developments in early childhood education as well as sketching out the urgency of the current landscape.

As Kagan noted, "...expectations and investments are soaring now as never before....domestically, early childhood is on the agenda of every governor; bills are in the hopper in early every state legislature...internationally, other nations look to America to see if and how we are education our youngest children."

With all the attention focused on the eating habits of New York City's public school children, from bake sale restrictions to new vending machines, EarlyStories was struck this week by an over-the-top example from, of all places, Great Britain.

It seems that parents at a school outside of London can actually log onto a computer to check up on what their children had for lunch, according to a story in the Daily Mail.

Children who attend St John's Church of England School are issued photo ID cards when they buy their lunch, the story notes. A list of all the items are then sent to a website, and parents can then log on and see if their children ate, say, nothing but chips and cookies.

A school official in charge of the program defended it to the Daily Mail: 'This isn't a case of Big Brother but we think it is important that parents can see what their very young children are eating during the day so that they can help them make better nutritional choices,'' the official said.

It's not clear how such a system would go over in New York City, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been somewhat obsessed with health issues, and where school vending machines will soon contain no sodas, candy or sweetened drinks.

Studies have shown the importance proper nutrition plays in early childhood academic success, but the electronic check-up idea the London area school is trying has yet to show up in the U.S. -- or has it? Are extreme measures needed to make sure our littlest learners are getting the nutrition they need?

While the U.S. is pushing early childhood education and an expansion of publicly funded pre-kindergarten, some in Britain are politely saying no thanks. A BBC report this week shed light on a review panel's recommendation that children should continue to learn by playing, and not start a formal education until they are six.

The review found no evidence 'that an early introduction to formal learning has any benefit,'' and noted that "it can do some harm."

The BBC has asked for, and is posting, responses from around the world on the question of what the right age is for children to begin formal learning. The responses should provide a fascinating glimpse at how this issue is viewed around the world.

Tiny Rhode Island is a struggling state economically. The unemployment rate of some 13 percent in September is among the highest in the U.S. The state's economic woes are outsized. That is one reason EarlyStories found it so refreshing to see the excellent story the Providence Journal ran this week describing life inside the state's first publicly funded pre-kindergarten program. Education perhaps cannot save the economy immediately, but it's important to continue reporting on education developments in the toughest of times.

The story did everything a well reported piece on pre-kindergarten education should do. The reporter spent time in the classroom, observing children and talking with teachers. The story included the perspective of researchers and state officials. It described how students were admitted and included interviews with parents on the difference pre-kindergarten is making in the lives of their children.

Readers came away with a much better understanding of how and why such programs matter, a story even a state in the grips of an an economic crisis can embrace.

"In Providence, research suggests that as recently as three years ago, almost a third of children arrived in kindergarten ill-prepared to learn their letters,'' Gina Marcris wrote. She added later on that the program "is designed to build bridges between home and school by regularly reporting progress and educating parents about the purpose of their children’s play.''

It hasn't been easy to get such a program off the ground in the tiny state, which was previously one of only 12 in the U.S. without a public program. Previous stories have noted the difficult fight the state had to get the pilot program started.

The strategy tells an important story: Half-day pre-kindergarten programs pose too many obstacles for working parents, and as a result classroom spots for children who might truly benefit from early childhood education in New York City may never be filled.

The Department of Education in the city is so anxious to find children for some 5,400 pre-K spots for 4-year-old by Oct. 31st they are advertising on Craig's List, according to a story in the New York Daily News. The story noted that the city faces a deadline of Oct. 31 for enrolling kids who turn 4 years old by Dec. 31 or it will lose federal funding; last year the city forfeited $35 million allocated by the state after it fell short of enrollment by 3,200 spots.

To its credit, the city realized that the half-day slots remain empty because working parents simply cannot get their kids to school and back for programs that are just half a day. This year, the city funded an additional 414 full-day seats, and some of these are being advertised on Craig's List as well.

The strategy may or may not work, but questions remain: why did the city wait so long to advertise? Parents usually need to sign-up for such programs way in advance; anyone who has followed the frenzy in New York City for private nursery school slots knows the search begins a full year in advance.

