NIEER newsletter 5/8

Hot Topics

Early Education Gets a Boost in Department of Education's FY 2010 BudgetThere were pleasant surprises for early education in the Department of Education FY 2010 budget proposal released yesterday. Among them were two new programs — one to fund Title I preschool programs and another to help states raise pre-K program quality. Highlights include:

• $500 million for a new program of Title I Early Childhood Grants, which would encourage local education agencies to use a portion of the increase in Title I Grants to start or expand Title I preschool programs.
• $300 million for the new Early Learning Challenge Fund, a component of the president's Zero-to-Five initiative that will provide grants to state education agencies for the development of state plans and infrastructure to raise the quality of publicly funded early learning programs.
• $370.4 million for an expanded Striving Readers program that, in addition to promoting the development and implementation of research-based interventions that improve the skills of teenage students who are reading below grade level, would provide demonstration grants to local education agencies to implement comprehensive and coherent programs of reading instruction for children in the elementary grades.
• $162.5 million for Early Reading First, an increase of $50 million, for support of an additional 52 grants to enable early childhood programs to improve the quality of their early literacy services for preschool-aged children.
• $10 million for the Promise Neighborhoods initiative to provide 1-year planning grants to non-profit, community-based organizations to enable them to develop plans and establish partnerships for the development of comprehensive neighborhood programs for children and youth, from birth through college.

The proposed budget eliminates Even Start, the 20-year-old program supporting family literacy through early childhood education and adult education. National evaluations have found that children and adults participating in the program made no greater literacy gains than non-participants. The Obama administration said the resources dedicated to Even Start ($66.5 million in FY 09) would be better directed to other early childhood programs. In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services has budgeted $124 million for competitive grants for home visitation programs. DOE's budget summary is available on the web.

Majority of Governors are Increasing or Protecting Pre-K

A national analysis of state-funded preschool released this week by Pre-K Now finds that as governors confront the fiscal crisis, the majority of them are either increasing or protecting their state's investments in pre-K for the coming fiscal year. Highlights of the analysis:

• Fourteen governors are proposing to increase pre-K funding.
• Thirteen are proposing to flat fund early education.
• Governors of three states with no public pre-K are proposing new programs.
• Five governors are proposing to cut pre-K funding.
• Total proposed state investment in pre-K for FY 2010 is four percent greater than FY 2009 appropriations.

Steering Stimulus Money to Pre-K is No Simple Matter

With funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) now allocated among the states, the push is on to develop plans for accessing the money. Since the intent is to be temporary, stimulative and beneficial to program quality, uses like teacher training and developing quality improvement and rating systems rise to the occasion. Less certain are other uses such as applying stimulus money toward keeping kids in state-funded pre-K where states are cutting funding. A number of resources have been developed in recent days that offer guidance on the various pots of funding contained in ARRA, what the stipulations are, and ways to go about qualifying for funds. The National Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center makes them available at its web site. Meanwhile, a new report from Learning Point Associates and Mission Measurement, titled The Education Stimulus: Too Big to Fail, examines challenges and concerns that are emerging among education leaders regarding application of the stimulus money.

Imaging Study Finds Brain Abnormalities in Toddlers with Autism

Science has known that an enlargement of the brain in young children often correlates with autism. A study reported in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry points to enlargement of the amygdala, the brain area associated with functions such as processing faces and emotion, as correlating with autism. A brain imaging study of 50 autistic children and 33 control children at ages 2 and 4 found that those with enlarged amygdalas at age 2 were more likely to demonstrate autistic behavior. The report said the autistic children had enlarged amygdalas prior to age 2 and they stayed enlarged through age 4.

Denver Preschool Program Ahead of Schedule

Denver Preschool Program CEO James Mejia reports that after 16 months of operation, enrollment has passed the 5,000-children mark, a milestone planners hadn't expected to reach this soon. In 2007, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper pushed for and voters approved a sales tax increase to fund preschool for all in the city.
Vinci is New Chief at the National Head Start AssociationYasmina Vinci has taken the helm as executive director of the National Head Start Association. She takes over from Michael McGrady who stepped in as interim executive director 17 months ago following the departure of Sarah Greene. Vinci was the executive director of the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (NACCRRA) where she served for 11 years.

