So, what kind of teaching makes a difference? And, by extension, what should journalists who visit pre-kindergartens look for? They should look for instruction to be woven into activities that give children "choices to explore and play." No drill and kill called for. Pianta says what works is:
– explicit instruction in key skills (teaching matters)
– sensitive and emotionally warm interactions (relationships matter)
– feedback (how'm I doing?)
– verbal engagement/stimulation (talk, talk, talk, words, words, words)
– a classroom environment that is not overly structured or regimented. (they're kids!)

Too often journalists fall into the trap of thinking that instruction is boring and borders on child abuse. In fact, learning can be joyful and fun, even for 4- and 5-year-olds. So, let's stop with the false dichotomies between teaching and play.

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.

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.

Inside Pre-K, a new blog written by a New Jersey pre-k teacher named Sophia Pappas, debuts. Journalists planning to visit a pre-k class should read some of Sophia's very detailed descriptions of vignettes that depict what her four-year-olds are learning. The blog will help journalists formulate questions and develop their skills of observation.

The new report from the New Commission on the Skills of the American Work Force is nothing if not bold. It paints a grim scenario of a drastically reduced standard of living for many Americans if the nation doesn't get better at building a skilled workforce. Essentially, the report says the U.S. needs to move in the direction of successful education systems around the world: more investment in pre-kindergarten, and getting most young people well-prepared for college or trade schools by the 10th grade. Lots of recommendations and well worth journalists' attention. The commission report says the recommended changes in the system would save about $67 billion a year it says about a third of that money should be spent on a system of high quality pre-kindergarten for all 3- and 4-year-olds. Time magazine, Tom Friedman in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune
all covered it. (Update: NYTs coverage is here and Christian Science Monitor is here.)

I mentioned a few days ago the new blog from Sophia, a New Jersey pre-kindergarten teacher, who describes what goes on in her classroom. As a journalist, I find her entries to be quite enlightening, giving me a sense of what to notice in classrooms and what to ask pre-k teachers about.

One example: in an entry headed "Wow!" she talks about one of her student's progress toward learning letters and their sounds. It reminded me of a point made by a Hechinger Institute seminar about assessment. "If you ask a good teacher how a particular student is doing, you'll never hear her say, 'I don't know. I don't have her test scores back.' " That's because good teachers always know how they're students are doing, and what they need help with. Good point for journalists to ponder.

"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.

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

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

Columbia University's National Center for Children in Poverty has a terrific overview of the early childhood policies that research has found to be most effective in narrowing the achievement gap between poor children and their more affluent peers. One crucial element, the center's report says, is what it calls an "intentional curriculum."

The report defines this as a curriculum that is:

content driven, research-based, emphasizes active engagement with children, includes attention to social and regulatory skills, and is responsive to cultural diversity and children just learning English. An intentional curriculum is directive without using drill and kill strategies; it is fun for young children and promotes positive peer and teacher interactions. An intentional curriculum is developmentally appropriate.

Whole report gives a very concise helpful overview of the research on this crucial question. Good one-stop shopping for the press.

Folks at Goldwater Institute in Phoenix have long been opponents of publicly financed pre-kindergarten. They're out with a new analysis that says the investment in early childhood education the state is making is a waste of money. It says that the small positive effects of full-day kindergarten fade by fifth grade. The study is odd, though. It seems to treat pre-kindergarten and full-day kindergarten interchangeably. It also does not use individual data and it is silent on the quality of the half-day pre-kindergarten programs in the state. In short, only a researcher who set out to find no effect from pre-kindergarten would rely on the study's methodology. Oh and, no surprise here, school choice is a big winner!

New Mexico Lieutenant Gov. Diane Denish, one of the strongest forces behind the start-up of the pre-k program in her state in 2005, now wants the number of children served to be doubled.. Illinois Gov. Rod Blagovich wants to increase the state's spending on preschool by $70 million, opening up 12,000 slots. Some legislators in Missouri will be proposing expansion of state-funded preschool to all disadvantaged children. Finally, a consortium of colleges, the city of Tuscaloosa, the Mayor's office, and the Tuscaloosa school system are working on a citywide pre-k program. Editorial in the Tuscaloosa News says that, "In the long term, Tuscaloosa will be a better community thanks to this program."

According to the National Institute of Early Education Research, Alabama in 2005 ranked 37th in the percentage of its 4 year olds served. The state also cut its per-pupil spending on pre-k every year from 2000 tto 2005 and the elimination of federal child care funds available to poor working women were cut. Whenever journalists report on a new program or purported expansion of state spending on pre-k, it's important to say what the state is already doing. A doubling of 2% of the 4 year olds served may look better than it is, especially if the funds aren't doubled as well.

