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.

University of Virginia Prof. Robert Pianta has a piece in the new edition of Education Next that says high quality teaching in pre-kindergarten can close achievement gaps between emotionally troubled children and the children of mothers with little education But Pianta writes that in the schools studied only about a quarter of the four-year-olds in the schools studied are lucky enough to get high quality instruction and emotional support. He also notes that just as in K-12, standard measures of teacher quality -- degrees and experience -- are not reliable proxies for quality and tend not to be consistently related to gains in achievement. So, he writes, classroom performance matters more than credentials and courses taken.

The three-part series in the San Antonio Express-News on the transformation of kindergarten is now available here. I like a lot about the series. All of its pieces were meticulously reported and instructive, in the sense that they gave readers insights into the dilemmas and decisions of educators in trying to figure out what's best for kids. It was not sensational in any way but it was interesting and filled with real examples. Different viewpoints were offered but it didn't feel like the "he said-she said" stuff that I often see. I also liked that the reporters talked to a lot of kindergarten teachers who seemed like they were given the freedom to express their professional opinion.

Word to principals and supes who try to "gag" teachers and administrators to prevent them from talking to reporters (OK, that phrasing is probably oh so five years ago, but forgive me, I only hang out on a college campus....) You don't get this kind of coverage that explores the issues you deal with all the time, and that helps parents and policy makers understand those issues, unless you provide access to your classrooms and trust your teachers....

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.

Howard Blume has a good, sophisticated piece in the Los Angeles Times that profiles an elementary school in Compton that seems to be making it. Compton is thought of in California as a stereotypical, struggling, minority community, with all that connotes. But Bunche Elementary School has test scores on par with those in Beverly Hills, Blume reports. And he gives us some snippets of demanding lessons, illustrating the school's expectations. (Though I'd like to have gotten some sense of how teachers are actually teaching. Conversation? Lecturing? How do they help students acquire learning behaviors?)

Such celebratory pieces often are unquestioning. Blume notes that it's a bit difficult to judge the school's gains, because its early success has attracted successful students from elsewhere. (I don't think this is a problem at all. A bigger group of successful students gives less engaged and accomplished students role models and changes the school culture. But it muddies year-to-year comparisons.) He also acknowledges that the highly structured program and strict discipline at the school may not fly in middle class schools. He reports that Bunche still suffers from high turnover among the young, bright Teach for America teachers it hires. Still, one gets the sense that the high expectations at the school make a big difference.

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.

This op-ed column by a former president of the American Bar Assn. includes particularly compelling descriptions of why and how well-prepared and skilled pre-kindergarten teachers matter. Some of the insights here would be useful to those reporting on the Head Start reauthorization bill, which in its current form would require more of the teachers to gain college degrees.

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.

Education Week's Linda Jacobson offers a well-reported, thoughtful roundup of the issues facing Head Start. [free registration required] Journalists in states where state-funded pre-kindergarten is expanding should set this aside electronically or in hard copy as a reference document and story list. How is the expansion of pre-k creating competition for Head Start? What is the culture clash in Head Start centers that also receive state money? [Hint: preschool teachers have to be persuaded to brush the teeth of four-year-olds.] Is the expansion of state pre-k causing greater racial and economic isolation in Head Starts? Is gentrification in cities undermining Head Start programs? Are Head Start programs failing to serve children speaking Spanish, African languages, Asian languages? No shortage of good stories.

The Associated Press and Washington Post report that the House of Representatives has passed by a more than 7-to-1 margin a Head Start reauthorization bill that increases spending by $500 million, increases enrollment, boosts salaries, and expands services. The bill also sets a goal for increasing the percentage of Head Start teachers who have gone to college and raises the income ceiling for eligibility. It also ends the controversial National Reporting System for monitoring program quality and bars programs from using religious beliefs as a factor in making personnel decisions. The Senate is working on similar legislation. The AP reports the White House opposes the bill. The Post puts a finer point on it, saying the legislation rejects the Bush Administration's main effort to make the program more academic.

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.

Leslie R. Williams, a Teachers College faculty member who made a long list of contributions to the field of early childhood education, died over the Thanksgiving holiday. Professor Williams had been a Head Start teacher and trainer for tribal programs in South Dakota, founded the Rita Gold Center, which is a day-care and pre-kindergarten lab school at Teachers College, and co-founded the Early Childhood Encyclopedia Project, which resulted in The Encyclopedia of Early Childhood Education. She also co-founded the All-Day Kindergarten Network.