Nazario Tapped for Post at HHS

President Obama has nominated Carmen Nazario to serve as the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Services. Nazario served as Administrator of the Administration for Children and Families for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico from 2003 to 2008. During the Clinton administration she was Associate Commissioner for Child Care in the Administration on Children, Youth and Families and later became Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Administration for Children and Families. She's currently an assistant professor at the Inter American University of Puerto Rico.

NIEER newsletter 4/24

Hot Topics

U.S. Senator Casey Introduces Bill That Would Boost State Pre-K
Congressional Quarterly reports that Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania has introduced a bill (S. 839) that would provide grants for states to provide at least one year of voluntary high-quality pre-K to low-income children. Among its provisions, the Prepare All Kids Act calls for programs to use research-based curricula, have children-to-teacher ratios no greater than ten to one and require teachers to have bachelor's degrees within six years. Casey proposes housing the program in the U.S. Department of Education. He is quoted as saying "…what's lacking is a real strategy for early education beyond what we have in Head Start." The bill is similar to one by the same name that he introduced in 2007. He did not provide an estimate of the program's cost.

North Carolina's More At Four Program Remains in Danger
A budget plan passed in the North Carolina Senate calls for More at Four, the high-quality preschool program created by former governor Mike Easley, to be cut by $40 million and shifted from the Department of Public Instruction to the Department of Health and Human Services. The Senate budget is now in the House but Speaker Joe Hackney has as yet made no assurances the funding will be restored.

California Proposition 1D Would Siphon Money Out of Fund for ECE
It was more than a decade ago that Rob Reiner successfully championed Proposition 10, the measure that financed early childhood development programs through a 50-cent-per pack cigarette tax. Now a new ballot measure, Proposition 1D, asks voters to approve shifting nearly $1.7 billion out of the surpluses in that fund to help balance the state's general fund. Another ballot measure, Proposition 1E, would siphon $460 million from surpluses in a fund for mental health services. Senate President Pro Tem, Darrell Steinberg, a supporter of early childhood education who pushed for Prop. 1D termed it a "temporary sacrifice" but Reiner doesn't see it that way.

World Bank Report: Latin America Needs Early Childhood Development Programs
A soon-to-be published report from the World Bank says early childhood development services across Latin America cover only a small fraction of the beneficiary populations, noting that in terms of inequality of opportunity between the haves and the have-nots, the region is second only to sub-Saharan Africa. Titled "The Promise of Early Childhood Development in Latin America and the Caribbean," it addresses the substantial returns to be gained from investment in early childhood services in the various countries in the region and makes policy recommendations. Details are available at the World Bankweb site.

PNC Announces "Grow Up Great with Science"
The PNC Foundation announced this week it is pledging up to $6 million in three-year grants to regional science centers and nonprofits to expand science opportunities for preschoolers. Called "Grow Up Great with Science," it is part of PNC Financial Services Group's 10-year $100 million philanthropic effort in early education that started in 2004. Bank officials and guests, including Elmo from Sesame Street, celebrated the program's launch at the National Air and Space Museum - one of the 14 science centers to receive funding. A recent NIEER working paper shows that teachers tend not to support science and math learning in pre-K.

In Japan, Preschoolers are Attending "Cram Schools"
The Christian Science Monitor reports that in order to compete for the best primary schools Japanese parents are now sending their preschoolers and kindergartners to ojuken, or cram schools, where they take special classes and complete workbooks. The schools are viewed as supplements to Japan's play-based early education policy. Read the full story here: http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0423/p06s01-woap.html.

