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Archive for the ‘Pre-K to 3’ Category

K-12 Can Learn from Early Education

Posted in Early educators, K-12, Pre-K to 3, Professional development & preparation on June 13, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Photo: Kate Samp for Strategies for Children

“At least some of the answers to turning around our nation’s struggling K-12 public schools can be found at the nearest preschool.”

With this admittedly “counterintuitive” statement, Robert Pianta, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, begins his recent report on teacher observation, published by the Center for American Progress. Citing “decades of experience using observation in early childhood education,” Pianta contends that two major observation systems contain important lessons for efforts to reform teacher evaluations used in K-12 settings.

“At a time of considerable urgency and demand for improvements in our nation’s schools, particularly when it comes to evaluating the effectiveness of teachers, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Instead of looking to the development and implementation of new educational models and methodologies, K-12 educators would do well to learn from the lessons and experience accrued by their counterparts in the early childhood sector, specifically when it comes to teacher performance evaluation,” Pianta writes in “Implementing Observation Protocols: Lessons for K-12 Education from the Field of Early Childhood.” (Full report  /   Introduction and summary)

“Early childhood education has long embraced the value of observing classrooms and teacher-child interactions. In early childhood education the features of the settings in which children are served are the hallmarks of quality. These features can include health and safety considerations, the materials and physical layout of the space, and the interactions that take place between adults and children — such as conversations, emotional tone, or physical proximity. Standardized observations of these early childhood education features in turn yield metrics that are used in state and federal policy, program improvement investments, and the credentialing of professionals — all uses that K-12 education is now considering.” (more…)

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MA PK-3 Grants Helped Districts Align Core Instruction

Posted in Pre-K to 3, Reading proficiency, Research on May 14, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children

A grant program of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) served as a catalyst for projects focused on early education, early literacy, special education inclusion and other areas, according to a recent report. Most of the 44 participating districts also benefited from the vertical P-3 teams they created to carry out the work. For many, this represented the first time they had collaborated across grades. (See “Improving the Early Years of Education in Massachusetts: The P-3 Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Project.”)

The federally financed P-3 Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Project — which funded projects in 2009, 2010 and 2011 –  was designed to help districts align efforts to improve the three critical areas, with a special focus on children with disabilities. Grant amounts ranged from $10,000 to $26,000.

“In Massachusetts, P-3 efforts build on numerous programs focused on improving early literacy as well as programs that target students with disabilities and English Language Learners.  Related developments include a working group at the Executive Office of Education on P-3 education, the introduction to the Massachusetts Legislature of An Act Relative to Third Grade Reading [Proficiency], the establishment by the Department of Early Education and Care of a Quality Rating Improvement System, the selection of third grade reading proficiency as a priority goal by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the publication of a widely-read report by Harvard literacy expert, Nonie Lesaux, entitled ‘Turning the Page: Refocusing Massachusetts for Reading Success,’” a 2010 report commissioned by Strategies for Children.

The project’s impact exceeded its small size, the report concludes. (more…)

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Focus on Early Literacy to Reduce Inappropriate Referrals to Special Education

Posted in Language development, Pre-K to 3, Reading proficiency, Research on May 8, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children

A new report commissioned by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) – “Review of Special Education in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts” — includes a powerful message about the importance of early literacy.

The report, prepared by Thomas Hehir and Associates, focuses on “disability categories whose determination – whether a child is identified as having a disability or not – might involve a greater degree of subjectivity.” It finds that Massachusetts has the nation’s second highest rate (after Rhode Island) of identifying children with special needs. It also finds that districts with large numbers of children from low-income families have higher rates of identifying students as eligible for special education than wealthy districts.

Hehir, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, presented his findings at a recent special meeting of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education that Kelly Kulsrud, our director of reading proficiency, attended. Hehir is also a former director of the Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education and a former director of special education for the Boston and Chicago Public Schools.

According to ESE’s opening presentation, referrals to special education are highest at age 3 and third grade. At age 3, children are referred from the state’s early intervention program. Hehir, in the meeting, linked the grade three numbers, in part, to the identification of children who struggle with reading.

