NIEER recommends early childhood stimulus proposals

NIEER Recommends Early Childhood Stimulus Proposals for Obama Administration

At the request of President-elect Obama's transition team, NIEER Co-Directors Steve Barnett and Ellen Frede have developed recommendations on federal investments in preschool education and child care. They made the following four recommendations for the President-elect to consider implementing in the first 100 days of his administration.

• Stop thinking small when it comes to young children. Pass a stimulus package
  that includes $15 billion in construction over two years for early care and
  education for 1 million children under age 5.
• Offer states up to $3 billion over two years in matching grants to maintain and increase their early care and education spending. • Increase funding for Head Start and the Child Care and Development Block Grant.

• • Create the presidential Early Learning Council alluded to during the campaign to coordinate federal early care and education programs and facilitate federal-state cooperation. Read all of their recommendations in this brief.

Economic Stimulus Proposal Includes $4.7 Billion for Early Ed

House Democrats on Thursday unveiled an $825 billion economic recovery plan, the American Recovery and Reinvestment bill, designed to stimulate the economy. The House Appropriations Committee released a summary of the bill, providing details on the bill's nine major components, one of which is titled "Education for the 21st Century." Specifically, the bill calls for these investments in early education:

• $2 billion invested in the Child Care Development Block Grant to provide child care services for an additional 300,000 children in low-income, working families.

• $2.1 billion invested in Head Start to provide comprehensive services for an additional 110,000 infants, toddlers and preschoolers from low-income families.

• $600 million invested in IDEA Infants and Families to provide grants to states serving children with special needs from birth to age 2. In addition, the bill proposes more than $140 billion to improve the quality of K-12 education and to support higher education. Some of the K-12 investments include improving teacher quality, providing comprehensive services to homeless children, and increasing the federal share of special education costs.

National Early Literacy Panel Identifies Early Skills That Predict Later Literacy

A much-anticipated report from the National Early Literacy Panel draws on a large body of research to illuminate early skills that best predict later success in decoding, reading comprehension, and spelling achievement. Developing Early Literacy also identifies interventions and instructional approaches that improve children's early literacy skills as well as areas where further research is needed.

"This report provides important clues about early skills that are associated with later learning, but the results need to be viewed with caution as they are mostly corelational. For example, the report finds that a young child who can rapidly identify letters or remember a string of letters will likely be a better reader. However, it does not follow that if we drill 4-year-olds in rapid letter naming or memorizing strings of letters, this will result in better reading. These types of discrete skills are indicative of cognitive processing speed, which is likely the underlying ability that affects both rapid letter naming and later reading skill. The one is unlikely to cause the other," says NIEER Co-Director Ellen Frede.

Serving on the National Early Literacy Panel was NIEER Senior Research Fellow and Rutgers Professor Dorothy Strickland. She and NIEER Assistant Research Professor Shannon Riley-Ayers co-authored Early Literacy: Policy and Practice in the Preschool Years.

What Should Be Learned in a Preschool Curriculum?

The Albert Shanker Institute answers that question in their new report Preschool Curriculum: What's In It for Children and Teachers?. Drawing on the research, Tanya S. Wright and Susan B. Neuman offer guidance to practitioners and policymakers, covering key content areas such as oral language, pre-literacy, mathematics and science. The Institute is endowed by the American Federation of Teachers.

Minnesota Study: Lack of School Readiness Costs K-12 System $113 Million

Findings from a Bush Foundation cost-benefit study in Minnesota peg the costs incurred by the state's K-12 system due to children who are unprepared for kindergarten at $113 million. That's a big piece of the $377 million the study estimates it would cost to provide two years of high-quality pre-K to all low-income 3-year-olds not currently getting early education.

Vermont Governor Recommends Budget Cuts and Hike for Pre-K

Like many governors these days, Vermont Governor James H. Douglas is talking about painful cuts that must be made in the state budget. When it comes to early education, his tone changes, however. In his inaugural address, Douglas said spending for public education reveals a "startling imbalance" in spending for early education, K-12, and higher education. He is recommending a 20 percent increase in funding for early education and higher education as a first step toward correcting that imbalance.

Top Brass Push for Early Ed Investments to Improve Recruitment Pool

Writing in Politico, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Hugh Shelton and former Navy Secretary John H. Dalton paint a stark picture of the pool of candidates from which the military draws recruits: more than 72 percent of 17- to 24-year-olds do not meet the basic educational, physical and moral standards required for service. They call for providing at-risk children with high-quality early education as the most reliable way to improve the pool. Not providing it could pose a threat to our national security, they say. Shelton and Dalton have joined with other retired military leaders to form a nonprofit organization aptly named "Mission: Readiness" that will advocate for this and other remedies.