Early Education News Roundup

courtesy of the National Institute of Early Education Rresearch - Rutgers University

April 8, 2009
Recession Stalls State-Financed Pre-Kindergarten, but Federal Money May Help
One of the most drastic expansions of public education in recent American history unfolded quietly in this decade, as dozens of states added free pre-kindergarten classes to their traditional kindergarten to high school offerings.

April 8, 2009
Playing Nice: Teachers Learn to Help Kids Behave in School
Daily playtimes are a centerpiece of the curriculum used in Ms. Randle's Head Start classroom, "Tools of the Mind" -- which incorporates training in "executive function," or the mental ability to control impulses and focus on new information, into children's routine.

April 2, 2009
Opinion: Easy does it with early childhood changes
North Carolina leaders have for some time recognized the critical role of early education in improving the later lives of young children. High-quality early education programs reduce the need for later remedial services, increase completion rates of high school and higher education, lower the rate of "retention in grade" and generally help those children who participate to lead more productive lives. The General Assembly is considering changes in our services to young children that will undo years of progress that have led to improved school performance.

March 30, 2009
State budget cuts threaten autism services for children
Early intervention and preschool special education programs were created to solve problems for children before they enter the public school system. Successful early intervention can decrease school failure and crime and increase economic productivity, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research.

March 30, 2009
Helping kindergarten transition
Public schools in Ohio and across the nation need to do more to help youngsters make the move from preschool to kindergarten, according to a report released today by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Education Commission of the States.

March 29, 2009
Educators explore kindergarten standards
How do you know if a child is ready for kindergarten? That's a loaded question among educators, but the Ready For School Council in the Holland-Zeeland area is determined to come up with a common definition since Michigan school officials have not.

March 27, 2009
Stimulus Providing Big Funding Boost For Early Childhood
Advocates for early-childhood education are taking President Obama at his word that the billions of dollars for programs like Head Start included in the recent economic-stimulus package are merely a "down payment" on future expansion. So, while other education officials are weighing the risks of starting new programs with federal money that may dry up in two years, early-childhood programs are ramping up for expansion after years of being underfunded, their supporters say.

March 26, 2009
New formula for funding N.J. schools ruled legal
A Superior Court judge declared the state's school-funding formula constitutional yesterday, ruling in favor of the Corzine administration and against advocates for poor students. The decision could abolish the controversial Abbott program, which has sent billions of state tax dollars to 31 low-income districts including Elizabeth, Perth Amboy and Newark.

NIEER newsletter

Hot Topics

NIEER Releases State of Preschool 2008 Yearbook
NIEER's annual analysis of state-funded preschool programs, released today at the Oyster-Adams Bilingual School in Washington, D.C., shows impressive expansion in enrollment and spending. Key findings in The State of Preschool 2008 include these:

• Enrollment increased by more than 108,000 children. More than 1.1 million children attended state-funded preschool education, 973,178 at age 4 alone.
• Thirty-three of the 38 states with state-funded programs increased enrollment.
• Based on NIEER's Quality Standards Checklist, 11 states improved the quality of their preschool programs. Only one fell back.
• State funding for pre-K rose to almost $4.6 billion. Funding for state pre-K from all reported sources exceeded $5.2 billion, an increase of nearly $1 billion (23 percent) over the previous year.

The new yearbook is available online.

Ed Secretary Arne Duncan Speaks at Preschool Yearbook Release
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joined NIEER Director Steve Barnett for the yearbook release. "Early childhood education is an economic stimulus package," he told the crowd. Duncan underscored the need for high-quality programs if they are to be effective and outlined the various ways the economic stimulus package invests in early education, from expanding Head Start and Early Head Start to doing more for children with special needs to providing first time parents with home visits.

