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Taking Responsibility for Ending Social Promotion: A Guide for Educators and State and Local Leaders &#; May 1999
To prepare students to meet high standards, we must start early. From years of experience in observing, studying, and teaching young children, we have learned of the importance of the early childhood years. We know that young children learn by having a range of frequent, positive early learning experiences. Early childhood education can help children develop broad knowledge and higher-level skills, as well as help educators identify children at risk of school failure and take steps to ensure their readiness for school and successful learning in the early grades.
Given what we know about the importance of children's earliest years, it is imperative that all children have access to high-quality early care and educational experiences to help them get ready for school. These efforts must involve educating parents, offering children and their families a broad range of interesting experiences, and providing much better early care and education settings than many children now experience.
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Bright Beginnings: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Schools The public prekindergarten program in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Schools, called Bright Beginnings, is funded mainly through Title I funds. As a result of a comprehensive planning effort, the school district decided to use 85 percent of its Title I funds to get children ready for school in collaboration with Head Start, special education, and other public and private partners. Bright Beginnings serves children who are selected through an assessment process that uses developmentally appropriate measures. Children are served in one of three prekindergarten centers or in prekindergarten classrooms in neighborhood elementary schools within the district. Staff at Bright Beginnings actively engage families in their children's learning at home and at school, and parents report tremendous satisfaction with the program and with their involvement in the growth, development, and learning of their children. The program supports a caring environment and gives four-year-olds a literacy-rich, resource-rich, full-day prekindergarten experience. All teachers are early childhood specialists who have at least a bachelor's degree and are certified to teach by the state. Professional development is continuous. Each classroom of 18 or 19 children has a teacher and a teacher's aide. The district has developed its own prekindergarten curriculum, content standards, and performance expectations that set high expectations for every child's growth, development, and learning. The program, which now serves over 1,900 children, plans to expand to 4,000 children--the number of children identified by the school district as needing high-quality preschool services to get them ready for school. |
All states fund some type of initiatives for children from birth to age 3, some of which meet new parents in hospitals at the birth of their child and provide follow-up home visits to ensure that parents understand their parenting responsibilities and have access to support services for themselves and their children when needed. The federally funded Head Start program has expanded to serve children birth to age 3 and their families, and is reaching out to pregnant women before their children are born. And, under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Part C, states receive financial assistance for maintaining and implementing statewide, comprehensive, multidisciplinary systems to provide early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities from birth through age 2, and their families. Under Part B of IDEA, states also receive additional federal financial assistance to fund the costs of providing special education and related services to children with disabilities ages 3 to 5.
High-quality early childhood and preschool education programs not only give children enriching and stimulating experiences to nurture their growth, development, and learning, but in many cases offer parents access to resources that can help strengthen their parenting skills. For example, Chicago's "Cradle to Classroom" program works with 700 young mothers each year to train them in the skills they need to stimulate their children's minds as well as to care for them physically, emotionally, and socially. The city's "Parents as Teachers" program trains liaison personnel to visit the homes of 1,500 preschoolers to help develop preliteracy skills.
When young children participate in a high-quality preschool, qualified professionals can assess children's developmental progress across all developmental domains--physical well-being and motor development, social and emotional development, approaches to learning, language development, and cognition and general knowledge. This is especially important for children with limited English language skills as well as children who are experiencing or are at risk of developmental delays and disabilities. These children often have much less access to preschool learning experiences than other children do. Linking children and families with targeted early intervention services as well as high-quality preschool programs is critical to helping all children reach appropriate developmental milestones in the acquisition of important early language and literacy skills.
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The Georgia Voluntary Prekindergarten Program The Georgia Voluntary Prekindergarten Program was launched in 1992. Alarmed by an unacceptably high dropout rate and increasing teen pregnancy rates, the state decided to make a significant investment in early prevention. The program was instituted to provide children with high-quality preschool experiences necessary for future school success and to provide resources and support for parents to ensure that success. With a current annual infusion of $2l0 million from the state lottery fund, approximately 70 percent of all eligible four-year-olds attended preschool during the 1997-98 school year. A critical component of this program is its outreach to the more than 40 percent of four-year-olds who have been identified as being at risk of school failure because of economic disadvantage. Eligible children receive before- and after-school care, free and reduced-price meals, and transportation. Prekindergarten programs are operating in public and private elementary and secondary schools, postsecondary vocational technical institutes, private and state colleges, private nonprofit and for-profit child care learning centers, Department of Family and Children's Services offices, Head Start sites, hospitals, military bases, and YMCA/YWCAs. The program grew from serving 750 children during the 1992-93 school year to serving 60,000 children during the 1997-98 school year. Families can choose from a variety of settings and curricula. The school-readiness goals of the program emphasize growth in language and literacy, math concepts, science, arts, physical development, and personal and social competence. Standards for classrooms require interactive learning opportunities that are age appropriate, meet individual needs, and enhance children's feelings of comfort, security, and self-confidence. All teachers in the program must have early childhood training and must participate in staff development and training activities. Parents are encouraged to volunteer in their child's classroom and to participate in parent-teacher conferences, meetings, parent group activities, and workshops. Parents are also strongly encouraged to read to their children daily. Family resource coordinators support parents' efforts to become involved in their child's educational development process, and parents have opportunities to obtain information and needed services, including adult education, employment counseling, literacy classes, and health services. A longitudinal study (1993-96) conducted by the Department of Early Childhood Education at Georgia State University using comparison groups of 315 children indicates that children in the Prekindergarten Program surpassed the comparison children on teacher ratings in five different areas of development, promotion to first grade, and attendance. At the completion of first grade, the Prekindergarten Program children achieved higher scores on 10 separate measures of academic development and achievement. |
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Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children Childhood environments that support early literacy development and excellent instruction are important for all children. Excellent instruction is the best intervention for children who demonstrate problems learning to read. Adequate initial reading instruction requires that children:
—National Research Council |
Starting early is critical in helping students develop literacy skills. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, more than one child in six has problems learning to read during the first three years in school. Children who do not learn to read make up more than half of the special education population. Today, proficient readers remain a minority in the United States, with only about a third of students in grades 3, 8, and 12 attaining at least the proficient level in reading.(32) Studies reveal that students who do not learn to read are blocked from achievement in every other subject in school.
The Administration has committed to ensuring that all students can read well and independently by the end of the third grade. Therefore, reading must be introduced early, integrated into preschool activities, and reinforced at home.
A recent report by the National Research Council suggests that preschool programs be designed to include attention to skills known to predict future reading achievement. Instruction should be designed to stimulate verbal interaction, enrich children's vocabulary, provide practice with sounds, develop knowledge of print, and instill motivation early for reading.(33)
Through family literacy programs, parents can acquire the skills needed to help children learn to read at home, develop expanded vocabularies, get ready for school, and become high achievers.Even Start is a family literacy program that extends early childhood services, literacy training, parenting training, and English-language instruction to many families with limited proficiency in English as well as English-speaking parents who lack a high school education. Even Start supports intergenerational literacy projects that combine early childhood education and literacy training for their parents.
Two years ago President Clinton issued a challenge to every American to help all children become good readers. On October 21, 1998, the President signed the Reading Excellence Act. The legislation will help more than 500,000 children from prekindergarten through third grade develop literacy skills. The $260 million in funds will support professional development, out-of-school tutoring, and family literacy projects.
32. NAEP, 1996; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 1996.
33. National Research Council, 1998.
[Strengthening Learning Opportunities in the Classroom]