Preschool Matters… Today!

Eating Right, Learning Right

October 10, 2011

The important link between children’s health and their education is being highlighted this week with the celebration of National School Lunch Week. This year’s theme is “School Lunch – Let’s Grow Healthy,” as part of a three-month long campaign by the School Nutrition Association to highlight the importance of school lunch programs. Common sense tells us that children with empty stomachs can’t concentrate on classroom learning or homework. With this in mind, schools and pre-K programs often offer snacks and meals throughout the day to make sure children are fully prepared to learn and excel. The federal Child & Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), administered through the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), provides guidelines for serving nutritious meals and snacks in child care centers and afterschool programs. In addition, providing nutritious meals to children is a key component of the federal Head Start program’s services to low-income children and families.

Each year, NIEER gives state pre-K initiatives a rating based on meeting 10 quality standards benchmarks, which address a variety of quality components including services such as meals. As we stated in The State of Preschool 2010, “these items are included because children’s overall well-being and success in school involves not only their cognitive development but also their physical and social/emotional health.” In order to meet our benchmark on meals, state programs must require by policy that all programs, regardless of hours of operation, offer at least one meal each day.

Unfortunately, in the 2009-2010 school year, only 24 of 52 state-funded pre-K programs met the benchmark of at least one meal being required in state policy. (See Table 1 for a list of the programs meeting the benchmark for required meals.) Twenty of these 24 programs specifically mention lunch in their meal requirements.

Table 1. State programs requiring at least one meal in all pre-K classes

Alabama	Louisiana LA4	Oregon
Alaska	Louisiana NSECD	Pennsylvania HSSAP
Arkansas	Maryland	Rhode Island
Delaware	Minnesota	South Carolina CDEPP
Georgia	New Jersey Abbott	Tennessee
Iowa Shared Visions	New Mexico	Washington
Kentucky	North Carolina	West Virginia
Louisiana 8(g)	Oklahoma	Wisconsin Head Start

However, only five programs – Pennsylvania EABG, Pennsylvania K4 & SBPK, Vermont Act 62, Vermont EEI, and Virginia – reported that no meals or snacks are required by state policy. The remaining 23 programs either reported that snacks were required and/or that meals are required for full-day programs but not half-day programs.

For the 2009-2010 school year, we also asked states to report on whether meals and snacks need to meet nutritional guidelines and found that all but 10 programs require this. (See Table 2 for a list of those programs not requiring programs to use nutritional guidelines.) Of those meeting nutritional guidelines, all were using federal nutrition guidelines set by the United State Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Table 2. State programs not requiring the use of nutritional guidelines

Florida	Pennsylvania K4 & SBPK
Illinois	Pennsylvania Pre-K Counts
Nevada	Rhode Island
New Jersey ELLI	Vermont Act 62
Pennsylvania EABG	Vermont EEI

The federal Head Start program’s nutritional guidelines play a role here as all five state programs that are Head Start supplements met the benchmark for meals. This is particularly noteworthy in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where the states’ other pre-K initiatives do not meet the meal requirement benchmark while the Head Start supplements do.

As with any other of the quality standards we report on in the State Preschool Yearbook series, it is important to remember that we are discussing policy here and not necessarily practice. While not every state policy requires that all programs offer at least one meal, some, or perhaps even all, of those programs may exceed the policy and do so. Still, with only 24 state pre-K programs on the record with a commitment to providing their students with at least one meal a day, we have a long way to go before we can truly celebrate school nutrition.

Child nutrition is of increasing concern as childhood obesity rates increase while food insecurity also spreads. President Obama’s proclamation of this week pointed to the need for collaboration throughout communities to bring students healthy food every day at school, a goal toward which we still work. At a time when Sesame Street has created a new Muppet to address the issue of food insecurity—the 17 million children in families who don’t know where their next meal comes from—it is clear that providing nutritious, consistent meals to children in school can go a long way to improving their daily lives.

- Jen Fitzgerald, Public Information Officer, NIEER

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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Sharing Time: Looking at a Busy Week in Early Education

September 30, 2011

It’s been a big week for pre-K in the news.