It's a strange fact of life in New York City that parents pay pricey consultants to help them find a spot in $25,000 a year private nursery school only to be turned down time and time again because supply doesn't meet demand -- and yet free spots in half-day programs in less desirable neighborhoods, where parents are being solicited on Craig's List, will remain unfilled.

EarlyStories managed to miss an excellent series on math education in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that included an interesting look at how math can and should be introduced to the littlest learners.

Talking to young students about math, it turns out, is very important. So is counting, and introducing shapes, all part of "teaching preschoolers in a deep, interesting and systematic way, with lots of activities and without textbooks,'' according to the story, which leans upon a report by the Committee on Early Childhood Mathematics, and the work of Herbert Ginsburg at Teachers College.

Education journalists get caught up in covering math scores and math wars, not realizing what to look for in a high quality early childhood program and how critical it is to math success later on. Locating the excellent series in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette served as a reminder of the good work that can be done on this important topic.

Shameless plug -- the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media has a new guide for journalists on covering math education that includes an extensive interview with Ginsburg on early childhood and math, and is filled with tips, resources and story ideas.

You can download "Math Matters: A Journalist's Guide,'' on the Hechinger Institute website.

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.

It is sad fact of life that in a time of economic crisis, as states are scaling back on promised expansions of publicly funded pre-kindergarten, that a few upscale Washington D.C. parents are whining.

In some ways, it's even sadder that their concerns have become a story, but indeed they provide a window into the unfounded fears that may accompany thinking about education.

And why are these parents whining, according to the Washington Post? It seems that a blog posting about the new academic focus in kindergarten set off waves of fear about how prepared their offspring might be, according to the Post's Valerie Strauss.

Strauss writes that parents have been begging school directors to let their 1 1/2 -year-olds into programs for 2-year-olds. In interviews with a few dozen preschool directors, Strauss learned that parents have been, among other things, demanding to know why their 2-year-old isn't being given the alphabet to copy over and memorize and enrolling their 3-year-olds in so many activities "that the kids are falling asleep on their preschool desks.''

Why all this anxiety? "Unknowing parents see their kids playing at a water table and think they are wasting their time,'' Strauss notes.

To her credit, she notes that there is an enormous amount of research showing that play has great developmental benefits.

In this case, it seems like the pre-school directors need to do some educating of parents. Several told Strauss they were afraid of offending them. As educators, they need to be clear about how and why play matters, and if they don't explain and defend the value of play, they might as well just start assigning homework to two-year-olds.

Sometimes it takes a jolt from a rural state to remind EarlyStories of the struggle it can be to help the public understand the benefits of high quality early childhood education, and how it fits into the bigger picture. Reading about what happens in other states is also a reminder of how old-fashioned notions about parents and the workplace can still impact public policy.

An editorial in the Lewiston Tribune that also ran in the Spokesman Review noted that the state has repeatedly declined to fund early pre-kindergarten programs and called it "outside the mainstream,'' with some of the country's weakest day care regulations as well.

"Some of its legislators openly pine for the days of Ozzie and Harriet when mothers stayed at home,'' the editorial noted. "Such longing puts Idaho out of touch with the way children are raised at a time when mothers work outside of the home and many of them are single parents."

The context for the editorial is Idaho's status as one of only 12 states in the U.S. that does not provide state funding for pre-kindergarten.

The editorial also comes as a group known as the Education Alliance of Idaho is pushing to improve education in the state without mentioning or pushing for a better early childhood education system.

At a time of unprecedented federal involvement and investment in education, coverage of the issue is so lacking it makes up only 1.4 percent of national news coverage, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution.

The report, entitled: "Invisible: 1.4 Percent Coverage for Education is Not Enough,'' finds scant coverage of critical issues like teaching, learning and curriculum; most stories "dealt with budget problems, school crime and the H1N! flu outbreak,'' according to the report, funded with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The findings are not surprising, coming at a time when newspapers are under pressure simply to survive and other news outlets are struggling due to declining ad revenues and other economic pressures. And there were some bright spots: local reporting still produces quality journalism about important education topics in cities like Providence, Minneapolis and and Phoenix.

