"We Need to Invest in the Skills and Education of our People"

Education came in fourth on the president's list in Wednesday night's State of the Union address, but at least it made an appearance. The president made it a priority by linking it to our economic stability as a nation. Not surprisingly, this is the same argument that advocates for pre-k have made for years. Some of the strongest arguments for public pre-k have centered around the idea that under-investment in preschool is a failure of the usually reliable free market system to produce the social and economic outcomes most beneficial to the larger society.

Many economists have looked at pre-k through a cost-benefit analysis lens − Heckman, Currie, and Barnett − but it is important to remember that for every statistic, there is a person, and whether that person is graduating from college or being arrested, lives are at stake.

President Obama referenced the Race to the Top grants as stimulus to education reform. Higher education was the biggest piece of the education pie in his speech, but he did reference the role of education in addressing poverty when he said, "In the 21st century, one of the best anti-poverty programs is a world-class education." Many educators will be glad to hear that No Child Left Behind was not mentioned, but instead Obama used the formal label of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to describe the law that funds Title I, a huge piece of many states' early childhood budget.

All in all, his lead in sentence, "We need to invest in the skills and education of our people," connected education to the economy, which ensures that it will stay in the mix of the public policy debate, even if it isn't on the front burner for some policy makers. Sadly, sometimes this commodification of education bends the purposes of education from the benefit to society to the benefit to the economy. Though they are related, they aren't the same. This is how curriculum gets narrowed for the "public" good and how pre-k outcomes get focused too narrowly on producing good workers instead of good people.

 

Yet my favorite statement that the president made Wednesday reminds me of my own description of what it is like to teach pre-k:

 

"Democracy in a nation of 300 million people can be noisy and messy and complicated."

 
This notion gives me hope because it shows the president realizes need to produce citizens who can create a better future out of the noise and chaos that is the American democratic system. What better place to start than in a pre-k classroom?

The Lifeboat Problem

Imagine a life boat and 20 kids in the water. You are the teacher in the lifeboat trying to save the kids in the water. You know that 6 of the kids can swim and 8 of them can't. You jump in the water and start pulling kids to the lifeboat. Which kids do you save first? That is the choice kindergarten teachers in high-poverty schools face. They want to save all of them but, because of the dire circumstances, you have to decide on your priorities.

If I were teaching Kindergarten in a high-poverty school and had 6 students from Head Start who already knew many letters, who could get along with peers, and whose parents were supportive and participated in their child's education (a Head Start requirement) then I might focus all of my energies on the 8 kids in my class who didn't know any letters when they got to school, who were socially delayed, and whose parents were not supportive of their learning. It is a matter of priority. Just because a kid enters kindergarten ahead of their peers doesn't mean they have to leave ahead of their peers. The Head Start kids' instruction is sacrificed for the progress of the rest of the class.

The Head Start Impact Study final report released on January 13th found that there were few benefits by first grade from attending Head Start. This isn't really surprising to me. Many of the benefits of high-quality pre-k are "time release" benefits. They don't surface until they are necessary. The role of Head Start is to level the playing field and to me the report confirms this function, almost too well.

The study also had a finding that is very important to advocates of open access to preschool all over the country. The report states "60 percent of control group parents enrolled their children in some other type of preschool program in the first year." This suggests that access to preschool programs was a priority for most of the sample families. Parents want their children in center-based early childhood settings, whether they are Head Start or not. It is up to our states to make sure that these high-quality settings are accessible to all children who need them.

Garces, Thomas, & Currie have made the assertion that Head Start develops students overall human capital. Currie has also cited the myth of fade as an aspect of Head Start students being more likely to attend lower quality schools than those who do not. I have two suspicions that I believe will, in two years, contradict some of the recent criticism of Head Start brought on by this study.

By 3rd grade, the higher vocabulary scores of students with Head Start and pre-k experiences will affect the trajectory of reading ability and academic success as suggested by Hart & Risley 

The second point I believe will bear out is that students who were in the 3 year old program will be significantly less likely to be referred for special education services, a cost savings for federal, state and local education agencies that will outweigh the cost of providing the two years of Head Start.

 

My cards are on the table, lets see what happens.