The Associated Press in Georgia notes that the state failed to keep data that would allow it to evaluate the long-term effects of the state's pre-k program, which is one of the oldest in the country. The lead of the story is punchy and to the point: "Fourteen years ago, Georgia launched a publicly funded pre-kindergarten program that later became the first in the nation to offer free classes to all 4-year-olds.Educators promised better prepared students and eventually lower crime rates when students got older.But don't ask state officials for data on how many of those students graduated from high school and went on to college this past fall. They didn't keep track." The whole story is posted here.

This is a question journalists in any state that either offers pre-k now, is expanding pre-k, or is thinking about offering pre-k. Does the state have a plan for gathering long-term data? Big promises are made about the positive effects of pre-k. But will it be possible to show whether those promises are being kept?

The fourth annual report from the National Institute on Early Education Research came out this week and it generated some good stories around the country. Nancy Zuckerbrod of the Associated Press gave a good overview, touching down in Virginia to review the program there. Natalia Mielczarek at The Tennessean in Nashville used the report as a starting point to report on Gov. Phil Bredesen's addition of $70 million to the state pre-k program the past two years. She also went out and talked to parents and teachers and visited classrooms. The Montgomery (AL) Advertiser carried a short Associated Press story. The Columbus (OH) Dispatch's Catherine Candisky used the report to explain the complexities of the program in her state and a proposal by Gov. Ted Strickland to put a little bit more state money in.

Surprisingly, though, none of the stories picked up on this element of the report:

Total state spending for prekindergarten was nearly $3.3 billion, an increase of 13 percent from the previous year. However, inflation-adjusted spending per child declined in 25 of 37 states (Florida was new). In other words, real spending per child declined in twice as many states as it increased. Worse yet, nominal spending per child (that is, without any adjustment for inflation) declined in 14 states. After adjusting for inflation, funding per child fell to the lowest level since NIEER began collecting such data. In 2001-2002, states spent $4,171 per child in today's dollars; last year they spent $3,482 per child.

Given what states are spending, and given that that amount is decreasing in real terms, it seems irrelevant and even a bit misleading for NIEER to assert that "high quality" preschool has returned "$17 for every $1 invested." That figure is based on a long-term study of a boutique program in the 60s that was unlike anything that exists today.

My earlier post on coverage of the new National Institute on Early Education Research report noted that journalists hadn't picked up the "mo' money, even mo' kids'"angle. Should have checked USA Today's coverage before I said that. Greg Toppo was all over it. See how he handled it here.

Toppo also noted the existence of a new website called savvysource.com, which offers parents a way to judge the quality of preschools in their communities. Toppo quotes the site's founder as saying it is "kind of a combination of Zagat's and Craigslist" for parents of young kids.

Follow-up: Look for letters in newspapers around the country from pre-k supporters. The advocacy group Pre-K Now which, like this blog, gets support from The Pew Charitable Trusts sees the AP story on the NIEER report as a hook for supporters to write to newspapers and demand more money to be spent to raise program quality.

Rena Havner's story in the Mobile (AL) Press-Register has been getting lots of traction on blogs and websites. The story, which was a follow-up to the NIEER report on the quality of state preschool programs, noted that while Alabama was one of two states to get a perfect score according to the NIEER scale, the state's program doesn't serve very many kids: only 1,080 statewide.
"We've got this great quality program, but we were dead last," said Criss Hopson with the Montgomery-based Alabama School Readiness Alliance, which is lobbying the state to expand its preschool program. "For the children that are receiving the instruction, that's great, but it's not going to be enough to make a huge societal impact."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A committee of the Missouri legislature decided it would be unfair to rate private preschools and child care centers based on education quality and to provide those rated higher with more state funding. But the committee said it would be just fine to subject the sliver of programs operated by the public schools to those rules it rejected for the privately operated programs. The legislature also loaded up the bill with a raft of controversial provisions unrelated to preschool: a measure making it easier to fire teachers who go on strike, one making it easier to start charter schools; and one allowing professionals to become teachers without a degree. Matt Franck has the story in the Post-Dispatch.

Be interesting to see what oversight or regulation, if any, that your state performs over private child care and preschool programs. Usually, the only regulations deal with health and safety rather than educational or developmental quality.

Looks like Iowa will be investing millions over the next four years to ensure that every Iowa four year old has a chance to attend preschool. The AP reports that a Senate measure looks like it will pass, the House is on board and so is the governor. The story reports that the $15 million plan will make "quality" preschool available for 28,000 children. Do the math and that's $535 per child. I know there's something I'm missing here. But so are readers and listeners in Iowa.