At EarlyStories, we often lament the lack of substantive reporting on pre-kindergarten and early childhood issues; the Brookings report did not isolate the issue, but noted that budget issues dominated coverage of pre-school programs. The report zeroed in on wire service coverage of education and noted that much of it "focuses on stories that have nothing to do with education itself,'' and instead are about crime, sex and scandals involving educators.

You can watch a webcast of the event, which includes recommendations, on the Brookings website:

At a time when public policy discussions are focused on state funding for pre-schools, it was interesting to see a San Francisco parent call for more programs that charge $10,000 or less. It seems that residents of the city by the sea are taking out second mortgages in some cases to afford preschool feels of between $12,000 and $20,000.

Those prices are daunting, of course, but anyone familiar with the insanity of preschool in Manhattan might consider such numbers a bargain.The highly coveted 92nd Street YMCA nursery school program, for example, charges $24,380 for a 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. program; some city nursery schools are charging close to $30,000 for full-day programs.

The upscale urban programs in New York City promise prestige along with sandbox play and alphabet training of course, and parents appear far more concerned about getting in than about the pricetag.

It's not so clear that the same is true of early learning centers in San Francisco; William Shireman wrote in his Chronicle column that "paying these prices is criminal,'' and noted that the kids who most need preschool aren't able to afford it. Shireman's argument is a good one for publicly funded, free pre-school, but he said he'd settle for more preschools "with fees of $10,000 or less that offer safety, warmth, love and a smart curriculum for children from all kinds of families. Not through subsidies but through well-designed programs and regulations that enable and encourage affordable preschool and child care, and give parents a choice."

A smart and well reported piece on so-called helicopter parents in Time Magazine at first produced in EarlyStories the kind of reaction such pieces intend to produce -- a sigh and a shrug, directed, as it should be, at parents who have once again gone too far.

But a second read produced a different reaction. At a time of high unemployment, and with so many families struggling financially, the timing seemed a bit off. Do parents worrying about foreclosures, credit card debt and job loss really have the time and inclination to over manage their kids lives in the way the Time piece described?

The answer is that that most don't, although the more upscale parents Time spoke with seem to have more than enough, according to the extreme examples from Nancy Gibb's cover article. Parental transgressions ranged from buying macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks to hiring tutors to correct a 5-year-old's "pencil-holding deficiency,'' and showing up at school unannounced to bring matching accessories. Let's not forget hooking up broadband connections in a treehouse or buying leashes for children and knee pads for toddlers.

"We were so obsessed with our kids' success that parenting turned into a form of product development,'' Gibbs wrote. "Parents demanded that nursery schools offer Mandarin, since it's never too soon to prepare for the competition of a global economy.''

All of this may be true. But so is this: More than 75 percent of the nation’s four-year-olds and an even larger percentage of 3-year-olds still have no access to state-funded pre-k programs, much less mandarin programs. Despite worries about the overscheduled child, some 18 million children need, but don't have, after school programs. Some 28 million parents work outside the home and as many as 15 million "latchkey,'' kids go home to an empty house.

So EarlyStories has concluded the following. The helicopter parent may not be hovering in many U.S. households at the moment. But reading the story was a nice substitute for buying Entertainment Weekly.

With so much debate and discussion over charter schools lately, EarlyStories found it fascinating to read the New York Times style piece Sunday, entitled, "Scholarly Investments.''

First thought: What on earth is a story about charter schools doing on the style page? The answer of course, can be seen in the picture of Ravenel Boykin Curry IV, who helped found two Girls Preparatory Charter Schools, posing with six uniformed young students in the Bronx.

Turns out that well connected, socialite hedge fund managers like Curry are are embracing charter schools as their new cause; these maverick investors have decided they like this new model -- whatever that means. So now it's in vogue to be supportive of charters in the largest school system in the U.S., with more than 1.1 million public school children -- although according to the story, only about 30,000, or 2.5 percent of them, attend attend charters.

