Levels of School Readiness Tied to Family Income & Education

A recent article in the Huffington Post caught our eye last week. We think it helps point out to those who want to cut social programs how important the relationship between early childhood programs and families really is to our littlest learners. A report by the Brookings Institute analyzed school readiness data from the Department of Education’s Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort and concluded that children of low income parents are less prepared for school than peers from middle and upper income families. Not surprisingly, the report also found that the higher a mother’s or father’s level of education the higher the child’s level of readiness. This means that some children walk in the kindergarten door and are already behind.

One of the good things about the report is it measured a child’s school readiness by pre-academic skills and behavior and physical health at school entry. This is a wider measure of readiness than we may typically see when it comes to assessing school readiness. Many districts misuse a narrow tool such as the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning-Third Edition (DIAL-3), or Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS) to assess a child’s skills and assume that the scores indicate readiness or lack thereof. These testing instruments look very closely at a child’s response to isolated academic skills but do not consider other essential personal-social competencies and traits successful students must have in order to function well in a formal learning environment.

School readiness data from the Department of Education’s Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort was collected through early academic assessments in Math and Reading, teacher responses about Learning-Related Behavior and Externalizing Behavior, and parent responses about Physical Health.

• Reading Assessment: questions about basic/phonological skills, initial understanding, developing interpretation, demonstrating a critical stance, and vocabulary.
• Mathematics assessment: questions about number sense, properties, and operations; measurement; geometry and spatial sense; data analysis, statistics, and probability; and patterns, algebra, and functions.
• Learning-Related Behaviors: based on K teacher responses about a child’s ability to focus, work independently, work to complete a task, and a child’s eagerness to learn.
• Externalizing Behaviors: based on K teacher responses about whether a child acts impulsively, disrupts others, overly active, physically aggressive, annoys other children, and has temper tantrums.
• Physical Health: based on parent’s overall rating of a child’s heath (1-5 likert scale)

Our organization, The Source for Learning, Inc. and the National Head Start Association will be partnering to host a School Readiness Summit this spring. We strongly believe that our nation has a responsibility to seeks ways to improve children’s school readiness. For more than three decades educators have been debating what exactly school readiness is AND who should decide how and what to measure when evaluating a child’s readiness. Right now more than 25 states perform assessments in some way—some use formal instruments while others use teacher checklists. Check back for more information in the coming weeks…

Read the full report Income and Education as Predictors of School Readiness online. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2011/1214_school_readiness_isaacs/1214_school_readiness_isaacs.pdf

Make an Early Education New Year's Resolution

Policymakers and stakeholders have called for "education reform" since the late 60's. But after decades of new initiatives, federal mandates, alternative curricula and delivery systems, increased accountability and billions of taxpayer dollars...not much has really changed. Unfortunately.

Sadly, we are not getting the job done. Our increased accountability has illuminated that fact test scores have remained basically the same --yet the amount spent per child on education has risen exponentially. Experts estimate that 1 in 5 American adults struggle to read at the average 8th grade level based on national studies, most read at a lower level.

Make a resolution for 2012 to educate families. Early childhood educators can have a BIG impact in children's lives when they help families understand how important they are in their child's school success. Children who score better on tests and perform at higher reading levels have a few essential early experiences in common. When young parents ask early childhood educators for ways they can help their child "get ready for Kindergarten," try sharing these basic tips.

1. Children from families that sit and eat dinner around a table together 3 or more times a week do better in school overall. This is a time to feed the mind with conversation, the soul with emotional connecting, as well as the body with nutritious food. This is a no-cost strategy everyone can use--it should have a higher priority than a "busy schedule", and other "enrichment" or sports related activities that impact the dinner hour.
2. Children who enter kindergarten with higher early literacy skills came from homes where parents cuddle up and read a book with them 3 or more times a week. They play games looking at the pictures, point to the text as they read and take time to ask children questions about the stories--and listen to their answers. Read to infants, toddlers, preschoolers and beyond. Don't make the same mistake many busy parents make and stop reading aloud just because your child is able to read on his or her own! Now you can choose books to read aloud to them that are a few steps above their current reading level. One parent read a Shakespeare play to her son who struggled to read it on his own for a high school class. Even if a parent doesn't fully understand a text, he or she can be a "fellow learner."
   
