Hail, Nicholas Kristof, for moving the “national newspaper of record” toward our team. It’s about time. “Occupy the Classroom,” his paean to early childhood education is, as I write, number six on the New York Times “Most Emailed” list. How clever of him to transpose the country’s fixation on Wall Street and income inequality into a well-reasoned treatise on the benefits of early childhood education. Expansion of ECE may seem “naïve and bizarre,” he writes, to those who “chafe at inequities.” Is it “absurd,” he asks, to expand ECE in the current economy?
Don’t roll your eyes: the payoff is sweet. “A good education tends to be the most reliable escalator out of poverty,” Kristof says. While I may take issue with the metaphor—a bit clunky, for my taste—his recitation of the evidence—from the likes of Kathleen Kennedy, Hiro Yashikawa, and James Heckman—is a joy to behold. He even takes on fellow columnist, Time’s Joe Klein, whose laceration of Head Start sent shock waves through the ECE community early this past summer. And the cherry on top: a rap on the knuckles for our President. “He probably agrees with everything I’ve said,” Kristof concludes. “But the issue has slipped away and off the agenda.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself—although I have been known to try.
Actually, ECE, ever the striver, returned to the policy agenda with a big bang this past summer, as states across the nation rushed to complete applications for the $500 million of federal dollars through the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC). All applications were due October 19th, by 4:30 p.m. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 35 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico submitted applications by the official deadline, with California, Florida, and New York each vying for up to a cool $100 million.
Meanwhile, stateside, down in the weeds of policymaking, New York regents just met to discuss, and make recommendations on, two critical pieces of an emerging ECE system: the Prekindergarten Foundations for the Common Core (formerly known as the Prekindergarten Learning Standards) and a Kindergarten Readiness Assessment tool, contingent on RTT-ELC funding. The Pre-K standards, forged in the crucible of early childhood DAP angst, are scheduled to be released to the field, for rollout in 2011-2012. I couldn’t help but see the invisible hands, hearts, and minds of the state’s kindergarten teachers in the following statement, lifted directly from the NYSED document:
The New York State Prekindergarten Foundation for the Common Core is not:
- Intended to be used as a checklist, but can inform the development or selection of screening and progress monitoring tools.
- Intended to be used as an assessment tool.
- Intended to be used as a curriculum.
- Meant to bar children from kindergarten entry.
- Meant to stifle the creativity of teachers, caregivers or parents. (Italics mine)
- Intended to mandate specific teaching practices or materials.
And wouldn’t you know that the memo about the standards from New York State Associate Commissioner Ken Slentz to the P-12 Education Committee includes as “Sample #1 a description of the competencies and awareness that four-year-olds are expected to demonstrate in “Domain 3: Social and Emotional Development.”
How about a round of applause for the team. With the fervent hope that such enlightened thinking will guide the process of designing and implementing a common readiness tool. Discussions of readiness have raged for years among parents, educators, and policymakers, whose target of universal school readiness has remained stubbornly elusive. New York State will embark upon this herculean task, sooner or later.
Kindergarten Readiness Advisory Council, beware.
On the bright side, New York will be following in the footsteps of the growing number of states that have taken it on. A review of 2009-2010 school readiness assessment practices by Child Trends found that more than half the states assessed children in kindergarten. Only a handful of states, however—including Alaska, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, and Vermont—conducted such an assessment “for the purposes of tracking the aggregate percentage of children statewide who are, for example, ‘ready for school,’ ‘in progress,’ or ‘not ready for school.’” This past spring, as the crocuses were blooming in Illinois, their Kindergarten Readiness Assessment Stakeholder Committee, steered by Barbara Bowman and Sam Meisels, among others, released a report with their recommendations to the Illinois State Board of Education. Put it on your reading list.
