Achievement gap « Preschool Matters… Today!

Missed Opportunities: Pre-K Lags for Hispanic Children

April 30, 2012

Hispanic children and families have been hit particularly hard due to recent funding cuts in state-funded pre-K. While the State Preschool Yearbook does not break down data by ethnicity, our data on state efforts combined with other sources paints a troubling picture for Hispanic preschoolers, especially those growing up in a household where English is not the primary language. A survey of Hispanic families shows that Hispanic parents are very likely to enroll their children when voluntary preschool education is available to them, but only 25 percent of Hispanic children at age 3 attend public or private preschool, compared to 43 percent of non-Hispanic children. State pre-K—which serves primarily 4-year-olds—has been important in increasing Hispanic enrollment at age 4, but Hispanic children still lag in access with 64 percent in a public or private program compared to 70 percent for non-Hispanic children.

Twenty-one percent of 3- and 4-year-olds nationwide live in an immigrant family with at least one foreign-born parent. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 6.1 million Hispanic children were living in poverty in 2010, representing 37.3 percent of all poor children. As can be seen in the graph below, the number of Hispanic children living in poverty accelerated sharply during the recession, due in large part to the 11.1 percent unemployment rank seen among Hispanic workers in 2011. The combined impact of being from a low-income family and having limited English proficiency can put these students at a serious risk of school failure, especially if they lack access to a quality preschool program.

Original graphic from the Pew Hispanic Center can be viewed here.

More than half of the nation’s Hispanic population resides in just three states: California, Florida, and Texas. Unfortunately, preschool programs in these states may not give Hispanic students the boost they need. Florida and Texas have high enrollment levels but low quality standards, which means that thousands of children are enrolled in programs that may not meet their needs. They both have per-child spending levels under the national average of $4,151, which further threatens quality. California’s program has grown rapidly due to including the state’s child care programs under the same umbrella, but per-child spending levels and policy standards are low there, as well. While many programs may exceed minimum standards, particularly when public schools are the providers, two aspects of these programs are particularly worrisome—class sizes and funding. Texas limits neither class size nor ratio and Florida has been increasing class size. California does somewhat better since it limits teacher-child ratio to a reasonable level even though it does not limit class size. All three states decreased funding per child in recent years, and in Florida it barely exceeds $2,400 per child, a figure too low to sustain quality under any reasonable definition.

State	4-year-old Enrollment Percent	State Spending Per Child	Quality Standards
California	19%	$4,986	3
Florida	76%	$2,422	3
Texas	52%	$3,761	4

Additionally, there are five other states with Hispanic populations above one million: Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York, as can be seen from this interactive map from the Pew Hispanic Center. Arizona totally eliminated its state pre-K program in recent years, though First Things First stepped up to provide some services to preschoolers there. Illinois and New Jersey are bright spots ranking among the top 15 in the country for program quality standards and both ranking in the top 3 for enrollment of 3-year-olds. However, both New York and Colorado reduced per child funding when the recession squeezed state finances.

The video below shows the change in enrollment in these states with large Hispanic populations over the last decade. While enrollments have increased tremendously, due in large part to the Florida program’s creation in the 2005-2006 year, we know that funding has not kept pace with the needs of so many more students. You can look at other trends in spending, quality, and access for these eight states in this interactive data set.

As was noted last year by Celia Ayala, Chief Executive Officer, Los Angeles Universal Preschool, “[w]hile ELLs can come from any linguistic background and therefore include children of any race and ethnicity, Hispanic children merit particular attention as their population grows, but many continue to suffer from an achievement gap.” At least 140,000 ELL students are served in state-funded pre-K programs; this number is likely to be significantly higher as many states with large Hispanic populations could not report ELLs specifically. Less than half of state pre-K programs report limited English proficiency as a factor that may make students eligible for pre-K. The majority of pre-K initiatives require at least one support service for ELLs and their families, with support services ranging from administering a home language survey to providing translators to offering monolingual non-English classes in pre-K.

Recent research on the benefits of bilingualism can bring renewed attention to this important issue. Research has pinpointed significant benefits to bilingualism including increased language and print awareness, classification and reasoning skills, concept formation, visual-spatial skills, and creativity. Bilingual children maintain strong connections to parents, grandparents and extended family leading to improved academic outcomes. Students also benefit from being secure with their home language. There has also been important research in the last few years indicating that attending a high-quality preschool program improves outcomes for Hispanic children, and that dual language practices can enhance outcomes in both English- and Spanish-speaking children. Pre-K attendance can improve early literacy and mathematic skills, and at least this one study found that gains were improved by being in a classroom with a Spanish-speaking teacher.

As the Hispanic student population grows and extends into rural and suburban areas, schools must provide additional supports for those students growing up in a dual-language household. A recent report from the New America Foundation focuses on bilingual education efforts in state-funded pre-K in Illinois and offers sound advice for all pre-K programs as they work to ensure ELLs receive high-quality services:

• ensure that pre-K providers receive financial support from their local districts for resources they spend on English language learners, and that there is an adequate bilingual/ESL budget to cover eligible children;

• track student outcomes for ELL students over time to determine where investment is most (and least) effective; and

• continue to align the ELL experience in pre-K, kindergarten, and the early grades and enable shared professional development opportunities in ELL instruction for teachers and school leaders across the pre-K to third grade span.

Additional recommendations on supporting dual language instruction at both the policy and classroom level can be found in the NIEER presentation “Enhancing Policy and Practice for Young Dual Language Learners: What Is the Research Base?”

There is significant support within the Hispanic community to increase access to quality preschool programs. The National Council of La Raza advocates for supportive programs for both students and families, and international music star and early education advocate Shakira, a member of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, recently spoke at the Summit of the Americas on the need for quality early learning.

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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OECD Report Sounds a Warning: Early Education Needed Now More Than Ever

November 1, 2011

One critical lesson we can draw from this recession is that demand for knowledge workers is increasing at a furious rate — so fast that many skilled people who found themselves out of work when the recession began now find themselves behind the curve knowledge wise as they apply for new jobs. As old jobs have gone by the wayside, the new ones, scarce as they are, are requiring more skills of applicants.

The growing importance of education in the labor market is underscored in a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Data from across OECD’s member nations shows that unemployment rates among university graduates stood at an average 4.4 percent in 2009, a year after the recession began. People who left school without qualifications experienced an unemployment rate of 11.5 percent in 2009, up from 8.7 percent the year before. These figures are likely different now (and not for the better), but the disparity between the educated and relatively uneducated remains, without a doubt, valid.

OECD calculated employment levels for citizens in three education categories: 1) Below upper secondary, 2) Upper secondary and post-secondary (but not tertiary) and 3) Tertiary educations. Those categories roughly account for 1) High school dropouts, 2) High school graduates with some secondary schooling, and 3) College graduates. What they found was that in 2009 for OECD member countries as a whole, 56 percent of category 1 was employed, 74 percent of category 2 was employed and 84 percent of category 3 was employed. The U.S. workforce placed below these levels at 52, 69 and 81 percent employed respectively. (Note: Because of the way the numbers are compiled it is not valid to infer unemployment levels from these employment data.)

The report also shows how the global talent pool is changing: Japan and the United States have nearly half of all tertiary-educated adults in the OECD area (47 percent). But that lead is slipping. While it’s true that one in three university-educated retirees resides in the U.S., it is also true that only one in five university graduates entering the workforce does.

Contrast this picture with China where only 5 percent of adults have a tertiary degree. Because of its population size, however, China now ranks second behind the U.S. and ahead of Japan in population with tertiary attainment.

Why are these figures important? Because, says the report, the earnings premium (net present value over a lifetime) for an individual with a tertiary degree exceeds $300,000 for men and $200,000 for women across the 34 OECD countries.

With trends like these and the apparent absence of political will to boost investment in education, it is little wonder that OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria talks about the developed countries producing a “lost generation” of citizens who will be ill-equipped to make their way in the ever more competitive world.

So why am I focusing on higher education in a blog on preschool education? Because far too many of our children enter kindergarten so far behind that higher education will not be within their reach, despite the best efforts of our schools to prepare them. If the United States is to increase the percentage of our population with education beyond high school, we will have to do a much better job educating children in the first five years. The current recession only makes that more difficult, of course, but the choices we make now at local, state, and national levels will determine whether the United States will have–as Thomas Friedman has argued–“a hard decade or a bad century.”

- Steve Barnett, Director, NIEER

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Head Start: Mend It, Don’t End It

August 19, 2011

One of the most neglected questions in the ECE policy arena is “How should we respond to the failure to find lasting effects for Head Start and Early Head Start after investing years and many millions in nationwide randomized trials of those important programs?” I say neglected because there is far less awareness of what the research says than one might expect given the importance of the high-quality research effort that represents our best shot at unbiased estimates of program impacts. For instance, I find that few people even know that Early Head Start’s long-term effects have been evaluated through fifth grade. I addressed this long-simmering question in an article published today in the journal Science. At the outset, I wish to make clear that the evidence does not lead me to the conclusion that we should end these programs, but that they need major reform. Let’s start by quickly reviewing the evidence.

One randomized trial evaluated the impacts of a year of Head Start by following 4,667 children and their families from entry in Head Start through kindergarten and first grade. After one year of Head Start cognitive effects were positive, but fairly small, and the broader the domain the smaller the effects. In follow-up the effects were even smaller. No cognitive or school progress effects were found in kindergarten or first grade, though one might argue that there is a persistent effect on IQ of about 1/10^th of a standard deviation. This would close about 10 percent of the gap between Head Start children and the average child on IQ. No effects were found on any teacher-reported measure of social-emotional development or behavior.

Upward adjustments can be made to the findings because not every child followed the random assignment (some assigned to Head Start did not attend, some assigned to the control group found their way into Head Start). Yet even after such adjustments, follow-up results remain weak. Additional adjustments could be made for participation in other programs, but these would make little difference, particularly at age 3 when high-quality alternatives are scarce.

A randomized trial of Early Head Start with more than 3,000 infants and toddlers produced results similar to those for Head Start even though most children and families participated two or more years. Effects at ages 2 and 3 were quite small for cognition and social-emotional measures including aggression. By age 5 no effects were found for cognition and only one small socio-emotional effect was found. In the grade 5 follow-up no effects were found on any of 49 measures and the estimated effects were near zero for both cognitive and social-emotional development.

For some in the early childhood field the reaction to these long-term findings has been denial. One claim is that bad public schools offset Head Start’s positive effects. The national Head Start study finds, to the contrary, that gains in literacy and math accelerate for both Head Start and control groups after they enter kindergarten. Any wash-out in Head Start effects from the public schools occurs because control children quickly make up the small advantage from attending Head Start. Others claim that non-experimental studies consistently find long-term effects despite a lack of short-term gains in achievement. However, the non-experimental studies are not really consistent among one another in either their short- or long-term patterns of effects. Their positive long-term results likely result from chance variation and methodological failings rather than real effects. If effects are not evident at fifth grade, they won’t be later.

Once we accept these disappointing findings, why not just end the programs as Joe Klein recently argued in Time magazine? I offer two reasons. First, America cannot afford to let so many children fail academically and socially because they are poorly prepared. Second, some other preschool programs have succeeded to a much greater extent, and Head Start can be reshaped to be similarly effective.

Table 1 compares the initial impacts of Head Start and some other large-scale programs. Pre-K programs with above average standards and funding are found to produce larger effects than Head Start in rigorous studies including a recent randomized trial. The Chicago Child Parent Centers, which are similar in key respects to the state pre-K programs in Table 1, have been found to produce effects on achievement and social development into adulthood as well. Reshaping Head Start to more closely resemble these programs would enhance its effectiveness. A quantitative summary of research on early educational intervention over the past 50 years adds weight to this argument as the Head Start and Early Head Start comprehensive services approach is associated with weaker effects, possibly because it reduces the educational focus.

Table 1. Achievement Gains from Pre-K

My prescription for improving Head Start includes increasing the percentage of funds spent inside the classroom, building a stronger connection to public education, and eliminating much federal oversight and related paper work. Early Head Start needs the same freedom from regulation, but should adopt home-based models that have a strong evidence base (Olds’ Nurse Family Partnership) as well as strengthen center-based options. Give programs a set amount of money, audit the books, and assess teaching and learning. Teaching should be highly intentional and include direct instruction one-on-one and in small groups. A new continuous improvement process should be put in place for learning and teaching. The Obama administration’s plans for re-competition of low-performing Head Start agencies should be implemented as soon as possible based on both measures of teaching and broad measures of child progress. Early Head Start should be regarded as an experimental program and subject to large-scale research for at least the next five years.

No doubt, these recommendations will be as controversial as is my longstanding recommendation to increase the amount and quality of education required of Head Start teachers and to increase their compensation accordingly. Head Start teachers should be given the opportunity to return to school with tuition and fees paid by government loans that would be forgiven if they remain in Head Start five years later. The quality and content of the programs they attend should be subject to an approval process to be eligible for these forgivable loans.

Even if they were not controversial, it would be foolhardy to reform Head Start based entirely on my recommendations given the limitations of current knowledge. The evidence is just not that strong given what is at stake. Fortunately, we have a better alternative. Allow Head Start and Early Head Start agencies to innovate, experiment, and find their own way to strong results. A systematic program of research should be launched in which Head Start and Early Head Start agencies propose new approaches to be tested in randomized trials. Experimental programs should be given a blanket waiver from Head Start and Early Head Start performance standards and most nonfinancial reporting requirements as long as they adhere to their own proposed plans (which will be monitored as part of the randomized trial). This systematic program of research would provide much better guidance for early educational intervention than is now available. In relatively short order Head Start and Early Head Start could fulfill their promise.

– Steve Barnett, Director, National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER)

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Why I’m Going to Head Start

August 15, 2011

As many of you know, I recently transitioned to a new position as Senior Vice President for Early Learning, Research and Training at Acelero Learning and will no longer be co-director of NIEER. I’ve loved my job at NIEER – the research has been interesting and my colleagues here and elsewhere have been a pleasure and inspiration. I am especially grateful to the Pew Charitable Trusts for the funding that has formed the foundation for NIEER’s work. My reasons for moving on are numerous but I wanted to take this opportunity to explain why I decided to move to Head Start. Acelero Learning is a Head Start grantee that works with delegate agencies in three states to deliver services to children and families. At the Support Center in Harlem we provide the delegates with technical assistance and guidance across all areas of Head Start services.

Why Head Start?

I started my career in early education in Head Start teaching in the Ann Arbor public schools’ Head Start classroom, but even before I knew what career I wanted I worked as a Head Start summer volunteer in high school. I have since served on Head Start boards off and on and I have a firm belief that Head Start can make a significant difference in the lives of young children and their families. It has worked in the past, and it works in certain places now. As a nation, we have to figure out how to make it work everywhere, consistently, while protecting and even expanding the funding required for Head Start to be effective. I am coming home to Head Start because I want to figure out how to produce in every center the lasting impacts on achievement that I know are possible in Head Start. Of course, this means that we in Head Start must face facts and resist the temptation to reject criticism or make excuses.

Why Acelero Learning, Inc.?

Acelero is unique. We are the only for-profit Head Start provider, and outside of the municipal “super” grantees, we are one of the largest Head Start providers in the nation, serving more than 3,800 children ages zero to 5. Our mission helps explain my choice:

The mission of Acelero Learning is to bring a relentless focus on positive child and family outcomes to close the achievement gap and build a better future for children, families, and communities served by the Head Start program.

We are serious about closing the achievement gap and every decision is made in reference to this mission. We use data to drive our decisions as well and have instituted a rigorous continuous improvement system at every level of the program from child to family to classroom to center to delegate to grantee. We measure our objectives in multiple ways at each level. For example, for child progress we implement performance-based assessments and are initiating a system for ensuring reliability of scoring and we select a random sample of children for administration of pre-post assessments of standardized measures. At the classroom level, in addition to CLASS observations in every classroom, we also developed a Teacher Success Rubric for teacher self-evaluation and professional development as well as for annual performance appraisal. To increase our ability to close the achievement gap, we operate all classrooms on a year-round basis – this summer alone, we will provide more than 500,000 hours of summer learning time that children enrolled in our Head Start programs would otherwise not have been able to access. We also offer full-day Head Start and extended-day programs whenever possible.

I’m excited to be involved at Acelero with an entire network of dedicated and remarkably capable colleagues. Together we will show that Head Start is a program of which we can be proud. We are determined to close most of the gap at kindergarten entry and significantly reduce the longer-term achievement gap. I look forward to calling on many of you to help us reach our goal and best wishes to you all.

– Ellen Frede, Senior Vice President for Early Learning, Research and Training, Acelero Learning

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Early Childhood Education Featured in Principal Magazine

August 10, 2011

NIEER co-directors Ellen Frede and Steve Barnett discuss the critical role pre-K plays in closing the achievement gap in the May/June issue of NAESP’s Principal magazine. Drs. Frede and Barnett note that the availability of preschool is a strong predictor of differences in scores in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a comparison of educational achievement across 65 countries. They also point to research findings that show national achievement test scores rise with the level of public spending on and quality of preschool education. Frede and Barnett maintain that a commitment to an effective, quality preschool program could reduce the achievement gap in the United States by 20 percent. The article from NIEER co-directors also offers principals and other school leaders 10 research-based, practice-tested steps they can take to increase the availability of quality pre-K whether or not they currently offer pre-K in their school.

Also included in the May/June 2011 issue of Principal magazine: Jacqueline Jones, senior adviser for early learning at the U.S. Department of Education, writes about assessment in early childhood education. First Five Years Fund director Harriet Dichter writes about pre-K to grade 3 education in Pennsylvania. University of North Carolina assistant professors Rebecca Shore and Pamela Shue and former principal Marion Bish report on a professional development program in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, designed to prepare elementary principals for preschool.

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Are Hispanic Children Losing Out in Preschool?

May 16, 2011

As revealed in The State of Preschool 2010, enrollment in state-funded pre-K programs nationwide has been negatively impacted by these bad budget years. Enrollment of 4-year-olds nationwide grew by only 3.9 percent, and 3-year-old enrolled actually declined by about 4 percent from 2008-2009 to 2009-2010. Both per-child and overall funding were down as well. These changes appear to be affecting young Hispanic learners worse than other groups.

The 2010 Census may show dramatic growth among the Hispanic population of children nationwide, but state-funded pre-K programs are not showing the same growth. The Yearbook does not collect information on enrollment by ethnicity or race, but data on programs in major Hispanic states is not encouraging. Arizona, which has one of the largest Hispanic populations in the nation, has cut its pre-K program entirely for the 2010-2011 school year, and shows no signs of reviving it. Cuts to early education have been proposed in at least seven states with among the largest Hispanic populations: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

As it is, Hispanic students who are able to access state-funded preschools may not be fully benefiting in some of these states. For instance:
• Texas enrolls more than 200,000 children, including 87,863 English Language Learners, in its preschool program, but it ranks poorly in its program quality. It is the only state program with no limits on class size or number of children per teacher. Proposed budget cuts could mean lower quality for many students, and decreases in the number of children being served.
• Florida ranks second in the nation in the percentage of children served, but received low marks when it comes to spending per child and program quality standards. Florida used $38 million in federal stimulus funds in the 2009-2010 school year to help support its preschool program, but these funds will not be available in the future.

There has been at least some good news for Hispanic preschoolers. In the 2009-2010 school year, California consolidated several child care and preschool programs into a single large preschool education program. While this policy change only consolidated enrollment and spending rather than increasing either, it will enable children to be in more education-focused programs. Among states with large Hispanic populations, the preschool programs in Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Washington receive high marks for program quality standards.

The Yearbook contains other indicators, including eligibility policies, support services and ELL enrollment, of how well Hispanic children are being served in public pre-K programs. Of the 54 programs profiled in the Yearbook, only 17 identify having non-English-speaking family members as a factor that may make students eligible for pre-K. The Kansas At-Risk Program may also determine eligibility based on a family’s migrant status. Thirty-six pre-K initiatives require at least one support service for ELLs and their families, while 15 programs do not require these services. Support services range from administering a home language survey to providing translators to offering monolingual non-English classes in pre-K.

It is difficult to estimate the number of English Language Learners (ELLs) served in state-funded pre-K programs as many states do not track the specific enrollment of these students. Only half of programs profiled in the Yearbook could report the number of ELLs in their program for a total nationwide of 128,312 ELLs. This number severely underreports ELL enrollment, as a number of states with large Hispanic populations — including Arizona, California, Illinois, and New Jersey — were unable to report their ELL enrollment. There are large variations in the reported enrollment of ELLs from 87,863 in Texas (41 percent of the total pre-K enrollment) to only 35 in West Virginia (0.25 percent of the total pre-K enrollment).

While ELLs can come from any linguistic background and therefore include children of any race and ethnicity, Hispanic children merit particular attention as their population grows, but many continue to suffer from an achievement gap. Evidence from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that Hispanic students lag behind white students in both fourth and eighth-grade math and reading proficiency, in high school graduation rates, and in college enrollment.

Achievement and Attainment by Race	Whites	Hispanic
4th grade % proficient math	50%	21%
4th grade % proficient reading	41%	16%
8th grade % proficient math	43%	17%
8th grade % proficient reading	39%	16%
High School Graduation	81%	64%
College Enrollment	63%	12%

Source: Milagros Nores and Niufeng Zhu, NIEER

Children from minority and immigrant backgrounds can benefit significantly from high-quality early learning programs. Positive outcomes include being less likely to be held back in school, and more likely to graduate from high school. As adults, they are more likely to be employed and less likely to commit crimes. Nationally, the Obama administration has recently increased its emphasis on improving educational outcomes for Hispanic children, as well as promoting high-quality early childhood education — two strategies that go hand-in-hand. Advocates must work to keep these issues in the spotlight, not only at the national level, but also as states continue to face harrowing budget decisions.

– Celia C. Ayala, Ph.D.,
Chief Executive Officer, Los Angeles Universal Preschool

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More Great Work from John Merrow

April 8, 2011

This week we saw on PBS Newshour an important installment in John Merrow’s continuing and exemplary pursuit of answers to what ails education in this country. Learning Matters, the nonprofit production company he founded traveled to Chicago where they visited homes with preschool-age children and visited an outstanding Educare program that serves kids from infancy to 5 years old. Along the way, Merrow interviewed Barbara Bowman who runs Chicago’s public pre-K program, once headed up the Erikson Institute, and is a NIEER Scientific Advisory Board. He also interviewed Diana Rauner, president of the Ounce of Prevention Fund, and Maria Whelan, president of Illinois Action for Children.

Bowman discusses the enormous costs of school failure and Merrow illustrates by cutting to a scene of young men entering a prison cell block. The cost of keeping them there? — $30,000 per year. Rauner says Educare spends about $19,000 per year per child, pointing out the potential return on that investment. She pointed to research showing that at-risk kids who attended the program for five years (at $95,000 per child) entered kindergarten as ready to learn as their middle-income peers.

There are 90,000 children in Chicago who need high-quality early education but the Educare Program Merrow visited serves only 149. Bowman describes to Merrow the dire budgetary straits in which Chicago’s much larger pre-K program finds itself. It serves 24,000 kids two and a half hours per day. When you add in all the kids in Chicago who attend Head Start and other public pre-K programs, the total comes to 37,000 kids served. In other words, says Merrow, Chicago spends about $5,000 per child on preschool for 40 percent of its neediest kids and nothing on the rest.

This picture could grow worse next year, says Bowman. Chicago used federal stimulus funds for pre-K and if that money isn’t replaced she’ll have to cut the number of children served by public pre-K even more. Merrow asks Whelan about making difficult choices in this economic environment, about spreading less funding over more kids or ignoring the needs of the many in order to serve the few. You will find her answer, and the analogy she uses, interesting. You can view the segment here: http://learningmatters.tv/blog/on-pbs-newshour/closing-the-vocabulary-gap-in-chicago-preschoools/5782/. American’s should not allow themselves to be forced into a “Sophie’s choice” because of all the other things that are given priority–corporate welfare, foreign wars, and tax cuts for the wealthy among them.

Where would Merrow find the money for pre-K? He presents a bold answer in his blog Taking Note. He proposes to eliminate 12^th grade, and then suggests the even more unthinkable—eliminate subsidies for corn production. I take it his point is that people will have to come up with new ideas and fight tough political battles to wrest money for early childhood investments from powerful entrenched interests. Stay tuned for NIEER’s 2010 Preschool Yearbook to be released later this month where we will reveal which states have chosen to support new investments in children despite tough times and which have chosen to disinvest in young children.

Steve Barnett

Co-director, NIEER

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Will New Jersey Gut Its Abbott Preschool Program? Or, How to Ruin Absolutely Everything

February 4, 2011

New Jersey Republicans are floating a proposal to cut the state’s highly effective Abbott Preschool Program from a full day of services to half a day. This, they say, would free up about $300 million in school funding that could be “more equitably” disbursed statewide. As is so often the case with such figures, the math is wrong—the plan might free up $150 million, but that is the least of the proposal’s problems.

They justify their proposal on the basis that the Abbott v. Burke V court decision did not specifically require the state to provide a full day of pre-K in order to provide a thorough and efficient education. Indeed, the justices wrote in 1998 that half a day of pre-K for kids in the state’s disadvantaged districts could represent an “initial reform.” (Emphasis added on the latter.)

It should go without saying that in the intervening years we have learned critical lessons about what it takes to provide disadvantaged kids with the kinds of experiences that enable them to acquire the skills necessary to narrow the achievement gap and enter school ready to learn. Chief among them is that more is better. NIEER conducted a randomized trial in the Abbott districts comparing extended-day, extended-year pre-K to the old half-day, school-year model. The longer day and year had larger effects on test scores than a half-day and these gains persisted. By first grade, effects of duration were apparent on more complex measures such as reading comprehension and calculation and not just on simple tasks like letter and number recognition. Other studies show that full-day Abbott preschool delivers high-quality education that significantly raises test scores and reduces school failure.

The Republican proposal would take money from disadvantaged children in the Abbott districts to address problems in New Jersey’s school funding scheme that are not without merit. Districts with a high percentage of senior citizens would get some of the money. So would those that transport children over longer distances or have demonstrated cost efficiencies. However, the state should address these issues without gutting the Abbott Preschool Program to do it. One suggestion: forgo the $1 billion dollar voucher bill that would bail out private schools hurt by the recession, but do little to raise test scores.

Backers of the pre-K cut proclaim its virtues based on three principles — equity, efficiency and accountability. It passes none of those tests. The Abbott program was developed to remedy the gap in equity between disadvantaged kids and their more affluent peers. Gutting one of its major components is hardly equitable. Neither does it pass the efficiency test. When kids receive high-quality pre-K such as the Abbott program, the subsequent costs of educating them go down, and the longer term benefits include lower crime rates and a more productive workforce. Sprinkling the funds freed-up around the rest of the state can’t be shown to produce any comparable returns for the taxpayer — who knows how the funds will be used? And that brings us to accountability. One must simply ask, “What accountability?”

I subtitled this essay “How to Ruin Absolutely Everything” because it illustrates the kind of state policy making that ruins public education. Hard evidence on what works and what doesn’t is ignored in favor of wishful thinking, ideology, and special interests. No studies are conducted to test out new proposals before they are widely implemented. Financial estimates are put forward that have no basis in reality.

It is a cruel irony that at the same time the proposal to gut the Abbott program surfaced the legislature is rushing to pass a voucher bill that research shows has no hope of significantly improving academic achievement and Governor Christie’s administration has announced a plan for the state to spend as much as $200 million to jump start a stalled Atlantic City casino project from which Morgan Stanley, in its wisdom, bailed out. The governor should insist that his advisors conduct cost/benefit analyses of both the voucher bill and the boardwalk empire plan. While they are at it they should also run the numbers on the costs and benefits of the state’s investment in the Abbott Preschool Program. If he does, he’ll find the current pre-K program provides a rich return to the public while the other proposals are, as they say, under water.

Steve Barnett

Co-director, NIEER

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What the PISA Scores Are Telling Us

December 17, 2010

There is much talk in Finland these days about the country’s showing in the recent international comparison of PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) scores — not the self-congratulation one might expect from a country that topped yet again the list of high performing countries, but rather a sober look at the report’s nuances. A slight decline in Finland’s reading scores have educators looking for solutions and Minister of Education Henna Virkkunen urging reinforcement of reading skills beginning with “very early education.” It’s a good bet the Finns will take action to remedy what they see as a problem and they will not wait until kids are in formal schooling to apply it.

We should be so lucky. Many responses coming from the chorus of experts in this country to the poor showing of our 15-year-olds look past early childhood education, failing to recognize that preschool education is a strong predictor of difference across countries in PISA scores. According to the PISA report, students who attended preschool scored higher more than a decade after they moved on to the higher grades.

Michael Davidson at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development which conducts PISA points out that 20 percent of the U.S. performance was attributed to social background. This is much higher than in other countries in the evaluation. This too argues for making substantial new investments in high-quality pre-K. While research shows all kids benefit from pre-K, it is the disadvantaged kids who benefit most. Yet despite the evidence, policymakers at all levels continue to seek reforms that have little positive effect. They apparently haven’t gotten the message, backed by abundant research, that high-quality preschool produces positive effects, not to mention high returns on the public’s investment in it.

This message has obviously resonated in Shanghai, China, which now sits at the very top of the list of high performers. Like Finland, this immense city with a population equal to many large U.S. states also provides universal pre-K and requires highly trained teachers. We don’t have to model what we do after the Chinese or the Finns. We can look to selected communities in the United States that have already adopted serious reforms including raising the quality of early care and education. But we do have to begin taking high-quality preschool education as seriously and with the same sense of urgency as the most educationally successful nations. After all, their children are the ones our kids will be competing against.

Ellen Frede & Steve Barnett

Co-directors, NIEER

1 Comment | Achievement gap, Assessment, Early Education, Early Literacy, Outcomes, Preschool | Permalink
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Education Can “Shore Up” New Jersey’s Image

May 10, 2010

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.

Darling-Hammond, who is a Stanford University professor and nationally-known education policy expert, said that because of the state’s Abbott program, inequities between districts have been minimized, enabling minority students the opportunity to better succeed. Her point was that New Jersey’s outcomes should be looked to by other states and federal policymakers as they address the vast disparities that continue to exist among the nation’s schools and hinder the progress of our students. Darling-Hammond made no political comments, but she did stress that the gains that have been made over the past ten years here in the Garden State need to be continued.

One of the most attention-grabbing statistics that Darling-Hammond shared was that even though New Jersey boasts demographic diversity that’s similar to California, minority students in New Jersey scored higher on one test than did average students in California. Even naysayers should agree that this is a testament to the fact that the system in New Jersey has been working and that it should not be cut off in the prime of its game. Darling-Hammond’s praise is especially uplifting, coming, as it does, in the midst of the most passionate education debate the state has seen in a long while, one in which teachers have been the target of negativity on radio stations and newspaper blogs. As a former Camden teacher, Darling-Hammond made it clear that investing in teachers is the key to successful school finance. “Standards can’t teach themselves,” she said.

In a time when a majority of folks voted down their local school budgets and others rally for school choice, it seems that some of the data that Darling-Hammond so eloquently presented should be wider spread and better known by New Jersey voters. Maybe voters would take more notice if she got herself a fake tan and pouf hair-do!

– Alex Figueras-Daniel

Research Project Coordinator, NIEER

2 Comments | Achievement gap, Preschool, State-funded programs, Teachers | Permalink
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