Preschool Blog and Directory
Findings from the 2009 State of Preschool yearbook indicate a slow down in the recent trend of increasing standards for teacher qualifications. Overall, for the 2008-2009 school year, 23 out of 38 states with pre-K programs failed to fully meet NIEER benchmarks for teacher qualifications. Qualifications include having a minimum of a BA degree and specialized training in early childhood education.
Please visit National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) for the complete blog post.
If all of the governors’ FY 2011 budgets were to pass as proposed, total state pre-K funding would remain roughly the same as FY 2010 – about $5.3 billion, says Pre-K Now’s just-released Leadership Matters report. Beyond the national total, however, lie big variations, ranging from expansion plans in Alabama to elimination of state pre-K in Arizona. Among the highlights are these:
Nine governors would increase pre-K investments. These proposals would increase funding for early learning in these states by a total of $78.5 million.
Please visit National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) for the complete blog post.
Each year, when we publish the NIEER State of Preschool Yearbook, we rank the various state pre-K programs based on children’s access to them and resources allocated to pre-K in each state. Beyond these rankings, however, there’s lots to learn from the print edition and even more in the online edition, which contains an informative appendix.
Please visit National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) for the complete blog post.
Linda Darling-Hammond’s recent lecture at the Education Law Center in Newark could not have come at a more appropriate time for concerned New Jersey educators. Except for heated debates between a newly elected governor and the New Jersey Education Association, the only notoriety that New Jersey has received lately has been Jersey Shore, a silly reality television show glorifying bar-hopping, fake tans and unruly hair poufs. Surely, New Jersey has more to offer than “GTL” (that would be gym, tan, laundry) and the popular show’s cast of mostly non-Jersey residents. Darling-Hammond’s lecture highlighted New Jersey’s progress as a national leader in education and her comments came against a backdrop of harsh economic reality that many in the audience clearly felt could have a deleterious effect on that progress in the form of imminent budget cuts.
Please visit National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) for the complete blog post.
Today I visited a wonderful publicly funded preschool program run by the AppleTree Public Charter School in Washington, D.C. In D.C., 40 percent of 4-year-olds attend the District’s preschool programs and nearly a quarter of the 3-year-olds. The programs meet high standards and are adequately funded. I don’t know if all of them are up to the high standards of AppleTree, but I do know that far too few children in the rest of the nation have the opportunity to attend such programs. In fact, I think we may have reached a peak in 2009 when one-quarter of all children attended a state pre-K program at age 4, and things have turned worse since.
Please visit National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) for the complete blog post.