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In this section, you'll find editorials, legislation, public policy and trends on issues relating to preschool, pre-kindergarten, childcare and the push toward universal preschool education. Particularly of note are articles concerning the states claim of a compelling interest in compulsory preschool education. Visit often for the latest preschool news.
Hispanic Directors Association Releases Report Critical of New Jersey Department of Education - Cites Flaws in Abbott Preschool Programs
The Hispanic Directors Association today released an eight-page report critical of the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) and its handling of the mandatory preschool program in the state s poorest districts.
"Dubious Commitment: Preschool Education in New Jersey and the Failure of State Government" was given out at the La Casa de Don Pedro Early Childhood Center in Newark. "We are issuing this report at this time because we are aware of the changing of the guard at the education department with the departures of Commissioner William Librera and Early Childhood Specialist Ellen Frede," said Daniel Santo Pietro, executive director of HDANJ.
June 25, 2005
[More Results from Arrive Net]
Dawn to dusk care plan for schools
All children under 14 in England will be offered "dawn to dusk" care under a radical extension of the current school day, which the government hopes will become known in the education lexicon as "Kelly hours".
But today's announcement by the education secretary, Ruth Kelly, is likely to be overshadowed by questions from teachers' leaders about how the so-called extended schools - open from 8am to 6pm - will be funded, and warnings of the bureaucracy involved.
June 13, 2005
[More Results from Guardian Unlimited (UK)]
Three-year-olds 'face criminal risk test'
Children as young as three should be targeted as potential criminals, according to a leaked government report. The Home Office study suggested nursery staff should be trained to spot tots at risk of becoming criminals when they grow up.
The publication said that infants not "under control" by the age of three were four times more likely to be convicted of a criminal offence once they reached maturity, according to a report in the Sunday Times. The 250-page report by the Home Office strategy unit, entitled Crime Reduction Review, was drawn up to identify the most effective ways of cutting crime by 2008.
June 13, 2005
[More Results from Guardian Unlimited (UK)]
Toilet training tips from the pros
Ever hear the old saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink'" The same can be said for leading a toddler to a toilet, says Michael McCabe, a pediatrician with North Canton Medical Foundation.
"There are a few things parents can't make their children do," he said. "They can't make them eat, they can't make them go to sleep and they can't make them poop in a toilet. But they can teach them to do these things." Instead of turning toilet time into a power struggle, start getting little ones comfortable with the bathroom when they are between 15 months and 18 months old, he said.
June 12, 2005
[More Results from The Salt Lake Tribune (UT)]
Scary Preschool Utopia
Did you know, the earnest lady asked, that one-quarter of even the affluent children in this country start kindergarten without full knowledge of the alphabet?
She clearly found this information a shocker, evidence that this nation needs universal pre-kindergarten, right away. This was, after all, Libby Doggett, the executive director of Pre-K Now, speaking at a seminar for reporters this spring in Denver.
June 7, 2005
[More Results from Los Angeles Times (CA)]
Pre-K plan may have a big flaw
Use of religious schools for programs could be a violation of the state constitution.
As they crafted Florida's free prekindergarten program last year, lawmakers were largely silent on one potential hang-up: Their plan may be unconstitutional. The problem is that Florida lawmakers, rather than relying on public schools as other states have done, opted to offer public money for 4-year-olds to attend religious schools.
June 7, 2005
[More Results from Sarasota Herald-Tribune (FL)]
County readies for free preschool
Universal preschool â€" or free and voluntary preschool for all â€" is creating a huge buzz in California, with the prospect looming of a June 2006 ballot initiative led by Rob Reiner to fund such as proposal.
First 5 Commission leads effort to create countywide program. Contra Costa County had been mulling the idea for free preschool for more than a year now. But on Thursday, about 75 representatives of early childhood education, private preschools, K-12 school districts, the parent community and nonprofit organizations met to begin the planning process.
June 3, 2005
[More Results from Inside Bay Area - Tri-Valley Herald (CA)]
Maybe Preschool Is the Problem
IF six out of every 1,000 preschool children are asked to pack up their Goldfish crackers and never return to nursery school - expelled at the tender age of 4 - whose fault is that?
But maybe, some education experts say, the problems stem from preschool itself. A new study released last week by the Yale Child Study Center found that preschool children are three times as likely to be expelled as children in primary school, and that roughly 5,000 preschool children are turned out each year.
May 22, 2005
[More Results from The New York Times [Requires free subscription]]
Unruly tots torment preschools
Inexperienced teachers' difficulties with unruly students prompt state-financed preschools to expel about 5,000 students a year, a rate more than three times higher than that of most K-12 public schools.
