Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Head Start’ Category

Obama’s Plan for Early Education

Posted in Federal, Funding, Head Start, National on April 17, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

obama budget pic

Photo: Micaela Bedell for Strategies for Children

It was inspiring to hear President Obama call for universal preschool in his State of the Union address. Now, he’s providing a plan for a national expansion of preschool in his fiscal year 2014 federal budget proposal.

“A zip code should never predetermine the quality of any child’s educational opportunities,” the White House said in a statement. Sadly, zip codes do matter when they define high concentrations of poverty. As the White House notes, “studies show that children from low-income families are less likely to have access to high-quality early education, and less likely to enter school prepared for success.”

As part of a $75 billon investment over ten years, Obama wants to create a new federal/state partnership to offer high-quality preschool programs to the country’s low- and moderate-income four year-olds, children whose families are at or below 200% of the poverty level. Also included in this plan is $15 billion over ten years to expand home visiting programs, and $9.6 billion for Head Start, with $1.4 billion of this for new competitive grants to build partnerships between Early Head Start and child care providers.

Revenues for Obama’s plan would come from a tax increase on cigarettes and other tobacco products. (more…)

Read Full Post »

How Effective is Head Start?

Posted in Achievement gap, Federal, Head Start, National, Pre-K to 3, Pre-kindergarten, Research on March 26, 2013 | 1 Comment »

Photo: Micaela Bedell for Strategies for Children

Photo: Micaela Bedell for Strategies for Children

Head Start has been in the news lately, both because of the effects of sequestration on the program and because of discussion about its effectiveness in light of proposals to expand early education. W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, sheds light on the research in a recent column on the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog.

Barnett concludes that Head Start is neither as ineffective as its critics contend nor as effective as its staunchest defenders claim. “Which side is correct?” he asks. “Neither.”

Barnett discusses the recent report by the Department of Health and Human Services that critics say show the benefits of Head Start fade by third grade. Although the study, based on a large-scale randomized trial, is the best to date on Head Start, Barnett cautions that it “does not say what critics claim it says.” (more…)

Read Full Post »

MA Education Secretary Completing Summer Early Literacy Tour

Posted in Head Start, Pre-kindergarten on September 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Paul Reville

Backpacks are loaded. School doors are open. The 2012-13 school year has begun, and with it comes the perennial question: How was your summer? One thing Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville did over the summer was embark on a statewide early literacy tour that will end on September 10 with a stop at Arbors Kids in Springfield.

The purpose of the tour, according to a news release, was to highlight the importance of third grade reading proficiency and its link to high-quality early education. “The [Patrick] administration has prioritized efforts to increase early literacy rates as a key strategy in helping all students achieve at higher levels and realize long term academic success and positive life outcomes,” the news release states. “Statistics show that three-quarters of children who struggle with reading in third grade will continue to struggle academically, greatly reducing their chances of graduating from high school, going to college or successfully participating in a 21st century high skill economy. Data also shows that children who receive high-quality literacy instruction during their earliest years are more prepared for kindergarten and success in elementary school and beyond.”

Secretary Reville’s most recent visit was an August 21 stop at the PACE (People Acting in Community Endeavors) Head Start program on Smith Street in New Bedford. “Reville said that students come into kindergarten with a three- to four-year grade span in terms of language fluency,” The [New Bedford] Standard-Times reports. “Those gaps in fluency tend to remain in place throughout a student’s K-12 career, which means the battle against high dropout rates is over before it begins unless we do a better job at early childhood education, said Reville.  ‘We really want to close that literacy gap … and we know to do that, we need to start very early,’ he said.”

Reville delivered a similar message at a meeting with the newspaper’s editorial board the same day he visited the Head Start program. “There’s no more highly leveraged investment in education than those investments we make in early education,” he told the editorial board. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Evidence Mounts of Lasting Benefits of Early Education

Posted in Achievement gap, Cognitive development, Head Start, K-12, Pre-K to 3, Pre-kindergarten, Research on June 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children

There’s yet more evidence of the long-term benefits of high-quality early education, this time from Michigan’s Great Start Readiness Program, a state-funded pre-kindergarten program for children at risk of school failure founded in 1985 as a limited pilot. It now serves about 30,000 children.