Education Nation, NBC’s annual education summit, presented its second offering this week, and it had a heavy focus on early learning. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical editor, moderated the panel “Brain Power: Why Early Learning Matters” featuring early learning notables, including researchers, practitioners, advocates, and a little star power from actress-advocate Jennifer Garner. While the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge was clearly a point of interest, the panel also discussed a number of issues NIEER has recently explored, including policies on family engagement, how to reform Head Start, and the 10 states that do not offer state-funded pre-K. More of Education Nation’s early education coverage can be found here, including NIEER data making a cameo appearance in this Today Show interview as well as in the Start Early, Aim High panel discussion earlier this month.

Also this week was the release of Pre-K Now’s final report, “Transforming Public Education: Pathway to a Pre-K-12 Future,” which reflects on the growth of state-funded pre-K during their decade of advocacy while pushing for increased alignment with the K-12 system moving forward. Their recommendations include expanding preschool-for-all programs to more children, aligning standards with state elementary and Common Core standards, supporting early educator professional development, and re-assessing governance structures to make effective use of existing resources.

The report succinctly lights a path for early learning advocates to follow as Pre-K Now closes its doors, though these goal reached a whole new audience thanks to a Time magazine article, “Rethinking Pre-K: 5 Ways to Fix Preschool.” The article, which was among the most popular of the week, provided “reality checks” on which aspects of the report’s recommendations are most likely to be implemented. Program data used in the article from the 2010 State of Preschool Yearbook makes clear that resource constraints have taken a toll on state-funded pre-K programs and could continue to slow growth going forward. In particular, at a time when accountability is the watchword in education reform, NIEER Director Steve Barnett is quoted in the article saying, “Evaluations take a lot of time and money. With budget cuts, I’m afraid they will be the first to go.” Indeed, the 2010 Yearbook did see a slackening of accountability standards in many programs, a trend we fear may be repeated in our 2011 report. Look for NIEER data also in the article “The Preschool Wars,” which looks at the battle for pre-K in North Carolina and elsewhere, in the October 10 print issue of Time magazine (available online now for Time subscribers).

NIEER, Pre-K Now, and Education Nation made a number of other media appearances this week. An MSNBC interview with Dennis Van Roekel of the National Education Association draws attention to the need for greater access to high-quality pre-K programs, especially for children who may not be school ready. Another piece with Mark Shriver, of Save the Children’s U.S. operations, calls for increasing investment in early interventions, even in an era of budget cuts.

After this week of much discussion, it is clear that early childhood education has made great strides in recent years, but still has far to go to help all children who can benefit. For those in the field—educators, researchers, advocates, and parents—who know the challenge of advocating for increased resources during these austere times, there may be motivation in the President Obama’s address to students this week: “It means that you have to stay at it. You have to be determined and you have to persevere. It means you’ve got to work as hard as you know how to work. And it means that you’ve got to take some risks once in a while.”

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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Childhood Obesity: A Growing Problem

September 27, 2011

Obesity, especially beginning in childhood, has become a growing problem in the United States. The rate of childhood obesity has been increasing at a breakneck speed so that currently a third of children are obese (16.4 percent) or overweight (18.2 percent), according to a recent report from the Trust for America’s Health. Childhood obesity is linked with numerous negative effects that can follow a person throughout their lifetime, including greater risk for other health problems such as asthma, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. Given the risk of these negative outcomes, early intervention is seen as paramount by many. With that in mind, President Obama made a proclamation on August 31^st, declaring September to be National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month. To that end, the federal government’s Let’s Move! initiative encourages children and families to make healthier choices regarding exercise and meals. But as President Obama noted in proclamation, “Everyone has a role to play in preventing and reversing the tide of childhood obesity.” This does not exclude preschool programs and, indeed, in the past research has found that a preschool program’s choices of daily activities and menu selection could play a role in reducing childhood obesity. For more on the role of preschool in promoting healthy lifestyles, stay tuned for NIEER’s upcoming brief on health policies in pre-K.