The findings, released Monday, put the first solid numbers on what observers say is a worsening behavior problem among very young students. The findings also suggest that while the national debate over pre-kindergarten focuses on how to get more low-income kids into the programs, "there appears to be a back door through which some children - the ones who stand the most to gain from these programs - are sometimes pushed," says Walter Gilliam of Yale's Child Study Center and the author of the report. "These 3- and 4-year olds are barely out of diapers."
May 19, 2005
[More Results from AZ Central (AZ)]
Research Finds a High Rate of Expulsions in Preschool
So what if typical 3-year-olds are just out of diapers, still take a daily nap and can't tie their shoes? They are old enough to be expelled, the first national study of expulsion rates in pre-k programs has found.
In fact, preschool children are three times as likely to be expelled as children in kindergarten through 12th grade, according to the new study, by researchers from the Yale Child Study Center. Although preschool expulsion rates varied widely by state and type of setting, the study found that on average, boys were expelled at 4.5 times the rate of girls, African-Americans at twice the rate of Latinos and Caucasians, and 4-year-olds at 1.5 times the rate of 3-year-olds.
May 17, 2005
[More Results from The New York Times]
Stick to what works, researchers tell preschool advocates and policy makers
As efforts accelerate to develop a universal preschool system, advocates and policy makers should focus dollars on blue-collar families, not hand preschools over to public schools.
"The worthy cause of extending preschool to all families is gaining steam, money and big-name proponents," said Bruce Fuller, co-author of the report and UC Berkeley professor of education and public policy. "But key pillars of initial programs are founded on the sands of weak evidence, ignoring the lessons from leading states."
May 5, 2005
[More Results from UC Berkeley News]
Labor of love lost
Rosie the goat loves to snuggle. But the kids who used to visit the brown goat and the other friendly animals at Barnyard Friends aren't coming back.
After a Samsula petting farm closed amid a bacterial scare, its owner struggles to cope. For some youngsters, Barnyard Friends was the first place they held a chick, milked a goat and rode a horse. The attraction was born years ago, when Sanders used to take a couple of goats and a pot-bellied pig for show-and-tell day at the preschool her children attended.
April 25, 2005
[More Results from Orlando Sentinel]
Opinion: Teaching is the answer
Learning to read is the key, not universal preschool - Universal preschools are not a solution to our education problems. If it were, universal kindergarten would have solved the problem long ago.
In California, approximately 65 percent of young children go to preschool. Yet, nowhere in the literacy performance of our children does that number appear in results. The U.S Department of Education has put its finger on the problem in a backward sort of way. In two official booklets about what your child should be learning in preschool and in primary grades, they do not mention that teachers should be teaching children how to read. Just stuff like reading to children, rhyming and alliteration. Nowhere is it suggested that teachers should actually teach children how to read. They imply that if you do those things, kids will catch on and learn. Life just doesn't work that way.
April 24, 2005
[More Results from The Reporter - Forum]
Op-Ed Not the time for universal preschool ballot measure
The free preschool program would be voluntary, but 70 percent of the state's 500,000 eligible 4-year-olds would be expected to enroll. Why wouldn't they? It's free.
Reiner's proposal raises a lot of questions. Do we want to transform today's network of independent operators into a statewide operation' Do we want a formally institutionalized preschool system with uniform standards and a bureaucracy' How big would it be' Given how strapped California is for money, including education dollars, do we want to fund preschool for wealthy and middle-class children or start by targeting needy children for financial aid'
April 24, 2005
[More Results from The Oakland Tribune (CA)]
Reiner proposes taxing the wealthy to pay for preschool program
Director and Hollywood activist Rob Reiner proposed a ballot initiative to provide universal preschool in California for 4-year-olds in what could be a prelude to a run for governor.
Reiner and a coalition of supporters announced the filing in coming days of an initiative that would impose a 1.7 percent tax on the state's upper 1 percent of wage earners to pay for the estimated $2.3 billion annual costs of the program. Reiner called his proposed constitutional amendment an "historic piece of legislation that will not only provide quality preschool experience for all 4-year-olds..."
April 24, 2005
[More Results from San Diego Union-Tribune (CA)]
Editorial: Ride the preschool wave
Education fads often turn into regrets. Open classrooms' Too noisy. Rejecting phonics as a tool for teaching reading? A disaster that caused California reading scores to plummet.
Now comes the movement to promote high-quality public preschools, which is taking on some faddish signs. In Florida, preschool advocates are stunned by their success selling Lance Armstrong-like orange wristbands — $21 for a pack of 10, with the profits dedicated to raising the quality of Florida's new preschool program.
April 24, 2005
[More Results from USA Today (FL)]
5-Year-Old Handcuffed By Florida Police On Camera
Girl Was Allegedly Misbehaving
A 5-year-old girl was handcuffed by police after she tore papers off a bulletin board and punched an assistant principal in kindergarten class, according to a video released by a lawyer for the child's mother.
April 23, 2005
[More Results from NBC10]
Classic toys never grow old with kids
At a time when many 3-year-olds can operate a DVD player to watch their favorite movies, it's nice to know classic toys still have a place in their lives.
Fisher-Price Toys Inc. is celebrating its 75th anniversary, and although the company has kept in touch with the times with hot licensed products and electronic gizmos, it's the classics that have captured the imaginations of generations of kids. Company lore has it that in 1934, Herman Fisher's mother, who was a teacher, coined the term "preschool" toys and a new toy segment was born.
April 22, 2005
[More Results from Chicago Sun-Times (IL)]
Preschool helps kids improve their German
Clap your hands and stomp your feet. Turn around. Touch the ground. Now, do it in German. Too kompliziert (complicated)? It's a breeze for kids in KinderZoo.
The German-based preschool is similar to any other, except that students and/or their parents are native German speakers. Kids sing, dance, play, tell stories and do art projects while speaking German.
April 21, 2005
[More Results from San Diego Union-Tribune (CA)]
Action Alert - CA: AB 172 - Universal Preschool.com
AB 172 Hearing - April 20, 2005. Your mission should you decide to accept it; is to call, write and/or fax the legislators listed below in opposition to AB 172. Be sure to write your own Assembly member as well.
After you have contacted your legislator and the Education Committee members, please forward this alert to any family members or friends, who may have an interest in preschool legislation.
April 16, 2005
[More Results from Universal Preschool.com]
Archbishop accuses Britain's parents of child 'abuse' - Britain - Times Online
Britain is a society of infantilised adults who are abusing their own children by default, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said today.
He condemned the "malign" obsession with testing in schools and issued a clarion call for the British people to grow up. "When adults stop being infants, children can be children," he told an audience of headmasters, church and mosque leaders, community workers and academics in east London.
April 11, 2005
[More Results from Times Online (UK)]
World Congress of Families II
"The learning tools -- vision, hearing, cognition, nervous system-- of
average children who enroll at today's early ages are not tempered for structured academic tasks.
Students lose physical and mental health from 1) uncertainty from leaving the family nest, 2) bafflement from social pressures and restrictions, 3) frustration from pressure to use their unready "learning tools" which can't handle the regimentation and routine of formal lessons, 4) hyperactivity growing out of tattered nerves warring against rigid studies, 5) failure which flows from the episodes above, 6) delinquency which is failure's twin, and 7) a sense of family lost, often including suicide.
April 11, 2005
[More Results from The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society]
Little scholars, big business
As more parents seek to give kids an edge, learning centers thrive
Rather than play outside on the mild afternoon, a half-dozen boys and girls hone verbal skills and hurtle through math drills inside a nondescript Newton storefront. Across the room, students sweat over synonyms and earn high fives after completing each unit.
Struggling students in need of remedial help' No. They're normal elementary-school pupils who came to the local Score! learning center for an hour of "personal academic training" while their mothers ran errands.
April 10, 2005
[More Results from The Boston Globe]
The danger of confusing education and childcare
Education and childminding have long been closely associated. In the 1830s, all three Brontë sisters went out from Haworth Parsonage to be governesses, either in boarding schools or private homes.
The posts involved both teaching and childcare, extending, in the case of Emily, "from six in the morning until near eleven at night". Why, then, do I feel the balance between the two is now so seriously out of kilter that the integrity of the education service is threatened'
From the end of the Second World War, day nurseries were set up by the government to meet the needs of the wartime female workforce with no pretence they provided education - other than on a very informal social basis. After the war, this continued in local authority day nurseries and through the voluntary playgroup movement.
At some stage, however, the concept of preschool education entered the scene. Nursery schools were established, typically staffed by one qualified teacher and a number of nursery nurses. The teacher provided an educational veneer for what was essentially organised play. April 6, 2005 [More Results from The Scotsman]
At some stage, however, the concept of preschool education entered the scene. Nursery schools were established, typically staffed by one qualified teacher and a number of nursery nurses. The teacher provided an educational veneer for what was essentially organised play. April 6, 2005 [More Results from The Scotsman]
Legislative Update: Universal preschool/education again loom large
Education again looms large in this year's legislative session. And while parents, school officials, teachers and, yes, even legislators, should be concerned with education...
California ranks 48th in the nation for education excellence-the reality is that every year legislators introduce hundreds of new bills affecting schools that micromanage education by dictating how and what teachers can teach in their classrooms, what policies school boards must adopt and other Sacramento-driven mandates.
AB 171 Comprehensive pupil learning support system (Yee, D-San Francisco) AB 172 Universal preschool (Chan, Oakland) April 5, 2005 [More Results from Christian Examiner]
AB 171 Comprehensive pupil learning support system (Yee, D-San Francisco) AB 172 Universal preschool (Chan, Oakland) April 5, 2005 [More Results from Christian Examiner]
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