In addition to noting the differing rates between low-income and wealthy districts, (more…)

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“Sidewalk” Field Trips Boost Children’s Early Literacy

Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Language development, Play, Pre-K to 3, Reading proficiency on February 27, 2012 | 1 Comment »

When Dao Krings, a second-grade teacher at P.S. 145 in New York City, asked how many students had never been inside a car, Tyler Rodriguez was one of several students who raised their hands. “I’ve been inside a bus,” the boy said. “Does that count?”

The anecdote illustrates why teachers at the Brooklyn school regularly take the children in their classrooms on “field trips to the sidewalk,” according to a terrific story in The New York Times that shows how teachers in a high-poverty school increase the background knowledge, vocabulary and comprehension skills of their young students. In the process, the field trips prepare the children to become strong readers.

Reading, as outlined in “Turning the Page: Refocusing Massachusetts for Reading Success,” is a complex process that is as much about comprehension as it is about decoding words on the page. The  background knowledge and vocabulary a reader brings to a text are critical ingredients of comprehension. Consider, the Times notes, that “by age 4, the average child in an upper-middle-class family has heard 35 million more words than a poor child.” And one-third of kindergartners from the bottom fifth of the income distribution are read to every day, compared with two-thirds of kindergartners in the wealthiest 20% of households.

“When a new shipment of books arrives, Rhonda Levy, the principal, frets,” the Times reports. “Reading with comprehension assumes a shared prior knowledge, and cars are not the only gap at P.S. 142. (more…)

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Aligning Early Education with the Common Core

Posted in Pre-K to 3, Standards and curriculum on February 23, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children

Across the country, early educators face questions about how best to align early childhood programs with the academic rigor of the Common Core State Standards adopted by 46 states (including Massachusetts) and the District of Columbia. The answer, experts say, lies in developmentally appropriate practice and understanding what research tells us about how young children learn.

“We have to be careful that those standards, particularly as they extend downward, appropriately recognize these important social, communication, and self-regulation skills that are really as critical for kids’ learning in those early and later years as whether they know the alphabet,” Robert C. Pianta, the dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, tells Education Week.

For young children, this means play and art and hands-on activities. It means fostering social and emotional development and executive function as well as laying the foundation for literacy, numeracy, science and other academic areas.

“With young children, art and physical movement aren’t a frill,” Gillian D. McNamee, professor of teacher education at Chicago’s Erikson Institute, tells Ed Week. “They are the disciplines that offer resources for the expression and the development of ideas.”

According to a 2007 review of states’ policies published in the journal Early Childhood Research & Practice, all states have preschool guidelines that cover multiple developmental domains. (more…)

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Early Education is a Dropout Prevention Strategy

Posted in College/career readiness, Full-day kindergarten, Pre-K to 3, Pre-kindergarten on February 7, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children

In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama called on states to raise the dropout age to 18. With research showing that low-income children who participated in high-quality early education are 30% more likely to finish high school, it is clear that early learning is a critical component of an effective dropout prevention strategy.

Chad d’Entremont, new executive director of the Rennie Center (and former research and policy director of Strategies for Children), tells American Prospect that mandating attendance “is not a silver bullet.”

“Instead, he argued that raising the dropout age ‘needs to be accompanied by a host of supports that address the root causes,’” American Prospect reports. “D’Entremont pointed to options like night classes for students who felt a need to work while in school and a bigger emphasis on goal-setting and counseling so that alienated students had at least on adult in the school they could turn to.

“To really lower the dropout rate, d’Entremont argued for early childhood care, like more pre-k and full-day kindergarten, and a better way to monitor which kids are likely to be at high-risk of dropping out—and provide resources in elementary and middle school. ‘We need to focus more on prevention as opposed to intervention,’ he said, explaining that ‘changes that occur at the very tail end of a student’s career’ are least likely to bring change.”

Laura Bornfreund of the New America Foundation also calls for a balanced approach to dropout prevention that begins with children’s earliest years. “Students who are developmentally and cognitively ready for kindergarten are more likely to be reading on grade level by the end of third grade and on the path to achieve at high levels and graduate from high school,” Bornfreund writes in a National Journal post.

Research backs her up. Children who are not proficient readers by the end of third grade are four times less likely to finish high school by age 19.