Duncan said President Obama's Zero to Five initiative supported by the fiscal year 2010 budget will leverage investments in early childhood education across the country to increase program quality, support coordination among programs and provide parents with information to choose the best programs for their children. He reiterated the president's plan to establish a Presidential Early Learning Council to examine better ways to integrate preschool programs and resources. "We are eager to listen ... but we are also issuing a challenge," Duncan said, referring to the need to raise program quality and the administration's plan to issue Early Learning Challenge Grants to reward quality and innovation. "Your preschool yearbook shows even though the quality of state preschool is up, five states meet fewer than half of the NIEER quality benchmarks. That's five too many," he said. Video of the yearbook release is available from C-SPAN.

Barnett: Outlook for State Pre-K is Uncertain, Proposes Federal Initiative
The difficult economy and sharply declining state revenues have combined to darken the outlook for the immediate future of state-funded preschool, NIEER Director Steve Barnett warned the group. He pointed out that in most states expenditures on pre-K are entirely discretionary and therefore easier to cut than expenditures for K-12 education. Barnett warned that several of the biggest states are considering enrollment cuts, reductions in program standards, and/or postponement of expansion plans — this despite the availability of new federal stimulus funds. Nine states have already cut funding for state pre-K and more have cuts under consideration. Perhaps the most disastrous proposal so far is legislation in the North Carolina Senate that proposes to zero out funding to the North Carolina Department of Education for More at Four, one of only two programs in the country that meets all 10 of NIEER's benchmarks for quality standards. The state Senate would substitute more poorly funded services through child care, though supposedly with the same standards.

Barnett pointed out that state pre-K receives no direct help from the federal stimulus package and that a new federal program to support state pre-K would be a big plus for expanding quality and enrollment. "We propose that the federal government commit to doubling the rate of growth in state pre-K while raising state quality standards so that by the year 2020 all 4-year-olds in America will have access to a good education," Barnett said. To do this, he said the federal government should match state spending with up to $2,500 for every additional child enrolled in state pre-K programs meeting basic quality standards. In addition, the federal government should facilitate increased integration of child care, Head Start, and state pre-K. NIEER's news release is available online.

Internecine

Don Wheeler

One of my supporters in the most recent school board elections, Fern Hamlin, used this word in a letter of endorsement. Here's what she said:

"I have had children in the South Bend schools for the last 20 years, and I continue to be appalled by the school board's inability to address the problems that plague our schools and hamper our children's achievement and success. We need school board members who can move beyond internecine squabbles and imagined personal slights. We need school board members who can identify and focus on the most important problems our schools face, investigate these problems thoroughly and rationally, work together to solve them, plan creatively for the future, and work in harmony with the school corporation administration."

I was intrigued by the word "internecine" - it was totally unfamiliar to me. So I consulted Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary - Unabridged, for some help.

I quickly dismissed the first definition. The reference to "great slaughter" seemed off her point. But the second one looked to be a better fit: deadly to both sides; mutually destructive.

I thought of this when a new squabble surfaced regarding school security advisory committees. From Joseph Dits and the South Bend Tribune:

School board President Sheila Bergeron is setting up a committee to look at security issues in the South Bend Community School Corp. She said it will include principals, teachers, students, parents, community members and school resource officers, along with board trustees Stephanie Spivey, Ralph Pieniazkiewicz and Bill Sniadecki.

She announced it at Monday's board meeting. Bergeron said the idea is to balance out the perspectives of a safety committee that Superintendent James Kapsa had just announced last Friday. Kapsa's committee includes the corporation's security director, Bill Bernhardt, board trustee Roger Parent, and four community members with experience in police work, education and Latino affairs: Michael Carrington, Charles Hurley, Carlis Phillips Sr. and Federico Thon. They said Friday they'll be talking with teachers, parents, students, juvenile court judges and anyone with a stake in school safety.

Trustee Bill Sniadecki said Monday he was disappointed, having learned about Kapsa's committee via an article in The Tribune. Sniadecki said he's shown an interest in security and was surprised to see Parent on Kapsa's committee. Parent explained that he'd shown an interest in security during last fall's elections. Kapsa said he was following through on goals and priorities he'd discussed with the board March 4, which include reaching outside the corporation for help.

