The Hechinger Institute was created at Teachers College in 1996 by former Teachers College president Arthur Levine. The Institute honors the legacy of Fred Hechinger, the legendary education editor for the New York Times. We do this by helping journalists produce coverage that is "fair, accurate and insightful." This blog is one of the ways that I, as director of the Institute, will be pursuing that goal. I (and guest bloggers) will be on the lookout for really good stories about all aspects of early education. I'll also be suggesting story ideas for my journalistic colleagues. Pointing out holes in coverage. Taking note of issues that deserve more attention. So, if you see good coverage or not-so-good coverage, please send it along.

Andy Rotherham, the policy analyst and provocateur who is co-founder of Education Sector, gave us ink-stained wretch types a good assignment the other day. Here's the nub of it:

What I'd really like to see is a big picture and long article about where the nation is and where it is going on pre-kindergarten education. It seems to me that through various venues, for instance state initiatives, the Tough Choices report, advocacy groups, and the attention of presidential candidates we're having a national conversation about what amounts to adding a grade to school. To be sure, it won't work like that because the pre-K system is more choice driven and pluralistic than elementary school and different in other ways, too. Yet that would be the effect, a big shift toward another year of school.

Any takers?

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.

The Hechinger Institute, in collaboration with the National Conference of Editorial Writers, gathered 30 or so editorial writers from around the country June 29-30 to discuss early education issues, emphasizing, in particular, the effects of poverty on children. Three of those who attended have already written commentaries, spinning off in different directions. The latest came from Kay Semion of the Daytona Beach News-Journal, who Download file">chided her state's leaders for cynically offering up a sub-standard pre-k program in response to the plea of voters for a high quality, universal program.

Earlier, Mary Ellen Schoonmaker wrote a lovely column in the Bergen (New Jersey) Record that drew on comments from a wonderful young pre-school teacher we had at the seminar as a speaker. And Linda Valdez in the Arizona Republic focused on the comments of New York developer and philanthropist Daniel Rose, who exhorted the writers to refer to high-quality pre-kindergarten as an investment, not an expense. Valdez referred to Rose as a "triple shot of espresso" for his rousing talk.

Alyssa Haywoode of the Boston Globe attended the Hechinger Institute/NCEW seminar both as a participant and as a presenter--she's written numerous pro-pre-k editorials over the past year. This editorial came out in the Globe the other day. She takes a look at Hilary Clinton's proposal for a federal investment in pre-k--the most detailed of any of the candidates--and finds it wanting. Rarely do journalists focus on the possible federal role in supporting early education. The Globe did.

Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to (subscription required) label the national trend toward expanded public spending on pre-kindergarten for what it is: "one of the most significant expansions in public education in the 90 years since World War I, when kindergarten first became standard in American schools." The Journal's front page article Thursday did what the paper does so nicely: allow a reader who hasn't been following a developing trend to drop in and get a good sense of who the players are, why they're doing what they're doing, the obstacles, and controversies, and what lies ahead. The story notes, for example, that not everyone is on board with the push for "universal" public preschool. Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman, for example, warns about overdoing preschool and says that "scarce resources should be directed to the problem areas." Mr. Murdoch, don't mess with success, ok?

Full disclosure: the Journal article describes the important role The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Trusts' director of education, Susan Urahn, have played in fueling the national movement to expand public spending on preschool. The article also mentions that the Hechinger Institute is a grantee, and that our role is to help journalists become knowledgeable about the issues surrounding pre-k. As I always say, though, we're not advocates for anything other than good journalism about education.

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley picked up a couple of important endorsements for his plan to triple state spending on pre-kindergarten. Riley, a Republican, is meeting resistance from his own party in the state and Republicans are dragging their heels in South Carolina and Tennessee as well. The Head Start association and the organization of private providers in Alabama are both on board with Riley now. Why is this signficant? The reason is that Head Start is often wary of pre-k proposals, because they tend to be better funded. And the private providers usually balk because they fear losing their paying clients to a free service. For example, Gov. Phil Bredeson in Tennessee told the Hechinger Institute last spring that one of the biggest hurdles he faced in expanding pre-k there was the private providers group.