One purpose of the annual "Leadership Matters" survey by the advocacy group Pre-K Now is to praise governors going along with the plan of adding more public dollars for preschool and to spank governors who are wavering, have jumped off the bandwagon, or who haven't yet climbed aboard. The report released this week praised Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana who has announced she won't run for reelection, and The Daily Advertiser of Lafayette, Louisiana took note. On the other hand, Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina was taken to task for his "evaporating" support for universal pre-kindergarten and the Post and Courier of Charleston took note. (Full disclosure: Pre-K Now, like this blog, is supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts, which advocates for public spending for universal pre-kindergarten.) In each of these stories, the reporters quoted people in the states unaffiliated with the national report and used it as a hook for a status report on pre-k in the state. What I didn't see in either story, however, was any attempt to connect the Pre-K Now report to the earlier report by the National Institute for Early Education Research on the quality of state programs. I also didn't see any mention of how much the states are spending per pupil. Quantity has to be matched by quality, otherwise these programs will have little if any effect.

The Southern Education Foundation today will release a report that will say that the region is ahead of other parts of the country in terms of its pre-kindergarten programs. The report "pulls together and synthesizes the findings of every major independent study of state-supported Pre-K across the South in the last ten years. These reports measure the current and future impact that Pre-K can have in improving Southern education and the region's quality of life." This comes from the Dawson County Times in Dawsonville, Dawson County, Georgia.

Journalists in the South who write on this report should also check other sources of information, such as the National Institute for Early Education Research on quality questions, and reports turned out by the advocacy group Pre-K Now, especially those analyzing the political leadership of governors and others in the states. Also keep in mind that 3-5 year olds can be found in many settings--Head Start, family care, child care centers, preschools in churches, preschools in public schools, for profit preschools and so on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Over the past three years Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen has steadily increased his state's spending on high-quality pre-kindergarten classes. Last week the governor addressed a group of editorial writers who gathered at Teachers College in New York City for a two-day seminar sponsored by the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media that dealt with early education issues. Pre-k advocates talk a lot about the studies that tout the long-term returns for investing in pre-kindergarten. But Bredesen, who has a degree in physics from Harvard, said those studies were not what persuaded him to push pre-k. What did the trick, he told the editorialists, was conversations with teachers around his state.

I went around the state and I talked to teachers and I asked them, "If you had one more dollar to spend on education, how would you spend it." When you forced people to pick one thing, it's amazing how many pick pre-kindergarten. It seems like there's a broad consensus.

Rather than plunge into a universal pre-k program all at once and launch poor quality programs with the intent to improve them later, Bredesen decided to establish high-quality programs and roll them out slowly. The Tennessee program employs only certified teachers, keeps class sizes small, and uses only approved curricula. Surprisingly, Bredesen said, the biggest political fight had to be fought over quality. Day care centers and private pre-k programs did not employ certified teachers or pay decent salaries and so they saw the state program as a "threat to their livelihood."

Bredesen said that he hopes that any parent in Tennessee who wants to send their child to a state-funded pre-kindergarten will be able to do so. Right now, he said, the state is about 40% of the way there. But he said it was a "realistic goal" that can be reached in about three and a half years.

More about the seminar over the next few days.

Despite lots and lots of early ed news I've been offline, running the Hechinger Institute after the departure of several staffers....also have been very busy with seminars for journalists, which is our main activity. I blogged a bit earlier on the talk Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredeson gave at the Hechinger seminar end of June, discussing the political challenges he faced in expanding his state's investments in early childhood education. The governor also explained that he thought it was better for states to emphasize quality and expand slowly rather than go big but cheap all at once. Tennessee's program meets 9 out of the 10 quality indicators that the National Institute on Early Education Research uses to analyze state programs. Look for more from EarlyStories and, as always, let me know if you see good stories in early ed being covered well, not being covered well-enough, or not being covered at all.....

The Washington Post's Maria Glod used Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine's decision to downsize his "universal" pre-k program to a targeted one as a news hook for a solid roundup of what's going on with the expansion of publicly funded preschool nationally. The article, which ran on A-1, had a glimpse of a good classroom, regional specifics, national sweep, details of Kaine's new approach, research, and quoted the strongest voices on both sides of the "universal" vs. "targeted" debate.

All in all, a fine example of going beyond a news development to provide readers with a useful context in which to understand that event. It wasn't necessary to go into it in this story, but one aspect of it made me think about what the next story on this might be for the Post.

Kaine says he decided to scale back on his idea because he was advised to "take the existing network and focus on the goals of increasing access and increasing quality" rather than start a new program from scratch. That's inevitable when a state expands its spending on preschool. It's not as if three and four year olds are not already going somewhere. But Kaine also may have been responding to pressure, because it is often existing private providers that lobby the hardest against expanding public spending, for fear that they'll be forced out of business by the competition. But Kaine's public-private approach creates another challenge. The state has to figure out how to push existing low-quality programs to improve. That's a hard job. Money helps but, as in New Jersey, public money poured into private centers sometimes leads to more money in the pockets of operators without any improvement in quality. Kaine suggests a rating system that parents will be able to use in choosing a preschool, in effect trying to tap market forces to maintain quality. The fact is, though, parents usually want their young children as close by as possible so the market forces are going to be weaker than they would be if true competition were unleashed. Kaine's right that it's the quality of programs not necessarily who provides them that's most important. But it's harder to ensure that quality in the private sector.

USA Today the other day took note of initiatives from mayors that put books in the hands of preschoolers to encourage them to read. It seems that mayors are getting on board with the movement that to this point has featured governors in the highest profile roles. The piece reported that dozens of cities have citywide book clubs and reading selections. In Jacksonville, Florida; Longmont, Colorado, Charleston, South Carolina and other cities, the city and private funders are providing preschoolers with books. In Jacksonville, every four year old who wants one receives a backpack stuffed with a book, hand puppet, reading blanket, flashcards and other items. The story also pointed out that these programs are universal, meaning they don’t target just poor kids. My only quibble with the story is that it uses the terms “pre-K” and “child care” interchangeably. That may seem fussy but the two terms really carry quite different meanings.

Two of the articles should be of particular interest to journalists interested in how education can help address issues of poverty. One, by economist Greg J. Duncan of Northwestern, Jens Ludwig an economist at the University of Chicago , and Katherine J. Magnuson of the School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, proposes an intensive two-year, education-focused intervention for all three- and four-year-olds that would charge fees on a sliding scale. The article is unusually specific. One key part of the idea is that the feds would offer incentives to states to participate rather than funding the program directly. The authors are more cautious than some advocates and researchers in that they don’t put a ratio on the return on investment. But they do say that the program’s $20 billion cost would be more than matched by the benefits—in the $2 or $3 per $1 spent range rather than the $7 to $14 that economists have calculated for other comprehensive programs in the past. They do, however, say such a program aimed at poor kids would reduce poverty by 5% to 15%, a very healthy gain.

Douglas Besharov, a well-known scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, came out last week with a new study that found that the true cost of early education--when the cost of increasing the quality of current programs, providing others services, and administering the programs is added in--are much more expensive than the figures usually used by policy makers and advocates. Here are the amounts he and his co-authors calculated:

* For center-based child care, about $8,908--not the widely cited $4,388 to $6,582.
* For pre-kindergarten/preschool programs, about $14,026--not the widely cited $3,551.
* For Head Start, about $21,305--not the widely cited $7,467.

A blog called BlueNC that says it is "community-driven website that promotes progressive values and policies in North Carolina" has what appears to be a comprehensive analysis of the positions of the Democratic presidential candidates on issues of child care and preschool. Hillary Clinton's position has been talked about a lot but this breakdown looks at all the candidates.

Determining whether pre-kindergarten or Head Start or other programs are serving their children well and helping them to develop socially, emotionally, and cognitively is fraught with challenges. Obviously, testing kids by asking them to read and bubble in the answers is silly. To wrestle with this issue, the Pew Charitable Trusts (full disclosure, a financial backer of the Hechinger Institute, which I run), the Joyce Foundation (another backer), and the Foundation for Child Development formed an accountability task force and named Sharon Lynn Kagan, a professor and associate dean at Teachers College, to chair it. The task force issued recommendations this week. A press release is here.

The task force took its task seriously and issued ambitious recommendations that go far beyond just assessment to providing a blue print for a "system" of early childhood education where one currently does not exist. Among the recommendations: develop standards, assessments, data reports, and training programs that are common to state pre-k's, Head Start programs, and so on; build grades K-3 on that same foundation, so that what happens before kindergarten builds toward what happens after kindergarten; make sure the assessments are good; make sure non-English speaking ahd disabled children are assessed properly and included in programs; invest the money to do all this.

I've just sketched the recommendations. Were I still writing for a newspaper or magazine I'd compare what the task force recommended with what my state is already doing in this area. In Florida, for example, kindergartners take a test and the state grades preschools based on the result. What are other states doing or not doing?

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