3. Children who watch their parents use learning, knowledge and skills in everyday situations can see how learning helps all of us do the things we want. Help parents realize that when they stop and think through problems, try different solutions, are interested in learning new things, ask for help from others, use math and numbers to measure or cook or figure out a price, and read for information and pleasure they are modeling what it looks like to be a lifelong learner. This is the most import 21st century skill we can teach any child. We do not know what jobs and careers will exist in 20 years, we may not even be able to guess what special skills will be needed to do them. But we do know that people who naturally learn new things will be more successful as the world changes. Look at the huge changes in just the past 25 years....
   

Let's all appreciate the power and presence of parents and guardians in the lives of young children. Their investment of time and attention today is priceless to our nation's future.

Yet Again, What’s Old is New: Will Block Programs Bring Back Hands-on Play?

Block play has been a staple in the progressive education philosophy for decades, but now charter schools and more traditional institutions promote “block labs” and block corners as the newest pitch to help children build the 21st-century skills essential to success in corporate America. On November 27, 2011 the New York Times published and article titled With Blocks, Educators Go Back to Basics. It featured educators and parents in elite NY preschools and early care programs who have “rediscovered” the educational and academic value of including an old fashioned material—wooden unit blocks—in the daily curriculum.

We at PreschoolFirst have to ask, when did block corners disappear? Open-ended learning activities that take place in a block center has been included in every theme/topic since the creation of the PreschoolFirst assessment & curriculum system in 2003. PreschoolFirst strongly believes that comprehensive unit block program integrated into a well rounded curriculum has many benefits for young learners.

We advise caution anytime an educational technique or approach is promoted as the “next, new magic bullet” to fix education and raise test scores, educators need to stop and carefully evaluate such claims. Studies over the years do indicate that block play can help children learn basic math concepts, perform better on language acquisition tests, and that sophisticated block play may help children earn better math grades later in school. Our staff feels it is important to ask a few questions to ensure educators understand the concepts and benefits behind a “new magic bullet”—in this case a comprehensive block program.

Do the wooden blocks themselves provide the benefits or is it the fact that when young children build with blocks they work collaboratively using real materials to model what they know and to represent what they learn?

• Could one of the benefits be that when children engage in block play they control the process and flow of learning as well as the product of the activity that represents their ideas and knowledge?
• Is the benefit of a comprehensive block play activity that it involves open-ended “project” approach yet participants use a framework of “rules” to guide their interactions?
• Might the benefit to language acquisition be tied to the fact that during block play children are involved in a language rich activity? A block area is not a silent place—children must express their ideas, identify problems and challenges, talk about solutions, discuss the process, and present their structures and creations to others.
• Might similar benefits be observed with other open-ended materials? In other types of project-based learning activities? During other child-directed learning activities? (i.e. Book making in a writing center, dramatic play, the sandbox, objects found on a nature walk, play dough, group sculptures, open ended art creations, etc.)

Block play is a multi-disciplinary activity, but so are many other learning activities. Include block play in your well-rounded curriculum, but do not replace the other developmentally appropriate practices or learning centers that are part of your program. We suggest programs avoid making pie-in-the sky promises about the benefits of any one material or activity…all children are different. Provide many meaningful ways for children to integrate social skills, fine motor control, new vocabulary, early literacy skills, geometric–spatial thinking, awareness of basic math concepts and relationships, and to explore principles of physics and cause & effect.

Read With Blocks, Educators Go Back to Basics by Kyle Spencer

Common Core for Early Learning: A Call to Summit

Power Struggle

In a recent webinar, David Kirp, author of The Sandbox Investment: The Preschool Movement, stated that the biggest challenge to early childhood is that different “factions” of early childhood stakeholders cannot put aside their differences and come together to agree on what is key to early childhood education today. This divide leaves the door open to consultants, “professional” researchers, and large for-profit corporations to step in and drive the discussions, secure research & development funds, and lobby legislation to meet their own agendas.