Jeff Solochek of the St. Petersburg Times started off the new year with a fine example of journalism that mixes perceptive close-in observation of a classroom with a sense of the broader set of policy issues that surround pre-kindergarten. Here's an excerpt that in just a few paragraphs captures the mix of fun and academics that the best teachers achieve.

Hector approaches carrying a peg board where he's fashioned the letter E. He proudly holds it up for [the teacher Brenda] Roberts to see. She offers him praise, and more. What sound does E make, she asks, kicking off an impromptu lesson. Whose name in the class starts with E? After a few more questions comes more encouragement.

"Thank you, Hector, for making that for me," Roberts says. "I love that E."

No sooner does she turn away than Ruth appears, smacking rhythm sticks together, seeking her moment with the teacher. "What sound are you making?" Roberts, ever smiling, asks. If the noise irritates her, you can't tell.

"Choo-choo train," Ruth responds.

Roberts starts dancing. "You make that sound, girl," she says, making chugging sounds as Ruth happily keeps the beat.

I'd urge reporters to look at that passage carefully. The children are certainly enjoying themselves. They're also learning skills that will prepare them to read. Those who pooh-pooh pre-k by saying "why can't we just let them have a childhood" and those who say "let's teach those kids their ABCs!" should be challenged. Clearly, those goals don't conflict.

Katy Murphy of the Contra Costa Times writes a blog called "The Education Report" about happenings in the Oakland (CA) Unified School District. The hook for an item she posted on full day kindergarten was a letter written by a parent whose son attends a public elementary in the (very) pricey neighborhood of Montclair, up in the hills above the city. The parent wrote a letter asking the district to let Thornhill (and other schools, if they wish) out of the district's policy to offer full-day kindergarten. There is a strong class angle to this. Families in which both parents work, or who don't have transportation, and many others welcome full day kindergarten for the academic boost it is meant to provide. But some affluent parents, whose children have rich and varied learning opportunities, and in which mothers (or fathers) don't have to work, don't see the need for it. (Kindergarten teachers, by the way, often oppose all day classes.)

I used to cover the Oakland schools many years ago and I know that many Thornhill children are "flats" children (black and Hispanic) bused into the mostly "white" and "Asian" hills. If those children were sent back down the hill on a bus, to homes where no parent is home during the day, it would create quite a burden. I went on the site GreatSchools and found this comment from a Thornhill parent: "The school is not economically diverse and does not at all embrace cultural differences. If you are not a montclair stay at home mom, you and your child will feel like the bused in outsiders. The classist, superior attitudes are ever present."

Many of these pre-k issues cut along class lines. It's a good thing for reporters to keep in mind.

Thanks to Sara Mead at Early Ed Watch for alerting me to a fascinating article on math education for young children by Herb Ginsburg of Teachers College and colleagues published by the Society for Research in Child Development. Ginsburg is well known in early ed circles for his research in this area and this article pulls a lot together--the math understandings children develop and use naturally, the lack of training pre-k teachers receive in how to build on that knowledge, the fact that many in early ed resist the idea that math skills and knowledge can be taught in developmentally appropriate ways and much more. So much of the talk about education up to grade three focuses on socialization, dispositions toward learning and on preliteracy skills and knowledge. This article convincingly shows that math should be on the table as well, and not just in the form of giving kids blocks to play with (geometry!) or pieces of macaroni to glue on paper in the shape of numbers (hands on!). But the article also is blunt about the obstacles, one of which is resistance to the idea that teachers should "engage in deliberate and planned instruction, an activity some think is developmentally inappropriate."

For journalists, it would make a great feature story to find a pre-kindergarten or a K-2 class where good, developmentally appropriate, content rich math education is occurring. This article (and interviewing Ginsburg) provides a sense of what to look for. Also in this newsletter are commentaries on math education by two other great sources for journalists on teaching and learning in pre-K-grade 3 classrooms: Deborah Stipek, dean at the Stanford ed school and Robert Pianta, dean of the ed school at the University of Virginia.

Or as USA Today's Greg Toppo says in an email: "What not to do as a kindergarten teacher." This teacher ought to be voted off the island. But, since the police determined what she did wasn't a crime, she probably possesses the immunity idol.