- Jen Fitzgerald, Public Information Officer, NIEER

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All in the Family: Engaging Families in Children’s Early Learning

September 26, 2011

Ask any parent, teacher, or researcher, and they will tell you the same thing—education starts, and extends, well beyond the walls of the classroom. Parents are children’s first teachers, and families play a crucial role in education, especially for the youngest learners. Noting the importance of this, the week of September 26-30 is being celebrated as Head Start Family Engagement Week.

Since its beginning, the federal Head Start program has made community and family engagement a key piece of its efforts to prepare at-risk children for school. Of course, other early childhood educators also emphasize engaging parents. NAEYC and Pre-K Now collaborated on the paper Family Engagement, Diverse Families, and Early Childhood Education Programs: An Integrated Review of the Literature, which provides guidance on family engagement based on a review of a range of literature. They recommend that early learning programs:

Integrate Culture and Community: Utilize role models of diverse backgrounds; translate materials in to the native languages of participating families; provide an interpreter; interact with families and children within communities, outside of the classroom environment.
Provide a Welcoming Environment: have staff available at the entrance to guide families; post clear signs; encourage parents to provide feedback through a variety of avenues.
Strive for Program-Family Partnerships: include families in decision-making regarding both their individual child and the program; provide resources to be used at home that connect with classroom activities.
Make a Commitment to Outreach: when possible, make home visits so teachers can learn from families; provide education activities that families can do at home.
Provide Family Resources and Referrals: provide preventative health and family services, including transportation and child care; provide opportunities for families in parenting and adult education classes.
Set and Reinforce Program Standards: emphasize outreach; provide ongoing professional development to expand culturally-sensitive, evidence-based family engagement practices.

During the 2009-2010 school year, NIEER collected data on family engagement policies in state-funded pre-K programs. The table below presents a list of family engagement activities and the number of programs that require them.

Table 1: Family Engagement Activities in State-Funded Pre-K Programs, 2009-2010

Family Engagement Activities	Number of Programs	Percent of Programs
Participating/volunteering in classroom or school events	9	17%
Parent/family shared decision making and governance, parent advisory committee	8	15%
Program orientation	8	15%
Parent/family workshops	6	11%
Family literacy activities	5	9%
As per federal Head Start regulations	5	9%
Newsletters	4	7%
Parent/family education classes	4	7%
Parent/family participation in determining activities/events	4	7%
Specific activities are locally determined	26	48%
Other activities, beyond answer choices above	13	24%
Family engagement activities not required by state policy	9	17%

* Note: Most programs require multiple family engagement activities; therefore the percentages do not total 100 percent.

Of the 54 programs profiled in the 2010 Yearbook, the most popular answer was “locally determined,” indicating that there is a great deal of variation in family engagement policy. Allowing local providers to determine their own family engagement activities allows for customization based on local needs, but there may be great inequality in the level of engagement from site to site. For more information on family engagement policies in state pre-K programs, see this blog post with data from the 2009 Yearbook.

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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The Empty Space on the Carpet: Absenteeism in the Early Years

September 19, 2011

While the Perfect Attendance award may be a coveted prize for some, young students are missing an alarming number of school days. According to the national nonprofit Attendance Works, about 1 in 10 kindergarteners and first-graders are chronically absent—that is, missing 18 or more days of the school year, or about 10 percent of class days. Most research on attendance does not start until kindergarten, but a new analysis in Chicago makes clear the issue persists even earlier. During the 2009-2010 school year, 62 percent of preschoolers in the city’s state-funded Preschool for All program were chronically absent. In more than a quarter of program settings, the rate of chronic absenteeism reached 80 percent. From preschool to grade 3, 15 percent of all students missed 18 days or more of school. Attendance problems were especially seen at schools in low-income areas.

Absenteeism is a serious obstacle to getting the most out of school, even starting in early elementary school. Chronic absenteeism in kindergarten and first grade is linked with a decline in test scores and can cancel out a degree of school readiness. As one principal noted in the Catalyst Chicago article, “We have an excellent, excellent Head Start teacher, but she worries she’s not as effective because the students simply aren’t there.” A study by the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) also found that children who were chronically absent in kindergarten were likely to continue this pattern in first grade, though the study did not address preschool attendance. If half the battle is showing up, these young students are not making the cut.