The simple fact is: it will be easier to collect reliable data and more cost effective if States adopt a common core set of early standards. Obviously since the Race to the Top funding, Quality Rating Improvement Systems are in the minds of all early childhood educators and states. If/when QRIS is funded in each state it will determine the commercial future of the EC market for all materials, curriculum and assessments. Common early learning standards must be instrument neutral---such as the way in which the Head Start Child Development and Early Learning Framework is impartial. But we must also coordinate our efforts so that this framework/standards considers the integrated approach of learning necessary in early childhood curriculum, young children's irregular development cycles, and the broader set of skills and knowledge a child needs to acquire children need in order to be successful.

Missteps & Injuries

To have any value for the money invested, implementing the Common Core State Standards should be seen as a formative process that will require collaboration, review and revision – not a power struggle between what makes good education reform VS. interested publishers, researchers trying to get funding or noticed, and commercial stakeholders. What if—as critics say—the K, 1, and 2 standards are too rigorous and expect children to perform at levels for which few are ready?

Sam Meisels’ makes a key point in a blog published by the Washington Post last week (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/common-core-standards-pose-dilemmas-for-early-childhood/2011/11/28/gIQAPs1X6N_blog.html?wprss=answer-sheet). He says that the common core standards represent sky-high aspirations. Meisels feels that just because the standards have taller stair steps for each grade in order to reach a higher end goal doesn’t mean students will just naturally grow longer legs.

We must speak up so early childhood has a voice at this To date the Common Core State Standards are not yet validated for efficacy or studied for reliability. No studies or pilot programs were done prior to their acceptance by the RTT & US Dept of ED. Will the Common Core creators modify or agree to “push up” some standards when/if they find they are too rigorous to be accomplished by students in the current grade level our current education system.

We must come together as a field and argue for a national system—not just a state-by-state system—that uses instrument neutral methods of collecting, managing, and monitoring data about program quality and child progress. Conflicts of interest from academic research and personal agendas will be present in any discussions.

We must insist that no single assessment instrument or curricular approach is dictated for adoption. Right now big publishers battle to have their tool be the one tool specified in any state that will mandate a tool or curriculum. Researchers and academic institutions battle to have their projects funded. Those not on the “short lists” object and point out weaknesses in any instruments, research processes, and resulting decisions. This tactic will only further divide the early childhood field.

Any systems that are developed or adopted for Early Learning must be instrument neutral and allow for individual program choice about the specific tool to use to provide data on quality and progress. This is the model that Head Start implements: an expansive standards with objective frameworks that ensures local decision-making for implementation.

PreK to Common Core Correlation Debate: It Matters to All Of Us

Earlier this week Education Week published an article Common Core Poses Challenges for Preschools, by Jaclyn Zubrzycki (http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/12/07/13prek_ep.h31.html?tkn=XRTF5u5aDLomVIu%2FXBMmpoQPhjSCEAn110zQ&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1). The article highlighted the ongoing tension between two approaches to early childhood education: increasing and measuring academic rigor as per the Common Core State Standards vs. young children’s developmental needs. Opinions from several experts on both sides of the argument were quoted in the article, one of whom was PreschoolFirst’s Mari Blaustein, Director of Early Childhood Initiatives at the Source For Learning (SFL). She was interviewed about the Common Core Correlation Project that was facilitated by SFL in partnership with the National Head Start Association. This eight month project guided Head Start experts to correlate the Head Start Child Development and Early Learning Framework to the Common Core State Standards for the end of the Kindergarten year (CCSS-K). The resulting correlation document is available for review and comment by the broader education community and stakeholders at the SFL website (http://www.sourceforlearning.org/news.cfm?newsid=68).