The tension between these groups can be found in just about all the states that are expanding their pre-k spending so it's worthwhile for journalists to pay attention to the compromises that result. In some states, such as Massachusetts, these groups have found common ground. That's interesting too.

The very able Liz Willen, associate director of the Hechinger Institute and a former award-winning reporter for Bloomberg News, and the tech-savvy and creative Zaira Zafra, also of the Hechinger Institute, will begin gracing EarlyStories with their presence. More views the better, I say.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Sign-up on the Hechinger website.

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

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

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

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

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

Has kindergarten become too "rigorous?"

EarlyStories could not help but wonder at the meaning behind a recent headline: "Increased academic rigor in kindergarrten questioned.''

The word rigor is one of the new buzz words in education, and it is often misused. The Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media produced an entire guide aimed at understanding academic rigor.

But the idea of a kindergarten being academically "rigorous,'' left much to ponder. Turns out, though, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review , that many schools now expect kindergartners to read and write complete sentences and count to 100 by ones and tens. And of course, the story included the stock phrase EarlyStories sees way too often: "Kindergarten has become the new first grade."

Is it reasonable in the post No Child Left Behind era to expect so much of five and six-year-olds, if indeed those expectations aim high? The topic has been getting a fair amount of debate lately, particularly with the release of "Crisis in the Kindergarten,'' by the Alliance for Childhood -- which included a plea for more play time.

The Tribune Review story noted that "the impact of academic rigor in kindergarten is not yet well-researched.''

But first, what evidence exists that kindergartens throughout the U.S. have indeed become more rigorous? And what specifically does academic rigor look like for the five and six-year-old set? EarlyStories would love to see some examples.

Journalists following early childhood issues should take a look at a new report released from Pre-K Now, which found that twenty nine states and the District of Columbia chose to increase funding for pre-kindergarten education or hold it study, despite the tough economic times their governments are facing.

The report includes a wealth of information on state budgets that will be helpful to education journalists, along with examples of how certain states are using money from the federal stimulus package to help pay for pre-k programs. It's a key issue at a time when President Barack Obama is pushing unprecedented federal investment in early childhood.

According to the report:
* Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia increased or are projected to increase pre-k investments by a total of more than $187 million.
*Thirteen legislatures increased investment in existing programs by nearly $130 million: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
* Two states that previously had no state pre-k programs approved pilot initiatives: Alaska and Rhode Island.
* Nine states and the District of Columbia anticipate increases through the school funding formula (Texas is included in this group as well but counted only once in the tally of 23 states with increased investments).

Every now and then EarlyStories come across a reminder of how important early learning is, even when there is an agenda attached. This reminder came from an article in the Washington Post about the sad condition of America's youngsters, age 17-to 24.

It seems some 75 percent of this age group is ineligible for military service "largely because they are poorly educated, overweight and have physical ailments that make them unfit for the armed forces,'' according to a report by Mission: Readiness, a Washington-based nonprofit organization.

The proposed solution? Greater investment in early education, to boost both academic achievement and social development.

EarlyStories would like to propose a modest amendment: why not add a mandatory fitness regime for all pre-schoolers? Couldn't a dose of push-ups, sit-ups and say, wind sprints be used as a counting exercise as well?

Mission Readiness, for the record, is pushing Congress to pass President Barack Obama's Early Learning Challenge Fund, which would grant states $1 billion annually for early childhood development programs.

Anyone involved in covering pre-kindergarten issues at some point hears a reference to the Perry Preschool study, which examined the lives of 123 African American children who were born in poverty. The study was the first of its kind to quantify the impact a high-quality preschool program had on the lives of children, and it is still widely quoted.

Over the years, EarlyStories has heard countless references to the study, but never really thought more deeply about what the actual experience was like for the people involved in it before listening to Emily Hanford's excellent broadcast on American RadioWorks. Hanford's "Early Lessons,'' report should be required for any journalist -- or anyone, really -- with an interest in preschool.