So why are so many young learners not making it to circle time?

The Preschool for All coordinator for Chicago Public Schools cites the lack of support staff—having only two social workers for over 400 classrooms leaves teachers in the lurch in fighting the absentee battle. Beyond just Chicago, parents may think consistent attendance isn’t important until “real” school starts in first grade.

Part-day programs may also play a role—parents with inflexible schedules need to arrange alternate child care after the school day ends, as well as transportation to a second site. This hassle may be enough to just forego the pre-K classroom for the whole day if another setting is easier. As shown in Table 1, in the 2009-2010 school year, only 12 of the 54 state-funded programs profiled in NIEER’s Yearbook required all children to have full- or school-day schedules (minimum of 5.5 hours per day). Many other programs allow for local flexibility or may combine two part-time slots to create a full day, but these strategies may still leave parents without the opportunity for full-day classes for their preschool-age children.

Table 1: State-Funded Programs Requiring School- or Full-Day Schedules, 2009-2010

State	Hours of operation per day
Alabama	Full day, 6.5 hours/day
Arkansas	Full day, 7 hours/day
Georgia	Full day, 6.5 instructional hours/day
Louisiana 8(g)	School day, 6 instructional hours/day
Louisiana LA4	Full day, 10 hours/day; School day, 6 hours/day
Louisiana NSECD	Full day, 10 hours/day
New Jersey Abbott	School day, 6 hours/day
North Carolina	School day, 6-6.5 hours/day
Rhode Island	Full day, 6 hours/day
South Carolina CDEPP	Full day, 6.5 hours/day
Tennessee	Full day, 5.5 hours/day
District of Columbia PEEP	School day, 6.5 hours/day

Some state-funded programs provided extended-day services using program funding, though others require that it be paid for out of a separate funding source. These wrap-around services may be limited to children whose families receive child care subsidies or meet other requirements set by a state human services department, leaving working poor or middle-income families without extended-day services. As Table 2 shows, only 47.3 percent of children in Head Start programs in 2009-2010 were in a full-day, 5 days-per-week setting; another 4.5 percent attended full-day classrooms but only four days per week.

Table 2: Head Start Enrollment by Schedule, 2009-2010

Enrollment Option	Percentage of Children
Center-based Full Day (5 days per week)	47.3%
Center-based Part Day (5 days per week)	17.9%
Center-based Full Day (4 days per week)	4.5%
Center-based Part Day (4 days per week)	25.8%
Home-based Program	2.5%
Combination Option Program	1.2%
Family Child Care Option	0.2%
Locally Designed Option	0.6%

Note: These figures do not include the Migrant or American Indiana Alaskan Native programs.

Source: 2009-2010 Head Start Program Information Report (PIR) Enrollment Statistics Reports – National Level

The Office of Head Start provides some support in converting part-day slots to full-day slots, though they are still a long way from providing this to all students. In addition to being more convenient for working families, full-day prekindergarten and kindergarten programs have been found to have a greater impact on children’s learning than half-day programs.

How can preschool programs combat the problem of chronic absenteeism? Catalyst Chicago reports that some programs are requiring parents to sign contracts regarding attendance expectations. Some districts may be able to drop students once they have missed a certain number of days, while others use the contracts as a means of communicating expectations, albeit without teeth. Others suggest that improving outreach, as both Chicago and Detroit have done with older grades, and conveying the importance of consistent attendance in pre-K is a less punitive approach. Mandating full-day programs and making it easier to provide extended-day services on site could relieve burdens for parents and improve attendance rates; even requiring a school-day schedule would simplify pick-up for parents with students also in older grades.

State-funded pre-K programs have made tremendous progress in the past decade, increasing enrollment, beefing up standards, and expanding program options. But all of these efforts are undermined if programs cannot get kids into the story corner.

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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Words around the World: Celebrating International Literacy Day

September 8, 2011

Since 1967, September 8 has been celebrated as International Literacy Day, with the goal of focusing attention on the need to improve literacy worldwide. As students, parents, and teachers settle into their back to school routines, it is worth looking at the status of literacy both at home and around the world.