Here’s why we believe this Correlation project is crucial to the future of early childhood education in the US. Early learning standards and definitions of school readiness vary across the nation—but do young children really differ from state to state? Correlating the Head Start Framework with common-core standards is just common sense; as both sets of guidelines are used in multiple states. Representatives at National Governors' Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers state that “there are no plans to create nationwide common-core standards in the mold of the K-12 standards for early childhood.”

States boast of their intense efforts to put high early learning standards into place so PreK is integrated into the elementary curriculum. Of note: implementing guidelines and accountability are voluntary in most states for private programs. Some states have written and linked their early learning standards to the Common Core, but this expensive, time consuming, and laborious process only creates an alignment that will be used in one specific state. It is still “state-centric.”

Critics of the Common Core argue that the scope of standards are too narrow because they only address English Language Arts and Mathematics, that the they are too academically rigorous and thus “misguided” or unachievable, and are “top down.” Critics also feel that the Common Core are profoundly incomplete and ignores important social, communication, and self-regulation skills.

Prior to publishing an opinion about the Common Core State Standards, we suggest that anyone—expert or otherwise—review:

a) background info and the podcasts that are on the CCSSO website that explains how/why the Common Core are designed they way they are (http://www.ccsso.org/Resources/Digital_Resources/Common_Core_Implementation_Video_Series.html);

b) personally review the broad array of state early childhood (PreK4) standards and their corresponding K level standards. After a careful review, we believe that the CCSS-K are actually much more developmentally appropriate than almost all of the K benchmarks/standards created by individual states for ELA and Math;

c) review the Correlation of The Head Start Framework to the Common Core State Standards in Kindergarten pages 1-19 (http://www.sourceforlearning.org/news.cfm?newsid=68);

d) research the status and array of benchmarks for Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) in each state.

We hope all early childhood educators and stakeholders will make the effort to become informed and join this essential debate.

$5 M Fuzzy Math Concepts for the Math Phobic?

You do the math for this one!

The Wall Street Journal reported The Department of Education awarded Erickson Institute $5 million to "offer early mathematics training to 111 teachers from preschool to third grade at eight more Chicago schools and to study the program's effectiveness." The Early Mathematics Education Project at Erikson Institute focuses on how to teach mathematical thinking to young children, rather than basic math procedures. The Erikson researchers intend to train Chicago early childhood teachers to help them teach young children to connect what numbers mean to their everyday world.

After reading the example in the article about "syncopated clapping patterns", this old time early childhood educator could not help but think of the Math Their Way program that was in widely used in the progressive private schools back in the 80's and 90's. Mary Baratta-Lorton wrote this book that uses an activity-centered approach to teach basic math skills for these same grade levels. The goal of her activities is to allow children to explore and develop understanding and insight of math concepts through the use of concrete materials.

The Early Mathematics Education Project goals and techniques and philosophy described in the article sound very similar to those used in the Math Their Way w-a-a-a-a-y back when. Seems to this early childhood educator that the newest thing was the price tag:

$5,000,000 Early Mathematics Education Project divided by 111 teachers (includes 1 week summer training + 6 training sessions during the year) = $45,045 per teacher

Math their Way: An Activity-Centered Mathematics Program for Early Childhood Education,
by Mary Baratta-Lorton, Lorton Baratta = $44.36 ($30.59 for paperback)

Oh...and Math Their Way Summer Workshops are available for $350 per person and if there isn't one in your area, you can set one up at no charge! http://www.center.edu/WORKSHOPS/wslist.php

For the same 5 million dollars, the Dept of Education could have:

-- given each of these 111 teachers a full scholarship toward a Master's degree

-- hired a full time master teaching partner for each class

-- hired 111 more teachers and cut class size in half

$45,000 is an average salary of a Kindergarten teacher earns in a year, it is 30% more than the average preschool teacher earns in a year.

Seems like early childhood educators are not the ones who need to brush up on basic math skills....

See: New Calculation: Math in Preschool, by Stephanie Banchero - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203764804577056551856059254.html