CWI Creators: Recession to Wipe Out Most Family Well-Being Gains Since 1975
The data won't be available for another two or three years, but The Foundation for Child Development (FCD) has issued a special report that projects the extent of impacts of the current recession on family well-being. The report says the percentage of children in poverty is expected to peak at 21 percent in 2010. At some point next year, 27 percent of children will have at least one parent not working full-time year-round. Median annual family income will decline from $59,200 in 2007 to $55,700 in 2010. While income for female-headed households will drop, the steepest drop will be for male-headed households. The FCD predicts social and health consequences as well.
Study Says California Needs to Work on Quality, Streamlining of Pre-K
The last in the series of RAND reports from the California Preschool Study recommends the state take measures to increase the quality of programs and make sure they get delivered to the state's 4-year-olds from families with income up to 240 percent above poverty level and 3-year-olds from families below poverty level. Among the near-term steps the report recommends are developing a quality rating system, providing web-based reports accessible to parents, and modifying contract rules for government-subsidized programs that reduce the amount of available funds that go unused.
Full-Day Head Start Pays Off in Montgomery County, MD
When Maryland's Montgomery County Public Schools offered the district's Title 1 schools the opportunity to expand Head Start half-day pre-K to full-day, the idea was to improve the prospects for non-English speaking children and those affected by poverty. It worked. A research report from the district suggests the kids in full-day programs made significantly larger gains in reading skills compared with children in the half-day programs.
Pre-K to 3: How One School Builds on Pre-K Gains
Another example of leadership from Montgomery County Public Schools comes by way of a 7-minute boots-on-the-ground video from the New America Foundation. It follows education blogger Christina Satkowski on her visit to Broad Acres Elementary School where third grade classes have made a startling turn-around in reading and math. It's the result of a plan implemented by Superintendent Jerry Weast to expand high-quality pre-K and rewrite and align curricula through third grade in an effort to maintain the momentum of gains made in pre-K. He says these days, those gains at Broad Acres continue to build rather than fade.
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