Image" http://www.whitbyweather.com/web_images/lifeboat2small.jpg

Lets Not Kid Ourselves

I just read pioneer early childhood researcher Steven Barnett's analysis of the The Head Start Impact Study with a nodding head. Dr. Barnett really does "get it" when he looks at this type of research. His take mirror's my own (less sophisticated) assessment of the study results. 

He says that we can't deny the validity of the study and attack it because we don't like what it says, or, what some would have us believe it says. That approach only discredits what high-quality early childhood education has always rested it's case on: research that supports the value of high quality pre-k experiences on a scale that affects not only children but society. We can't transfer blame up the ladder to public schools either. Steven Barnett's look at the "cumulative" knowledge of research left oddly positive about the prospects for a more effective Head Start program.

His six lesson's from the study include:

• Most private preschools are of lower quality than Head Start.
• The study did not show "fade out" but actually showed catch up.
• Kindergarten was key to the growth for both Head Start and control groups.
• Head Start was the first public preschool program but it has been done better since its inception by state programs like those in Oklahoma and New Jersey.
• The small effects evident in the study may lead to substantial, if not necessarily measurable, effects later on.
• If Head Start were reformed it could realize more substantial affects.

These are just the sound bites from Dr. Barnett's extensive response. Please check out the whole thing here.

Quality Recognized

It is not often that pre-k educators get the recognition I think they deserve. I mean pre-k people build a more positive future every day, I think we should be the highest priority in educational systems, not the first program placed on the back burner. Recently one educator did get the regard she deserved, and for all the right reasons. Dr. Ramona Paul was named Person of the Year by Oklahoma Today Magazine. She is the first educator presented this honor in the award's history. For the past 30 years, the Assistant State Superintendent of Education has been helping to build one of the highest quality and most accessible pre-k systems in the country. Oklahoma has been consistently held up as one of the best examples for what high-quality pre-k, for all kids, looks like in action.

Louisa McCune-Elmore, the magazine's editor in chief explained why Dr. Paul was named Oklahoma's person of the year this way:

“Her vision and achievement have put Oklahoma in the limelight of early childhood education progress. To say that she has created a better future for Oklahoma is an understatement, and we believe telling her story is a step toward creating the best schools in our nation. There can be no doubt that our state’s four and five year olds are lucky children indeed.”

 

Oklahoma began its state program in 1980 as a pilot. Since then it has grown to serve over 70 percent of the state's preschool age children. Dr. Paul has been there from the beginning providing insight and guidance to policy makers and advocates who have made the program one of the best in the country, according to National Institute for Early Education Research. Read more about just how good Oklahoma's program is here on the NIEER website.

A Real Life Pre-K Superhero

When you teach pre-k, you learn just how primal and important it is. When you have done that and THEN become involved in public policy, well, you have the backstory for a superhero powerhouse pre-k advocate. Check out Fulfilling our Promise: The Prospects of Early Childhood Education by former Inside Pre-K blogger, writer, and public policy expert Sophia Pappas. Only real experience with the benefits of pre-k could start an article on federal early education policy with "I found my calling in a pile of vomit and a smile." You gotta love when a policy talk starts with puke and a grin.

 

It is funny but true, pre-k educators have to balance much of the heavy lifting of a young child's educational foundation, which includes teaching him how to read and count while simultaneously caring for him. A typical day in pre-k has at least one or more of the following: falling, spilling, sneezing, wiping, crying, tattling and bleeding. It also has at least one of these: counting, sorting, recognizing, naming, ordering, classifying, graphing, rhyming, and reading.

 

When you live in a daily flux of competing interests you gain a deep respect for the process of learning and each student's individuality. It also, if you let it, tug your heartstrings like the final scene in E.T. Here is how Sophia described Tyrique, a former student who helped her fall in love with pre-k.

His trajectory from an anxious newcomer without an understanding of what a letter is to a self-confident early reader required strategic and steadfast efforts to identify and meet his needs. I paid attention to everything, from the toys and stories that piqued his interest to his specific skill deficits, in order to create individualized learning plans that maximized every moment.

 

Read the rest of the article at Good magazine to get a sense of why we need more superheroes like Sophia on the front lines of public pre-k debates, and don't forget to join the Pre-k Justice League and Become a Friend of Sam.


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