So why are the money folks choosing charters instead of embracing some of the other struggling public schools, many of which could use an infusion of hedge fund cash at a time of deep budget cuts?

Because, according to Nancy Hass of the Times, "their obsession — one shared with many other hedge funders — is creating charter schools, the tax-funded, independently run schools that they see as an entrepreneurial answer to the nation’s education woes.''

Curry himself explained that hedge fund mavericks see charter schools as “exactly the kind of investment people in our industry spend our days trying to stumble on.''

The story did not explain why the wealthy fund managers are attracted to the type of education that charter schools offer, or how it differs from what happens in some of the 1,600 New York City public schools. Are they excited about the quality of teaching and learning, and the success of students? It did point out that studies on the effectiveness of charter schools differ in their conclusions.

One manager suggested the attraction has to do with the way charter schools rely "on metrics and tests to measure progress,'' -- a concept that is also deeply ingrained in the public school culture in the aftermath of No Child Left Behind, and also part of U .S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's education agenda. (He is also a big fan of charter schools)

The hedge fund managers appear to be excited by the notion that charter schools are “scalable,” with models that could be emulated in many communities that have long waiting lists of parents looking for free alternatives. Charter schools, for the record, also pay their employees differently and don't choose their staffs from teachers unions.

There are many good questions that should be raised here, and the style piece attempted to raise some of them. EarlyStories can't help but want to see more journalists spending time in charter schools, starting in pre-kindergarten if at all possible, to let the public know how these schools are different. Are they changing lives for children? How so?

Head Start, which doesn't get a lot of media attention, is back in the news for offering preschool children in its program a chance to establish healthy eating habits. The federally funded program is now pushing fresh fruits and vegetables, along with low-fat milk,and making sure children spend time playing, according to an article in USA Today.

The article is based on a survey of Head Start directors that serve some 829,000 children, and had some frightening conclusions: Some 30 percent of kids in Head Start are overweight or obese. Findings were published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, based on the work of researchers from Temple University and Mathematica Policy Research.

Directors are aware of and concerned about these issues and are offering healthier food when they have their own cooks or work directly with food services, the article noted..

A key quote in the story summed up why it's important for journalists to look in on Head Start programs from time to time and find out what is actually going on in the classrooms of the largest federally funded early-childhood education program, which serves about a million low-income children:

"Currently, there aren't any federal standards for Head Start that limit kids' TV time, specify how much time they need to spend each day being physically active or the kind of milk that is served," said Robert Whitaker, professor of public health and pediatrics at Temple University in Philadelphia, the lead author of the study, supported by supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through two national programs, Healthy Eating Research and Active Living Research.

So what is happening in many of these centers? Are the kids watching television? Are there play areas or designated outdoor space?

Picture this: A four-year-old boy is isolated in a library during the two and half hours he is supposed to be in pre-school, and is on the verge of being kicked out completely.

And just what did this four-year-old do to face expulsion? It's about his hair, according to articles in the Dallas Morning News.

Taylor Pugh is in Big Trouble for making an end run around the dress code rules at Floyd Elementary School in Mesquite Texas, the kind of place where students "can't go to class out of dress code,'' according to the associate superintendent. It's also the kind of school district that sent a 19-year-old boy home back in the seventies because his hair touched his collar, and told a boy wearing skinny jeans he had to change or go home.

EarlyStories likes to remain neutral and balanced, but can't help in this case wondering why the length of a four-year-old boys hair -- and in this case the boy is of Native American heritage and has a legitimate cultural reason for keeping his hair long -- should prevent him from getting a pre-school education.

Where is the outrage? Free Taylor Pugh!

One of the more interesting chapters in Paul Tough's "Whatever it Takes,'' -- a book about the Harlem Children's Zone -- describes how young parents go to school to learn how to be parents. The Harlem Children's Zone is the brainchild of Geoffrey Canada, whose goal is to "end the cycle of generational poverty.''

The book describes in detail the nine week parenting workshop known as "Baby College,'' aimed at expectant parents as well as those with children up to the age of three. One of the major goals of the program is to improve the lives of children born into poverty -- all part of the Harlem Children's Zone attempt to surround children within a 97-block section of the city with social services and educational advantages from birth through college.