“Attacking the drop out crisis at both ends,” Bornfreund writes, “should in time lead to less of a need for costly remediation at the secondary level, making additional investment in early learning, birth through third grade, much easier. In tough budget times, states want to get the most bang for their buck.”

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Questions about Common Core and Youngest Learners

Posted in K-12, Pre-K to 3, Standards and curriculum on December 21, 2011 | 4 Comments »

Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children

Samuel J. Meisels, president of the Chicago-based Erikson Institute, a graduate school in child development, has raised some provocative questions about the Common Core State Standards.  By working backward from college and career readiness, he argues, the K-12 standards in English and math give short shrift to early childhood and the developmental needs of the youngest learners, from birth to grade three. And they miss half of early childhood by starting at kindergarten.

Massachusetts is one of 45 states that have adopted the standards. A year ago the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopted curriculum frameworks that include the Common Core and aligned standards for pre-kindergarten.

“Early childhood education — concerned with children from birth to the end of third grade — seems nearly an afterthought in the [Common Core] standards,” Meisels writes in the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog. “Not only do they end (or begin) at kindergarten, ignoring more than half of the early childhood age range, they simply don’t fit what we know about young children’s learning and development.”

Standards, Meisels notes, are important. (more…)

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MA Plans Birth-Grade 3 Professional Development Program

Posted in Dept. of Early Education and Care, Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education, Pre-K to 3 on November 9, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children

We talk often about the importance of aligning children’s learning experiences, from birth to third grade. For instance, “Turning the Page: Refocusing Massachusetts for Reading Success,” the 2010 report we commissioned from literacy expert Nonie Lesaux of  the Harvard Graduate School of Education, outlines strategies to improve the language development and literacy of children from birth to age 9. Now the Massachusetts Departments of Early Education and Care (EEC) and Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) are joining forces for a seven-month professional development program for instructional and community leaders “focused on building and sustaining strong birth-to-grade-three systems of services and supports for young children and their families.”

The program –  Brain Building and Early Literacy and Numeracy: Strategies and Supports for Young Children  – begins with regional conferences (more…)

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In Quotes

Posted in Pre-K to 3, Pre-kindergarten, Quotes on September 30, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

“Truly reforming our public education system will require that we provide high-quality early learning for every child, and where it is lacking, full-day kinder­garten – just as we do for first, second and third grades – and that we ensure later grades are designed to build upon skills gained in the pre-k years. Without this our education system will struggle to realize its full potential, no matter what other reforms we pursue.”

“Transforming Public Education: Pathway to a Pre-K-12 Future,” Pre-K Now, September 2011

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Pre-K Now Issues a Call to Action

Posted in Pre-K to 3, Pre-kindergarten on September 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

(Observant readers will notice something new in the Look & Listen section of our right rail. It’s a great video – Early Learning Matters  – customized for us by the First Five Years Fund. Its call to action complements the message in today’s blog post. Please share the video with friends and colleagues. Present it at meetings Post it on your website.)

“Take two kids, one from a low-income family, the other middle class. Let them run around and do little-kid things in their respective homes and then, at age 5, enroll them in kindergarten. Research shows that when the first day of school rolls around, the child from the low-income household will be as many as 1.5 years behind grade level in terms of language and prereading and premath skills. The middle-class kid will be as many as 1.5 years ahead. This means that, by the time these two 5-year-olds start school, the achievement gap between them is already as great as three years.

“When you look at findings like this, it’s not hard to see why educators and government officials believe so strongly in the need for early-childhood education, particularly for low-income children. A half-century’s worth of data has shown that reaching kids early helps them avoid repeating grades in elementary school, stay on track to graduate high school, earn more money as adults and spend less time in prison or on welfare. Recent studies have also pointed to third grade as a critical benchmark — if children are not performing at grade level by then, they may never catch up — making the years leading up to that point increasingly important.

“And yet early-learning programs, because of the way they are financed and administered, are not part of the entrenched educational system in most of the U.S.”

With these words, Time magazine sets the stage for a story (“Rethinking Pre-K”) on the Pew Charitable Trusts’ report “Transforming Public Education: Pathway to a Pre-K-12 Future,” prepared as Pew’s Pre-K Now wraps up its decade-long campaign. (more…)

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