Hanford, a producer at American Radio Works, acknowledges she didn't know much about preschool issues, or about the Perry Preschool Project until she tackled the same question the study attempted to answer: Can preschool boost IQ scores and prevent children from failing in school?

In three visits to Yipslanti, Michigan, where the study took place, Hanford grew fascinated with both the history of the study and the profound questions it attempted to raise about equity in education. She learned a great deal about David Weikart, the Perry preschool founder who died in 2003. Weikart started the Perry preschool in 1958, according to Hanford, "in response to frustration with what he describes in his memoir as "the pace of needed changes in a small, local school system.''

Hanford tracked down at least three of the teachers at the school, who share stories about visits to apple orchards and other ways the children learned about the world around them. The Perry preschool, Hanford's report notes, focused "on cognitive development – stimulating children’s brains, increasing their vocabulary, teaching them letters and numbers.''

Hanford's piece is filled with powerful interviews and descriptions of what life was like at the school: “I would do whatever we needed to do,” former Perry teacher Evelyn Moore told Hanford, “to prove that this many African-American children were not retarded.”

Hanford noted in an interview with EarlyStories: "This is history that is going to go away soon. "The researcher is dead. The teachers will be gone -- most are gone already -- and even the kids are going to be gone, so it was a great thing to capture this history at a moment in time.''

Hanford had not heard of the Perry study before she began the project, made possible with support from the Spencer Foundation which investigates ways in which education can be improved around the world and believes research is part of the equation.

"I literally spent a month just reading and talking to people and trying to figure out what education research has had an impact on policy,'' Hanford said. "I was more interested in the question of how research effects policy...and whether and how research informs public policy in a positive way. It's an open question -- sometimes research doesn't do what it should.''

A transcript of Hanford's project is available here, and the program can also be downloaded.

Will Elmo and his buddies from Sesame Street be able to convey a meaningful message about the need to improve math and science in the U.S.? That is apparently what President Barack Obama's administration hopes, as evidenced by the announcement of a new campaign described in the New York Times.

The campaign comes at a time when U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has pointed out that “none of us should be satisfied” with student results on recent math tests, which revealed that under 40 percent of U.S. students in fourth and eighth grade are proficient in mathematics.

The National Math and Science Initiative and the Carnegie Corporation are both promoting new initiatives, described recently in a Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media webinar, available here. Journalists should do more than simply cover the cute advertisements and industry partnerships the White House is announcing; they must examine and find out what, if anything, the schools and districts they cover are doing to help prepare the country’s 50 million students for secure jobs and higher education in math and science.

That effort must start in pre-school, so it's worth asking to see the curriculum and find out what role math and science plays at the earliest levels.

EarlyStories read the New York Times piece on an outdoor kindergarten in Saratoga Springs New York with interest. Finally, a story about something other than how kindergarten has become so academic: "It's the new first grade.''

Ultimately, though, the story was disappointing. It noted that 23 children in upstate New York are spending three hours each day outside, no matter what the weather, and that it is an extreme version of outdoor learning that is taught at Waldorf schools -- which are largely private and emphasize nature and the arts. The story noted that forest kindergartens are "increasingly common in Scandinavia and other European countries like Germany and Austria.''

It's nice that a handful of kids whose parents can afford it are enjoying the great outdoors while in school. But the story gives no context for what the nature-based curriculum can and cannot do, nor does it compare the Waldorf program to what kindergarten looks like for millions of U.S. children.

What goals do we have for these four, five and six-year-olds? (The age range varies according to district entrance requirements). What evidence is there that tramping about in the woods for several hours a day will make for a better thinker or reader later on? What does the research show?

A cute woodsy feature story about one program can and should go further at a time when the U.S. is seriously considering national standards and much debate is taking place about what children should learn and when. Is the program prompting urban schools to consider taking more field trips, for example? Do the kids who don't get outdoors suffer? Is anyone proposing a different approach for city schools, based on the Waldorf's results? And what are those results?

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: