NAEYC’s website has a treasure trove of materials for the Week of the Young Child, particularly as associated with six focus areas. We encourage you to view their suggested activities and related materials, but we also include some additional relevant resources for each area below.

Raising Public Awareness

• To highlight the importance of and need for high-quality early learning opportunities, view and share videos succinctly telling the pre-K story. For starters, check out  The State of Preschool 2011: On the Edge of a Crisis by NIEER, Early Learning Matters from First Five Years Fund, How Pre-K Levels the Playing Field from The Pew Charitable Trusts, Preschool: America’s Best Investment by NIEER, and One Window of Opportunity by the National Head Start Association. For examples of a broader view at the state level, take a look at some wonderful videos from advocates in Florida and Mississippi.
• Harness the power of social media and join the conversations about pre-K and early childhood education on popular sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
• Pre-K isn’t just in the realm of education and policy wonks – early childhood education advocates are also military leaders, members of the business community, and economists, to name a few. NAEYC recommends that promoting partnerships with business and other community leaders be a part of your public awareness campaign during the Week of the Young Child.

Public Policy and Advocacy

• Read the blog post “Human Capital Development: Why Pre-K Needs to be a Capitol Concern” for an explanation why taxpayers should invest in early childhood education.
• Another NIEER blog post lays out the early education aspects of President Obama’s federal budget proposal for fiscal year 2013.
• Peruse The State of Preschool 2011: State Preschool Yearbook to gain knowledge about state-level policies in your region and around the country.
• In this article NIEER’s Steven Barnett reviews the literature on the outcomes of pre-K investments and recommends that public policies support preschool education.
• Parents and other family members can be the biggest advocates for early learning opportunities, especially when they are fully engaged with their children’s education.

Reading and Writing

• NIEER’s policy brief on early literacy includes a review of the literature and recommendations.
• Dorothy Strickland, NIEER Distinguished Research Fellow, testified before the House Education and Labor Subcommittee on early literacy learning experiences. Read her full testimony here.
• Dr. Strickland’s presentation for NAEYC on what makes a good book can be downloaded from NIEER’s website.
• This NIEER blog post includes additional information and resources on literacy.

Violence and Child Abuse Prevention

• Preschool interventions can have the greatest influence on reducing childhood aggression and preventing youth violence, as described in this report from the Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Development.
• High-quality early childhood education can reduce future crime and victimization, as explained in this blog post from NIEER and the National Center for Victims of Crime.
• The Week of the Young Child also corresponds this year with National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. The Office for Victims of Crime within the U.S. Department of Justice has more information on this important observance.
• Fight Crime: Invest in Kids has been highlighting child abuse prevention in their 1560 Campaign.

Child Health

• This week is also World Immunization Week; find out more about state policies on pre-K immunizations in this blog post.
• Children’s health is inextricably linked with their diets. Find our more about the growing epidemic of childhood obesity in these blog posts.
• Because of the connection between children’s nutrition and their ability to function in a classroom setting, many state programs have policies related to meals in pre-K.
• Early childhood education has been proven to provide better outcomes not only on children’s health while enrolled in preschool programs, but also on their health later in adulthood.
• For a global perspective, become familiar with advocacy organizations that support child health initiatives and early learning opportunities, such as Shakira’s Barefoot Foundation or UNICEF.

Creativity and Play

• Arts education can help preschoolers develop in other domains including math, language, critical thinking, and social-emotional, as explained by NIEER’s own Judi Stevenson-Boyd and a group of experts on Caucus: New Jersey.
• NIEER’s Kim Brenneman provides ideas on how science-based lessons could be delivered through everyday life activities, such as playing with Mr. Potato Head or engaging in a game of golf.
• The Ultimate Block Party is an event that highlights the importance of play-based learning for young children.
• NIEER examines the role of technology in children’s play in this blog post and the interaction between play, intelligence, and learning in another post.
• Learn more about the best ways to use technology to benefit young learners in this position statement from NAEYC and the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College.
• This presentation from NIEER’s Shannon Ayers and Ellen Frede discusses the importance of learning through play against the backdrop of preschool assessments.

For the Week of the Young Child, we’ll be working on NIEER’s pre-K research, listening to the voices of early childhood and education advocates, and spending time with the young children in our lives. How will you observe this important week?

- Jen Fitzgerald, Public Information Officer, NIEER

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

NIEER Director Steve Barnett and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan read to preschoolers at the State of Preschool 2008 release.

According to the fact sheets from the International Reading Association, an estimated 860 million of the world’s adults do not know how to read or write—more than twice the entire United States population.  More than 100 million children globally lack access to education.  Illiteracy plays a role in a damaging cycle of poverty, poor health, and a lack of mobility.  In countries with a literacy rate below 55 percent, the average per capita income is $600.  Geography plays a huge role in this cycle: 98 percent of non-literates live in a developing country. About 52 percent of non-literates live in India and China, and the continent of Africa has a literacy rate of under 60 percent.  The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNSECO) also provides compelling information on the extent of this problem globally.

Either out of naiveté or a desire to believe the problem hasn’t reached our shores, it is easy to think of illiteracy as a problem “over there.”  In reality, though, Americans whose literacy skills are never fully developed lag behind fully literate peers in a number of ways.  Research from ProLiteracy Worldwide finds that one half of all adults in federal and state correctional institutions in America cannot read or write at all, and reading problems are seen in 85 percent of juvenile offenders.  Health costs for individuals with low literacy skills are four times higher than those with individuals with high level literacy skills. Students with poor literacy skills may struggle in a number of subjects and some will eventually drop out before high school completion, a grim outcome when the income gap between those with a bachelor’s degree and those without is ever growing.

Starting children early on the road to literacy is an important step in helping develop these skills.  Recognizing this importance, NIEER has several recommended resources on developing early literacy skills in the early years, including:

• A policy brief, “Early Literacy: Policy and Practice in the Preschool Years,” by Dorothy Strickland and Shannon Ayers.
• “Hooked on Literacy: Why Dorothy Strickland Sees Language as Job One,” a Preschool Matters interview with Dorothy Strickland.
• “What Leads to Literacy?,” a feature story from Preschool Matters on some of the factors most likely to indicate later literacy achievement.
• A book review of Literacy Leadership in Early Childhood: An Essential Guide.
• The volume Handbook of Early Literacy Research edited by Susan B. Neuman and David K. Dickinson.

For the literate, we cannot remember what it was like before letters automatically formed into words and words into sentences. We cannot turn off our ability to read and cannot imagine being unable to read our homework, a grocery list, or even street signs. For millions, though, this is their reality. Ensuring high levels of literacy attainment, beginning with the earliest years, both at home and abroad pays dividends in promoting educational attainment and creating a more capable workforce.  Improving literacy rates is a massive goal which requires more than one day of activism, but today is be a good time to start. And what better place to start than with early interventions?

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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

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

This month, my research colleagues and I issued the latest in our series of reports focusing on the impacts of New Mexico PreK on children’s vocabulary, math, and literacy skills at the beginning of kindergarten. Our data (for the 2008-2009 school year) were gathered from a sample of 1,359 children from Public Education Department (PED) and Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD) PreK sites statewide.  Kids attending the program scored significantly higher on assessments of vocabulary, early math, and literacy in comparison to children who did not attend.

These results show that children gained important skills in areas such as addition and subtraction, telling time, knowledge of letters, and familiarity with words and book concepts. The vocabulary test is predictive of reading success and general cognitive abilities. Our conclusion: Kids who attend New Mexico PreK are better prepared to enter kindergarten than those who do not.

These positive findings merit particular attention in the context of New Mexico’s current budget shortfall.  First, the state has discontinued funding our PreK evaluation.  More importantly in the day-to-day lives of New Mexicans, the state PreK appropriation has decreased for the current school year.  This represents the first decline in state funding since New Mexico PreK began five years ago.  And, as a result, PreK enrollment declined this fall by more than 10 percent.

Over the past five years, program administrators at PED and CYFD showed they know how to launch a good program and expand it with high quality standards.  And a greater percentage of 4-year-olds in New Mexico were enrolled in state prekindergarten than in any other Western state except Colorado.  But continued expansion of this effective program may be threatened.  Even at its highest point of enrollment last school year, fewer than one in five children were enrolled. In her campaign, Governor-elect Susana Martinez said she will protect public education. Let’s hope that extends to maintaining and expanding the investment in New Mexico’s well-documented PreK winner.

Jason Hustedt

NIEER Senior Research Fellow

Assistant Professor

Department of Human Development and Family Studies

University of Delaware

From my perspective, the standards are a step in the right direction, but definitely a work in progress. Standards for these grades already exist in every state, and this attempt to have common standards across states can help ensure equality of education for all America’s children. Of course, we have to start somewhere, but by covering only math and literacy as these initial standards do, we run the risk of implying that already neglected subjects like science and social studies aren’t all that important. Many in the early childhood field also worry that omitting social-emotional or pro-social education could be misinterpreted to mean that child growth in these areas is not necessary for later success and not the responsibility of public education.

As should be the case, the common core standards are outcome-focused, listing skills children should have achieved at the end of a given grade level, such as kindergarteners being able to count to 100 or know all of the upper and lower case letters. This focus on discrete skills makes it imperative that: (1) these benchmarks are accurate targets; (2) we ensure teachers know how to teach the skills in appropriate ways; and, (3)  that the child is never blamed for lack of mastery.

That’s not to say we don’t need clear standards. We do — but we need to use the “Goldilocks” test to ensure that the indicators aren’t too prescriptive or too general, but just right for the early years. Some have called for scrapping the standards effort altogether, believing no set of common standards can be drafted that won’t threaten play-based learning or lead to inappropriate teaching practices. Fueling this concern is the fact that the framers start with the aim of “college and career readiness” seemingly without consideration of what we know children entering kindergarten can do.   I don’t believe we should scrap the standards, but I do think that more early childhood experts need to be brought to the table to carefully analyze each outcome and ask:

• Does it overestimate what children can do at this age based on our best knowledge?
• Does it underestimate what children can do at this age based on our best knowledge, especially in the context of pre-K standards?
• Is it too general leading to teachers not knowing how to use it?
• Is it too specific leading to “a mile wide and an inch deep” curriculum?

The fact that 48 states have signed on to the common core standards effort is testimony that we have gone far too long without clear common standards to guide teaching.  A number of early childhood professionals have weighed in with constructive suggestions and the NAEYC and NAECS-SDE have developed a joint statement that contains specific responses. You can find it here: http://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/policy/NAEYC-NAECS-SDE-Core-Standards-Statement.pdf.

Ellen Frede

Co-director, NIEER

According to the poll, about three-quarters of Americans assume that even if children enter kindergarten not ready for school, they will acquire the necessary literacy skills in elementary school to catch up with their peers. However, the research evidence shows the contrary – children who enter kindergarten unready usually do not catch up. In fact, research points out that children who enter kindergarten behind are three to four times more likely to drop out of school when they get older.

More than half of the population polled was unaware that family income is the best predictor of whether or not a child will succeed in school, nor were they aware that nearly half of the children from low-income families begin first grade up to two years behind their peers from higher income families. In addition, three-quarters of Americans are unaware that about 60 percent of low-income parents do not own age-appropriate books for their children.

While the vast majority of people polled acknowledged that early childhood illiteracy is problematic, they did not recognize that the simple act of reading to 3- to 5-year-olds can have significant impacts on children’s academic and life-long success.

“It’s common to under-estimate the importance of early literacy experiences for young children’s later language and literacy development, especially those experiences before the age of 3,” says Shannon Ayers, an assistant research professor at NIEER and a specialist on early literacy.

“Experiences of a caregiver cooing back at an infant provide the basis for conversation turn taking, and singing lullabies and silly rhyming songs provide experiences with the cadence of language,” she adds. “Lap reading and talking about stories and personal experiences with children offers exposure to story structure, print, and language (vocabulary development) in a comfortable, loving way that will provide the foundation for later learning.”

NIEER discusses literacy in the preschool classroom and its link to academic and lifelong achievement in the policy brief Early Literacy: Policy and Practice in the Preschool Years.