It sounds like we're going to have rival groups addressing the same issues. Does this sound nuts to anyone else?

I don't know how this situation arose, but someone or some people made a mistake in communication. We should agree on that, figure out a way to blend these groups that is acceptable to all concerned, and concentrate on the important task.

People make mistakes. Grownups should be able to accept responsibility, accept good faith efforts of remediation when they feel wronged, and move on to the work.

Episodes like this cause a great deal of impatience in the community - and a deadly attitude of fatalism. And we just can't afford it.

A decision about our values

Don Wheeler

remarks as prepared for the business meeting of the South Bend Community School Corporation Board of Trustees - 3/16/09

I strongly favor treating Kindergarten as being of equal value to all other classes taught in the SBCSC, therefore; I urge you to fund universal normal school day length classes for our Kindergartners.

I think that it is unfortunate you are put in the position where a choice is necessary. I believe it is a dereliction of duty of the state that causes this. The State, while claiming the primal importance of public education, still considers Kindergarten optional, won’t fund it properly, and lets our children leave the system (of their own accord) both before they have enough experience to make an informed decision and before their education is anything like complete.

What the state ought to be doing is taking a hard look at programs like the State of Oklahoma has. For ten years, Oklahoma has offered an optional pre-Kindergarten year. The program has a sixty percent participation level at this point, and has paid many dividends to citizens of the state. Universal normal school day length Kindergarten classes are a given there.

Clearly, Indiana has a way to go ... and so here we are. You are the ones left to pick up the pieces.

I’m sensitive to those who voice budget concerns about this measure. But I’d point out that a budget is the clearest statement of values any organization or community can make. By passing this, the Board of Trustees will tell us that they understand a true commitment to successful outcomes for all our children requires maximum effort towards getting our youngest citizens off to the best start possible…even when it’s not easy to do. You will also be making a strategic, proactive decision – rather than a reactive one.

Should the Board fail to take this step – again – the message will be quite different – but equally clear. But I have confidence you won’t do that.

Since I have a daughter in Kindergarten, and some of you may not, I’d like to share some observations about the current program.

Sarah attends Hay Primary Center. Her principal, Craig Haenes championed and pioneered the Wilson LiPS reading program in the corporation. Her teacher, Dixie Eichorst, is one of those people who are both supremely good at what they do and seem to love it as well. And she’s done it quite a while. We have no worries for our daughter.

Sarah’s class only meets for about two and a half hours a day. When there are half days scheduled, her class typically doesn’t meet at all. But the expectations are the same for all Kindergartners - which means that there’s a fair amount of homework. As five-year-olds, Sarah and her classmates need to complete two pages (both sides) every day to keep up. Plus, her mother and I had to figure out how to cover the part of the day she would have been in class. We have the means and the flexibility to pull this stuff off, but what about the children in more challenging situations? Those children’s parents, parent, or guardian may not have the sort of advantages our family has.

Those children may not have the guidance it takes to form this new homework routine. Those children might not have two years of high quality pre-school (ECDC at St. Mary’s) behind them – as Sarah does – which could help them offset these problems. Some of those young citizens may be starting their public education experience at a disadvantage because of our current program. I am aware of no point in our current program designed to address that deficit.

Mr. Kapsa, Board members, let’s take this important step towards getting our children off to the best start possible. Let’s use this decision as a foundation to form a solid early education strategy, where all our students take a trip down Light Bulb Lane and gain the benefits of the Wilson LiPS reading program. And let’s look for other opportunities in the future.

We can’t try to play catch-up with High Schoolers as our main strategy for good outcomes. If we’re ever to break the cycle of too many of our children failing to graduate High School, we have to take every opportunity to get them to High School ready for High School – and to Intermediate Centers before that.

Clearly, the only way we can achieve transformational change in student outcomes is to concentrate on ensuring our children leave Primary Centers ready for the next step. The best way to achieve that is to give our youngest students the best start possible.

I ask that you adopt item 9.04 of tonight’s agenda.