Month: July 2010

The recent New Jersey Privatization Task Force recommendations on pre-K disregard the facts and oppose the best interests of New Jersey’s children. The report highlights pre-K as an example of “successful” privatization, but then calls for the state to replace this successful private-public educational partnership with low-quality child care. This plan is taken straight from the playbook of former Governor Whitman who first tried to substitute cheap child care for education and failed. The plan was firmly rejected by New Jersey’s State Supreme Court then. Governor Christie and the legislature should reject it now, as well. How the Privatization Task Force ended up recommending the destruction of one of the state’s best known privatization successes is worth exploring in some detail.

Please visit National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) for the complete blog post.

When renowned abstract expressionist Robert Goodnough created his paintings, he probably didn’t have an audience of 3-year-olds in mind — and when New Jersey built its performing arts center (NJPAC) in Newark, playing to preschoolers probably wasn’t high on the list of justifications. These days, however, both are regularly pressed into service to help young children develop a broader range of skills. Most people agree that exposing young children to the arts helps them develop but there hasn’t been enough said about how this should happen.

Please visit National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) for the complete blog post.

Developing guidance on what works in early education is always challenging and that certainly applies to the difficult business of evaluating and selecting a curriculum. Whenever specific early education curricula are evaluated, judgment calls have to be made on the strengths and weaknesses of the evaluation including such issues as the duration and quality of training in the curriculum prior to the evaluation, how well the measures used actually measure children’s learning and development (are they broad enough and deep enough?), and how well any given curriculum is implemented in the classroom at the time the research was conducted.

Please visit National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) for the complete blog post.

The overwhelming majority of early childhood education in France takes place in public preschools such as the well-known ecole maternelle. These programs must meet national standards and are sufficiently subsidized by the government to enable children from middle class families to attend at little or no cost. Not surprisingly, enrollment of French children in the ecole maternelle is near universal at age 3.

Please visit National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) for the complete blog post.