Arne Duncan Agrees with NAEYC: It is time to stop playing catch-up with the acheivment gap

Arne Duncan said what we wanted to hear as early childhood educators and what we expected to hear last night. Duncan, the first Secretary of Education to ever speak at NAEYC, is definitely behind early education but, with so many other national issues it is easy to see how appropriate early childhood education might get pushed to the back burner. I think he may have gotten some applause when he didn't expect it, like when he mentioned Oklahoma as an example of high quality preschool. He got a standing ovation from about 4 people, and a round of applause, when he said, "Play is crucial." He also paraded some ideas we expected, like, outcomes based evaluation of quality early education and the push for more funding for high quality early education through the Early Learning Challenge Grants. Listen to the whole thing here:

Arne Duncan 2009 NAEYC Conference

Thanks to  @haaeyc for the image

Pre-K in Tennessee Makes the Grade

Tennessee Comptroller Justin Wilson commissioned a report highlighted in the Memphis Daily News on the effectiveness of its state funded pre-k program. The study found that the effects of pre-k diminished by second grade. While I found the report to be informative, it raised more questions for me regarding how well Tennessee's schools are educating their Pre-K - 3 students.

 

If the state has a history of under-preparing their students, then it seems understandable why the positive effects of a pre-kindergarten education would be shredded by the 2nd or 3rd grade. Although national studies have shown that pre-k positively affects student achievement, most notably in the longitudinal ECLS studies, the "fade out effect" is cited when pre-k goes under the microscope of a political opponent to public pre-k. The mythological "fade effect" beast continues to survive, mostly due to sensational reporting, despite the presence of numerous studies that support the idea that high quality pre-k supports student achievement even through 5th grade. The Tennessee researchers might not necessarily agree with the article in the Memphis Daily either. In the report they write, "Although the effects of Pre-K on long-term academic achievement are not evident in the present study, the lack of a statistically significant difference in measures of student achievement in the long term cannot logically be attributed to an ineffective Pre-K intervention."

I decided to do  a little research into Tennessee's academic record and found some ideas that should be considered whenever pre-k is attacked by that mythological monster the "fade effect". You can read the report yourself on the EdWeek Quality Counts page, but I'll share some important caveats to consider. EdWeek's Chance for Success indicator - a combination of early childhood services, school performance and educational and economic opportunities for adults, was a C-. How did this happen when the state has an A- in early childhood education transition and alignment? The State's pre-k program, meeting 9 out of 10 of NIEER's Quality Benchmarks, catapulted Tennessee's score above the D mark. It was mostly K-12 that made Tennessee's grade so low. I know there are likely incredible teachers in Tennessee just like every where else, but it is where the buck hits the blackboard that many state school systems fail. Essentially, we have a high quality pre-k program feeding into a low quality K-12 system. Here is the breakdown:

Rep. John Deberry's reply really captures my initial reaction, “This report says that we have been successful with pre-K. We need to ask ourselves why, and then why can’t we be equally successful in the second, third, fourth and fifth grades.”

The Learning Studio

When I walk into a classroom these days I feel like I am walking into a dance studio.  I am the only one who isn't moving, learning, expressing, struggling or stretching and as a result, find myself sticking out like a sore thumb. For one, my clothes are too clean. And generally, a clipboard and pen now accompany me. I stand by the door observing, trying not to reflect on how much I'm interrupting by simply doing nothing.

I am enjoying my new job as a Child Development Specialist for Head Start, and some days I feel like I am really making a difference. Like last week, I was able to show a novice teacher how to negotiate the power struggle with a boy who kept pushing. I told her, "He wants to be told no. He wants you to love him by saying no. He wants to know that you won't let him float away." A little modeling on how to connect, some reflection, some follow-up the next day and she was teaching again with a new friend.

I get the feeling that teachers want me to see perfection when I enter their classroom. But there's no such thing as a perfect pre-k class. When I was teaching everyday, my classroom felt a lot like a studio. What happened there was imperfect, unfinished, and always a work in progress. I worked with an instructional assistant so I always had a "partner" to bounce ideas off of, to make sure I wasn't too far off the mark. Now I am by myself when I am "working."

I walk into other teacher's studios. I know they can't be sure how to interact with me. I am a supervisor and I am also too familiar with the imperfections of the classroom. Working in a preschool classroom is one of the most primal experiences you can have in education. I am talking body fluid primal. I am talking pure joy, pure rage, pure uncertainty, cultures clashing, towers smashing, tricycles crashing.

 

The children shed crocodile tears, Daddy arrested tears, and give me back my doll tears all in a couple minutes. Who am I to judge this chaos but, it's my job.

I could always tell how comfortable a visitor was with this primal experience by how far they came into my classroom. Another pre-k teacher might make it all the way back to the dramatic play area. Most, especially principals and school board members, never made it past the line-up line. The energy, chaos, joy, and terror, stopped them like a moat of tears. It was shallow, but who would want to get their feet wet in "real" teaching when they could just as easily not muddy the waters of their ideals with the human drama and primal experience of real pre-k kids.

 
I am trying to negotiate this role of supervisor. I wear the micro-politics of my role as a supervisor like a sports coat that is too small. I can see how tight it is, how it doesn't quite fit, and I wonder, does the teacher I am talking to think it doesn't fit either?

image: http://www.buzzle.com/img/articleImages/294252-3328-5.jpg

Baby Einstein or Not

This just in...

 

In a surprising turn of events, Susan Linn, a well known early childhood advocate at Harvard's Judge Baker Children's Center, humbled the king of all children's media, The Walt Disney Corporation. Linn's watchdog advocacy group, Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood sued  Disney because it claimed the Baby Einstein videos it sold were educational for both babies and toddlers. Inside Pre-K posted a youtube video of Linn speaking about the lawsuit in September. - The company marketed the videos, "created from a baby's point-of-view,"  — as a way for parents to stimulate their children's cognitive development. Due to pressure from the CCCF and other advocates concerned about the idea of quality early learning taking place in front of a television, Disney issued a refund voucher for Baby Einstein DVDs purchased within the last five years.

After CCCF claimed the voucher as a win in their fight against Disney, the company claimed that is has always maintained a money back guarantee on the product.

 

Now, if I could only get a refund for those twenty minutes I spent watching Hanna Montana with my daughter...