Baby College instructors promote everything from teaching early reading skills to lessons on how to turn a trip to the supermarket into a learning experience. Tough's book on the program weaves in a great deal of research showing that what happens during early childhood is key to building a foundation for a child's educational future.

All of this is a very long introduction to a piece in the Times-Union of Albany, New York that described how the Harlem Children's Zone's efforts in New York City captivated parents and educators in upstate Albany, who are already moving forward with a similar plan and will be launching their own Baby College in the coming months. Already, there are waiting lists.

EarlyStories is trying to keep an eye on any expansion of the Harlem Children's Zone because President Barack Obama said he'd like to see it expanded to 20 cities nationally -- and he set aside $10 million in seed money to develop a national model. Journalists should look out for applications and see if communities are finding ways to address and improve the quality of early childhood education -- and what existing models they hope to emulate. Are new programs to be offered? Will they be eagerly embraced? How can the public know if they are of high quality?

(photo from "This American Life")

Thanks to our colleagues over at Early Education Watch for raising iquestions about the important new study that may not bode well for Head Start, the national school readiness program that is integral to President Barack Obama's early childhood strategy.The study made its way to Congress on Wednesday.

The study found that while Head Start had a positive influence on school readiness after one year, the gains were minimal by the end of first grade. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services immediately announced plans to strengthen Head Start programs, and it will be important for journalists to follow up.

Early Ed Watch concluded that the study points to the need for giving disadvantaged children more than a a year of high quality education, and that improvements in teacher training for Head Start and all pre-kindergarten programs are needed. W. Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, offered another perpective: he noted that the findings "are based on comparing children who went to Head Start with other children who likely also received some kind of preschool experience – sometimes Head Start in another place or a state-funded pre-K program. It is especially significant because that kind of comparison will not likely show big differences."

He also pointed out in a press release released by NIEER that "the promises of Head Start can only be fulfilled if the program is funded and staffed at the levels that have proven to make a real difference in the lives of children, something that has not happened in the entire 40-year history of the program.''

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius noted in a press release that Head Start must be improved. “The program provides comprehensive education, health, nutrition and social services to low income children and families,'' she noted. “Still, for Head Start to achieve its full potential, we must improve its quality and promote high standards across all early childhood programs.”

How will questions and concerns about the future of Head Start be addressed? EarlyStories has noted repeatedly that this is an issue worth paying attention and too often ignored by the press.

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.

A number of fascinating issues came up in "The Myth of the Gifted Child,'' a cover story in New York Magazine this week by Jennifer Senior that looked at intelligence tests for gifted programs. The story had lots of information that will be welcome to wealthy, connected New York City parents obsessed with getting their kids into the right private schools, including statistics on what percent of the students who graduate will attend Ivy League colleges.

It also made a point that might be welcome for parents willing to do whatever it takes -- copies of the tests can be purchased in advance for a few thousand dollars.

Far more interesting to EarlyStories, though, were interviews with experts like Samuel Meisels at Erikson Institute, who helped Senior cement the point that tests perpetuate stratification instead of really determining a superior intellect.

"Instead of giving IQ tests, you could just as easily look at zip codes and the education levels of the parents to determine who gets the better schooling -- you get a very high correlation between IQ and socio-economic status in the first seven or years of life,'' Meisels, an assessment expert and president of the Institute, told Senior. His take? Several observations of a child in a classroom setting would be a far better way to determine a child's intelligence, along with an examination of their work.

One of the more interesting observations in the story came from the director of the Calhoun School, which charges $31,240 for kindergarten. The director prefers children with a slightly rebellious and even cynical streak, and told Senior he wanted "a school full of kids who daydream....who don't want to answer the questions on those tests in the way the adult wants them to be answered, because that kid is already seeing the world differently."

But is that kind of child born, or nurtured with money, connections -- and perhaps the right zip code?

With the release of President Barack Obama's budget this week, much of the media attention has been focused on what the president hopes to do with the No Child Left Behind Law as well as his Race to the Top program. Few journalists have the luxury these days to focus exclusively on early childhood education, but those who do might want to spend some time on the website of the New America Foundation and click on the Early Ed Watch blog.

Early Ed Watch points out that Obama's priorities offer a stark contrast to budget cuts that are part of life in tough economic times, with significant boosts to an array of programs, including $989 million for Head Start. The president has also proposed another $1.6 billion for federally funded child care programs.

So what will a potential new infusion of cash mean in local communities and cash-strapped states that have cut back on pre-kindergarten and other early childhood programs? And what will other proposed changes and consolidations of early learning programs mean? The New America Foundation has come up with a list of key questions that should be a useful jumping off point as the budget battles begin to unfold.

EarlyStories was both horrified and heartened by an expose in the Journal Sentinel of Milwaukee that looked at ways thousands of children from low-income families in Wisconsin are being kept out of kindergarten.

The horrifying part were the facts laid out in the story, which found that the $350 million Wisconsin Shares program lets parents keep their 4-, 5- and even some 6-year-olds in day care centers all day - at taxpayer expense - rather than enroll them in accredited kindergarten programs.

"In some cases, unscrupulous parents are participating in an easy scam,'' the story noted. "They sign up their children with friends or relatives who provide child care. The state then pays the providers roughly $200 a week, and providers give parents a kickback."

The story found that the state's neediest children "often wind up in loosely regulated environments where little learning takes place. Day care providers aren't required to meet the standards of teachers, nor are they accountable for what children learn."

Naturally, by the time they do start school, they are lagging way behind.

The heartening part? That newspapers are still able to produce the kind of journalism that brings situations like this to public attention.

Tuesday's New York Daily News carried one of the saddest pieces EarlyStories has ever seen about parental expectations gone wrong.

In a story that is likely far more complicated than meets the eye, a U.S. soldier was arrested for waterboarding his 4-year-old daughter because she wouldn't say her ABC's.

Army Sgt. Joshua Taylor admitted that he punished his daughter by holding her down on the kitchen counter of their home and pushing her head backward into a full sink of water, according to the story.

This is probably not a tale about societal and/or parental expectations for pre-schoolers. It's may be more illustrative of the problems an Iraq war veteran is having adjusting to civilian life.

'He would lay her down on her back and push her head into the water right up to her eyeline. He was open about it," Todd Stancil, the police chief in Yelm, Washington, is quoted as saying in the story. "He did it all the time. To him, that was an acceptable form of punishment - because she wasn't able to say the alphabet."

Tabor will be arraigned next month, and is out on bail and restricted to his base. It's difficult to fathom what the father expected of the child and if she had real learning issues that might be identified.

Again, this is a story that is far sadder -- and more complicated -- than a few sensational paragraphs about learning the ABC's might convey.

In an unusually blunt answer, the founder of Harlem Children's Zone recently described how he defines success at the anti-poverty program he started in Harlem in 2004.

"The only benchmark of success is college graduation,'' Geoffrey Canada told Helen Zelon of City Limits magazine, where Zelon's excellent series appears this month. "That's the only one: How many kids you got in college, how many kids you got out. Everything else is interim."

Canada's remarks were particularly instructive because the "cradle to college,'' program he began in Harlem in 2004 has been cited as a model for President Barack Obama's "Promise Neighborhoods.'' Obama wants to see 20 poverty reduction campaigns in areas around the country that, like the Harlem Children's Zone, offer services to new parents even before the child sets foot in a school. The best programs support children all the way to college.

There's a great deal of interest in how Canada's program works, and the best source for truly understanding both the ideas behind Harlem Children's Zone and the difficulty of succeeding are described in "Whatever it Takes," by Paul Tough, a former New York Times writer.

Journalists throughout the U.S. should be learning more about Canada's programs as the communities they cover contemplate similar models, and Zelon's pieces are another great jumping off point. Hope or hype? Zelon asks.

Zelon perfectly captured the lockstep approach to Canada's pro-college philosophy in an interview with Patrice Ward, who teaches ninth-grade English language arts, African-American film, and college prep.

"Everyone is here for the same greater purpose,'' Ward said. "Everyone exudes it and will support you in it. So the students, from every person they encounter, are going to get the same message: That they can succeed, that they can go to college, and here's what you need to do. No, you're not going to fall apart—no, we're not going to let you have a bad day—we want you to succeed, we're going to push you in that direction."

Some fascinating findings came out of a comprehensive survey of U.S. teachers, released this morning at Scholastic headquarters in lower Manhattan. The results of a questionnaire on American education sent to some 40,000 teachers found many teachers have doubts about the ability of their students to succeed after high school.

Nine out of 10 teachers said that not all of their students could leave high school prepared to succeed in college. The teachers had lots of ideas and recommendations about how to better prepare them, and the 100-page report that came out of a collaboration between Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is filled with strategies and ideas for moving forward.

The report should be required reading for all education journalists, but EarlyStories was particularly interested in what the findings mean for the way the U.S. does -- or does not -- educate children well before they even set foot in a classroom. Beth Prince, a kindergarten teacher at Hearst Elementary School in Washington, D.C. was on hand to share some of her thoughts on the topic.

"If you get it right in the early years, from pre-kindergarten to third grade, and look at early learning styles, you can get that spark and love for learning going early on,'' said Prince, who has worked with young children in private child care and public school settings for over 19 years. Prince said she always notices the difference when children arrive in kindergarten without having attended a pre-school, nursery school or a Head Start program.

"They don't have that letter and number recognition, or that sense of having been read to,'' she said, adding that children who start kindergarten without any formal sitting have particular difficulty sitting still.

Francie Alexander, Scholastic's chief academic officer and a former kindergarten teacher, noted that the findings of teachers confirm the importance of establishing trust with parents early on. "It really starts in kindergarten,'' she said. "Parents really want to know how my child is doing."

One finding that supported that view came from teachers, who said family support is a critical part of keeping students engaged in school. Teachers cited a lack of encouragement from family and friends as a major obstacle to student success.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, was on hand to hear the results of the survey and called it "one of the most reveting conversations I've experienced. Teachers will tell you their real world experiences if you listen."

While the survey was anonymous, excerpts of their remarks appear throughout the report from both elementary, middle and high school teachers that provide insight into their thinking on everything from student achievement to standards, performance pay and retention.

Harris Interactive conducted the survey, which also provides an in-depth look at state-by-state data that show how teachers in different states view the issues.

Vicki L. Phillips, the director of education, College Ready at the Gates Foundation, said the findings show that teachers support a stronger curriculum that relates to the establishment of clear academic standards and reliable data on student learning.

"The survey tells us that what's good for students and student achievement is good for teachers too -- in fact, it's what they want,'' she said.

One other interesting note about what teachers think is important to keeping good teachers in the classroom: good leaders. More teachers say it is absolutely essential to have supportive leadership (68%), time to collaborate (54%), and quality curriculum (49%) than it is to have higher salaries.

How often have you heard children answer "recess,'' when asked the following question: What is the best part of your day at school?

Who can blame them? EarlyStories wouldn't mind running and jumping around outdoors in the middle of the day if given the opportunity. What's interesting about the concept of recess, however, is the new life and attention it is getting from the media and from bloggers, including my excellent colleagues over at Early Ed Watch and Birth to Thrive.

The discussion started anew last month after the New York Times ran a piece about how much sense it might make to reschedule recess for before, instead of after lunch. Writer Tara Parker-Pope last year in a column looked at new research findings that children who had more than 15 minutes of recess a day showed better behavior in class than those who had little or none.

This week, Paul Nyhan noted on his blog that some 30 percent of students in a study published in the journal Pediatrics have little or no recess at all.

At a press conference this week at Scholastic headquarters, Beth Prince, a kindergarten teacher in Washington, D.C., said that many of her students show up at kindergarten unable to focus in class because they've spent too much time in front of television, computer and video game screens. Prince noted that while she can't control the technology they are exposed to at home, her preferred solution is more outdoor time. "These kids need to run around,'' she said.