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

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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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Human Capital Development: Why Pre-K Needs to be a Capitol Concern

August 5, 2011

It would be difficult to find a more timely report than Attracting, Developing, and Maintaining Human Capital: A New Model for Economic Development, from the Partnership for America’s Economic Success (a project of the Pew Center on the States). At the same time American families fret over the continued economic doldrums and begin to worry about back-to-school shopping for their kids, the report connects high-quality early education to long-term economic success, pulling from the new book by economist Timothy Bartik.

Bartik’s research makes a strong case for both the short- and long-term benefits of quality early education programs for students, parents, employers, and taxpayers. Short-term, investing public dollars in early education can:

Help attract skilled workers with young children, who prefer areas with high-quality education programs to those with low-quality or inaccessible programs;
Provide peace of mind to local employees, allowing them to be more productive and fully present on the job; and
Increase the demand for highly qualified teachers, who are likely to move to the area as well as spend their earnings locally.

These are essentially the same reasons parents are drawn to areas with good elementary and secondary schools. Businesses want to be in areas rich with highly qualified, happy employees, reflected in years of research showing that public services, including education systems, play more of a role in locating a company than does the business tax rate. Offering peace of mind to parents regarding the arrangements for their young learners has become more important throughout this economic downturn. A 2010 report from the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies (NACCRRA) found that 51 percent of families with child under age 5 had their child care affected in some way by the recession, even as 57 percent of these families reported child care as an economic necessity. Investing in high-quality early education could not only go beyond the needs of “just” child care but also alleviate the stress families feel regarding both the quality and cost of this care.

Some may ask, “What about the taxpayer?,” echoing the rallying cry of this age of austerity. As noted above, quality early education can improve the environments for both families and businesses, improving local tax revenues and quality of life. Bartik notes that the short- and long-term effects of pre-K include higher test scores. Looking further down the line, quality early learning experiences can reduce special education placements by up to 50 percent through second grade and reduce grade retention by up to 33 percent through eighth grade, both of which significantly reduce the cost of public education. All told, school systems can save up to $3,700 per child over the K-12 years, to say nothing of the crime-related savings of between $2 and $11 per each dollar invested in early education.

Bartik also calls up an interesting statistic in this age of globalization: 60 percent of American workers, including 45 percent of those with a college degree, continue to live and work in the state in which they were raised. Thus, the investments states make during early childhood to prepare children for school and, eventually, work pay off in benefits to taxpayers of those same states later in life. As any real estate agent can attest, parents are attracted to areas with good schools. Bartik’s research find the testing score improvements attributed to pre-K can improve property values by $13 for every dollar invested. Creating attracting education systems can also working parents to stay local, benefitting businesses and local tax bases.

Early childhood education does not need to be limited to state efforts. Bartik’s data indicates that as an economic development strategy, half-day pre-K for all 4-year-olds more than holds its own against business tax incentives. At the state level, pre-K benefits $2.78 for each dollar spent, not far behind the $3.14 benefitted by business incentives. At the national level, however, the $3.79 per dollar benefitted by pre-K far outstrips the $0.65 benefit-cost ratio of business tax incentives. Tax incentives encourage businesses to play musical chairs throughout the country, seeking to cut overhead without necessarily producing more. High-quality early education, though, starts children on an improved educational and social path that benefits workforce quality into the future. It is not difficult to understand, then, the federal government’s current Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge that seeks to develop these early learning programs.

As government at all levels continues its belt-tightening, there are those who claim pre-K is an unaffordable luxury, when in reality it is an astonishingly good investment for both the short- and long-term benefit of the nation. While pre-K has not traditionally been considered in the elementary education system supported by taxpayers, using public funds to provide such programs can actually spur current economic growth while preparing America for a prosperous future. A recent NIEER brief examines current public financing of early learning as well as how the system can be improved. Advocates of publicly-funded pre-K support early learning not only because it is the right thing for children, but also because it can mitigate some of the long-term deficit ills so recently brought to the national light.

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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