Researchers from the HighScope Educational Research Foundation have been following 338 children who attended Great Start (GSRP) in 1995-6 and a control group of 258 children from similar demographic backgrounds. The children have now graduated from high school, thus yielding valuable longitudinal data, which HighScope recently presented to Michigan’s board of education.

The findings include:

  • Kindergarten teachers consistently rated GSRP graduates as more advanced in imagination and creativity, demonstrating initiative, retaining learning, completing assignments and as having good attendance.
  • Second grade teachers rated GSRP graduates higher on being ready to learn, able to retain learning, maintaining good attendance and having an interest in school.
  • A higher percentage of 4th grade GSRP graduates passed the MEAP [Michigan Educational Assessment Program] compared to non-GSRP students.
  • Significantly fewer GSRP participants were retained in grade than non-GSRP students between 2nd and 12th grades (36.5% versus 49.2% in 12th grade).
  • Significantly fewer GSRP children of color were retained for two or more grades than their non-GSRP counterparts by the 12th grade (14.3% versus 28.1% in 12th grade).
  • More GSRP students graduated on time from high school than non-GSRP participants (58.3% versus 43.0%).
  • More GSRP children of color graduated on time from high school than non-GSRP participants (59.7% vs. 36.5%).

Researchers also estimated that 43.5% of Great Start’s cost was recouped through savings from the reduction in grade retention.

“This simple calculation does not quantify additional savings from reducing school failure and delayed high school graduation, as well as their lifetime effects on earnings and employment and crime reduction,” the report states. “This return could be increased by better targeting of children and better funding per child leading to higher-quality programming.”

Read Full Post »

“Creating a Culture of Quality” for Early Education

Posted in Dept. of Early Education and Care, Early educators, Early Learning Challenge, Head Start, NAEYC, Professional development & preparation, QRIS on February 28, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Amy O'Leary visits Boston preschool (Photo: Kate Samp for Strategies for Children)

My colleague Amy O’Leary, director of our Early Education for All Campaign, tells a story that illustrates how far the field of early education and care has come over the past several years.

Amy has been going to meetings of the Boston Alliance for Early Education  since she was a preschool director in Boston’s South End neighborhood in the 1990s. “It was originally designed as a support group for directors,” Amy recalls. “The conversation often focused on overflowing toilets and the day-to-day logistical challenges of running a center.”

Much has changed since then, not the least of which came in December 2011 when Massachusetts was named one of only nine states awarded a federal Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge grant. Back in 2005, Massachusetts merged its child care and early education agencies to create the nation’s first consolidated Department of Early Education and Care. The same year it established the Early Childhood Educators Scholarship. In 2006, the state created the Universal Pre-Kindergarten grant program to support and sustain quality. Head Start and the National Association for the Education of Young Children, an accrediting body, started to phase in bachelor degree requirements for early educators. In 2011, Massachusetts launched an evidence-based Quality Rating and Improvement System, which defines tiers of quality that include teacher education and training, curriculum, and assessment.

With these changes, the conversations have changed, too. (more…)

Read Full Post »

The Case for Sustaining Head Start

Posted in Federal, Head Start on March 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Kathleen McCartney, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, weighs in on the future of Head Start in a column “Cutting Head Start is Bad Fiscal Policy” posted on CNN’s website. The early education program for children from low-income families is entangled in the stand-off in Congress over the federal budget for fiscal year 2011, which started October 1, 2010. The federal government is operating under a series of continuing resolutions, the latest of which will expire Friday unless Congress takes further action.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives recently approved a measure that would cut $61 billion from the federal budget over the rest of FY11. Among the cuts in the House bill is a decrease of almost $1.1 billion for Head Start, which would mean 218,000 children would be dropped from the program. Some 2,900 Massachusetts children would be at risk. The Democrat-controlled Senate voted down both the House bill and an alternate measure from Democrats that included a $200 million increase for Head Start, to $7.4 billion from $7.2 billion in FY10.

“There is ample evidence that early childhood education more than pays for itself,” McCartney writes. “Too often policy does not reflect evidence, (more…)

Read Full Post »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 2,437 other followers

%d bloggers like this: