ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

Perhaps, if we went back to practicing what early childhood educators know to be right and true, the outcomes would be higher. In California transitional kindergarten (TK) is taking young children out of preschool and incorporating them into elementary school.
Elementary school teachers with little/no early childhood education are force feeding academics to 5 year olds at their principal's request. Many of these TK children are not developmentally ready to sit for long periods of time, recite letters, letter sounds, comprehend math, yet they are forced to do just that. My fear that these young children are frustrated and turning off to school and the joys of learning new things at a very early age!

Yes, let's protect children from universal, government orchestrated preschool that is typically designed within the same failing framework as the public school system. That system does not attempt to understand development in the same way as our international neighbors who think the US is insane for starting children so early with the academic rigors as we do. Many of these countries have systems that early care and education for children but with vastly different curriculum models that embrace whole child learning through their academic careers. These systems are also rigorous, provide autonomy to well-paid and well-educated teachers. These kids speak at least 2 languages and test higher than we do by age 16. We can and should do better but we will not as long as government is held hostage to special interests and business groups and the science behind teaching and learning is ignored. It isn't early education that fails, it is who holds the strings of fear and exacerbates that fear by insisting that all children read by third grade. I don't believe our children are failing as much as we are failing to understand that we cannot build on an already out dated system that continues to use the age, grade and factory model. I have heard this argument from many of those who use alternative methods to educate their children. We have increasing numbers of children falling at or below the poverty level that lack the resources to be prepared for kindergarten. This is part of the 'failure' in the system but one that gets brushed aside because of its complexity. This kind of research is also part of the argument used by those that choose to home school their children or are using alternatives offered within school systems themselves. Early childhood educators have been raising their voices for over 40 years regarding best practices for young children, the need for healthy environments that support play and playful learning, stable families and collaboration of resources and services for families in need. Enough talking. Let's just do what we need to do. We can start by seriously scrutinizing the role of business that view children as commodities and education as the last for profit frontier. Be well my friends. R.

I noticed this line in the WSJ article:

"If Mr. Obama is serious about helping children, he should begin by fixing what is clearly broken: the K-12 system. The best way of doing that is by building on programs with a proven record of success. Many of these involve giving parents control over their own education dollars so that they have options other than dysfunctional public schools. "

This reads as "private or charter schools".

First, there is no way for every parent to send their child to a private schools (which would effectively turn private schools into the new public schools).

Second, seven years on, we have just as much evidence to contradict claims made in 2008 that the charter school model would be an improvement over the public one. There is still, as yet, no conclusive evidence that charter schools could do any better serving the entire population (small-scale, laboratory-like experiments don't count, sorry). Charter schools are the equivalent of building a new set of train tracks beside the old ones; it makes little sense beyond an academic, what-if best-case-scenario.

Early childhood development efforts may indeed not work for *all* kids--what does?--but there is ample evidence to support the claim that it works for *most*.

I just opened my very own preschool in Bradenton florida called Little Steps Big Steps. I have worked in the childcare field for preschool 12 years and have taught for 15 years. I wanted to have q quality childcare where parents felt comfortable and the children were learning through guidance and self motivation. It is not easy right now getting enrollment due to job losses and families having limited funds but I have confidence that things will start looking up and my families will come

Shikha Dalmia and Lisa Snell from the Reason Foundation really need to check out their research and their sources. These two are totally misinformed and have made many mistakes in their article. There is much more valid and up to date research done on Head Start and the Perry Preschool study, which they obviously missed in their article. What they really did was slander. Where did they get that non-sense from, that the parents of the children in the Perry Preschool study were 'drug addicts and neglectful.' There is no evidence for this claim. I have worked for the High/Scope Foundation (they did the study) for 6 years and have never heard that or seen any evidence of it because it is simply not true. Instead of slandering the good name of Preschool and all the work and good it has done, why don't they try to find out how to do accurate research and not just make up stuff for the sake of trying to discredit a political candidate.
I applaud Senator Barak Obama for his support of Preschool. We need more politicians to realize that this is a crucial age for learning and put more funds into it so we can really do what it really does, which is to help make children better adults.

I have read the Wall Street Journal article "Protect Our Kids from Preschool" and find it lacking in depth and understanding of the family structure and environmental impact of our culture today. These play a highly important role in determining children's ability to succeed in an educational environment. It seems the Wall Street Journal chose this topic to strike back at Barack Obama. It is extremely important for children to have access to the highest quality early care and education environment in order to succeed.

Nancy Reach, M.Ed. Coordinator
Mary Jo Oldham Center for Child Study
Southeastern Illinois College
Harrisburg, IL

Thanks to all the people who stood uo to the poorly informed, misguided critic. I am a director and early childhood educator. I have seen children who have left our program full of zeal, eyes with wonder and curiousity for the world that lay ahead of them. What happens within the next year and a half of their life is still a mystery. Tests and more tests become the order of the day. Children become bored and frustrated in the system that does not cater to meeting individual and unique needs. The social and economic climate does not make it any easy on sytem where teachers experience shrinking funds and mounting presuure to make the "A" grade. "No Child Left Behind" has become just a cliche with no guarantee for progress.

I am qualified to teach in the public school system but at the end of every day I will not be able to honestly search my conscience and/or convince myself that I have done my best for young children.

I can't believe such blanket comments on the dismal outlook for preschool outcomes. The Reason Foundation needs to take a closer look at the "unreasonable" comments their colleagues are posting. Consequences of poverty, the plight of working-poor and single parent families have produced the sharp increase in preschool attendance. Sometimes providers (public and private) need to think out of the box. We at Jack & Jill serve a population where 90% of our families are headed by single Moms who are trying to keep their jobs and their sanity. Along with national and state accreditation, we provide wrap-around family support services. We truly believe that if a child is to succeed, the family must succeed as well. This concept seems to have taken hold in other states, as I read the Pre-K Now blogs. In fact our VPK scores for 2006-07 were 282/300. Quality early education and care makes such a difference. Anyone who thinks this is "glorified babysitting" needs a loud wake-up call. I do feel that more attention should be given to the early years after preschool and kindergarten, in grades 1-3 otherwise "everyone's" child will be left behind."

I have not had opportunity to read the complete Wall Street Journal article, nor to analyze the data on which it was based, however, I am sorry that an article that purports to be reserach-based appears to make such blanket conclusions. Most scientific observers qualify their findings due to their realization that no matter how large your sample, it is only that - - a sample; and no matter how in-depth your overview of existing data, it can never fully take into account the multple factors that impact the issue.

In addition, it appears the writers sorely underestimate the social pressures that impact children today: a proliferation of singe parent homes; the increasing incidence of divorce; and dual incomes families in which both parents work full time. These major shifts in family life from that of the 1970's are accompanied by a decreasing focus on literacy. There is less and less need to read fluently: most signs are now graphic symbols; many newspapers, journals, and web site entries are now prepared at the 4th or 5th grade reading level; computers can be used to correct both our spelling and our grammar; and text messages are make communicating in full sentences an archaic practice for our young people. Is it any wonder then, that standardized reading scores have not increased. The wonder may be that they have remained as high as they are. In summary, it seems less than stringent academic thinking to blame the preschool expereince - or lack thereof - for academic performance with such dynamic shifts taking place in our culture.

It always amazes me that people say preschool is a failure because kids don't do so well later in elementary school, but don;t hold the elementary schools accountable for the children's decline in learning....maybe it's Leave No Child Behind's failure, or just poor quality teachers, or overcrowding, or, well I could go on... and how have the statistics accounted for the many different types of preschool programs, or the fact that more parents are working, or that kids don;t get outside as much as before. Who can say what factors , or combination of factors account for the change, of in fact it is a change????

I read the Wall Street article with dismay and disbelief. I cannot believe that anyone could, in 2008, hold to, let alone, publish such views when the contrary has been so well established. The Perry Preschool Longitudinal Study, the research on Head Start are just two of the internationally known studies which have clearly established the critical importance of QUALITY preschool. Indeed, the High/Scope model of quality preschool first established in Ypsilanti, Michigan has been replicated in several countries with one common outcome-- quality preschool works and returns rich dividends.
The fact that children who have gone to preschool do poorly on paper and pencil tests in later grades is no reason to say preschool has failed. Rather than coming to that erroneous conclusion the writers of the article ought to be looking at both the tests and the elementary school system. The writer(s) is/are likely to find that it is what happens after preschool that is failing our children.
The quality of the preschool experience should also be examined. We all know that depriving children of the rich, developmentally appropriate experiences is as bad as keeping them in an environment of neglect and abuse.
Quality makes the difference.

High Quality is the key to providing good programs that benefit young children. Regulations are key to ensuring quality, as is education of parents as to what quality is in looking for a program for their child. Research supports the concept that young children benefit from good early learning and care experiences. It also is clear that poor quality experiences can have a negative (not neutral) effect. As our government provincially (state) is looking into all day kindergarten for 3, 4 and 5 year olds we are having a lot of discussion about this very topic. I believe that high quality early learning experiences can happen in many different settings and auspices (private/non-profit). I also think that children and their families have varying needs. It is my hope that we will follow a plan similar to New Zealand's where parents have choices about what program suits their child and therefore where the funding will go. Some may choose all day kindergarten in a school setting (hopefully play based and with a program appropriate for young children), others may choose traditional preschool (2-4 hr. programs a few days a week) and others may need full daycare which includes of course early learning and care. What is exciting is that it is now generally accepted that early learning is important, quality is key in that experience and that all children deserve the opportunity to participate.

Not having read the article nor having seen the research on which it was based, I can only speculate using my experience:
I have seen a great range of quality in preschools. Many of them are of low quality - staffed by teachers and directors who are poorly trained and educated. Such settings would do damage to young children.

The qualities that make a preschool good - and likely to have a positive impact on a child's future academic prospects - are contained in standards such as those required for NAEYC Accreditation. It is difficult, however, to find, orient, and retain the staff needed to meet those criteria.

There are many subtle differences between approaches that appear to have children learning, and those that encourage the type of learning that builds the skills which allow children to continue to make connections between what they know and new information that they encounter. It is the rare teacher who knows this and even more rare is the teacher who consistently teaches this way.

There is evidence that the quality of preschool teachers has been dropping for many years now. Without good teachers, preschool will not be a positive experience for children - and they will not develop the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in school or life.

I support the thoughts from this article and feel the evidence that preshcool does more harm than good to children should help our efforts to get more financial support from our govenrment. It is obvious that the need for preshool or childcare is a significant part of our culture and this article proves that there are changes that need to be made . Our society underestimates what we are doing in the field of early childhood eduacation and the impact it has on the child's foundation for their future success in school. I applaud this article and dare to say we need more like it. We have come a long way but still have a long way to go to make early childhood eduacaton a good place for children to grow, develop and prepare for life. Currently the majority of our young childr are being placed in schools/daycares that have teachers who are underqualified, underpayed and also centers are understaffed. This all adds up to more stress and anxiety for the child which equates to poor learning conditions. Lets use this information to make a positve impact for our children in preschool settings.

Early Head Start programs, Parent Education Co-operatives, and most college Laboratory programs, provided young children AND their parents with VERY high quality, developmentally appropriate learning experiences and positive relationships. Best of all, these models include an element of Parent Education, usually mandated for enrollment! It is the relationships that matter.

It makes no sense at all to promote the idea that taking children from disadvantaged environments at home and putting them into low quality environments that look like first grade classrooms called universal preschool will benefit anyone.

Young children, children younger than 7, should be engaged in active, often loud, interesting activities--mostly of their own design and by their own choice. They should be physically active, talk a lot, share their opinions and ideas with adults who listen and care, and who recognize the role of development in all of learning.

The implementation of "standards" the requirement of "outcomes", and the view of the early years as a time to drill and kill to prepare children to pass a test for the No Child Left Behind program, is among the worst things our country is doing presently.

We SHOULD look at Scandinavia, a successful model for early childhood programs, and ask ourselves why our leaders refuse to do what they know works. Who are the policy makers. What do they know about development, behavior, young children, family relationships, and teacher dispositions?

It is akin to abuse to require 3, 4, and even some 5 year-olds to conform to the inappropriate expectations put on them today by state and federally funded programs.

All healthy children will learn. By the age of 8 or 9, unless there has been a great deal of discouragement and /or neglect and abuse, all children are within a reasonable range of learning abilities.

When we try to assign the well being of children to "programs" instead of facing the fact that our families, neighborhoods, cities, and nation are a mess--we will surely fail.

It is good to see an article opposing preschool because that gives ExchangeEveryDay credibility in its objectivity and also facilitates the dialogue. I had started to use the phrase "...article critical of preschool," but I rescinded that language. The reason is that the quote from the Wall Street Journal (I admit I've yet to read the actual article) did not criticize or critique, which requires examinining both the positive as well as the negative aspects. Instead, at least in these quotes, only the alleged negatives are addressed. I say alleged because these quotes make the same logical error that many education psychology studies also make: to assume a cause-and-effect relationship from a correlational study. Just because two events occur in proximity of time does not mean they are interconnected. That is on a par with "A woman in New York was doing the dishes when suddenly she started thinking about her daughter in California. At that very moment, her daughter was delivering her first child." Did one event cause the other? Not likely! Did they happen at the same time? Absolutely. waas ther a connection of sorts? Of course momma would think about her daughter who was due to deliver, but most likely, gestation to term was the real cause of the birth.
It is like this: Studies have consistently shown that Head Start is effective in improving young children's developmentally appropriate academic performance, yet by age eight years old, those gains begin to dissipate. What those studies have yet to examine is that the approach utilized in Head Start is proven effective on academic and social-emotional criteria, but there is no continuity carrried into the SEPARATE public school system. So, by 3rd grade, the public schools have detracted from preschools gains and by fourth grade there is no visible improvement. Does that mean that preschool is ineffective? No, it means that public schools are failing our children.
Does the emotional impact of preschool damage children? well, what has been shown in Head Start and can be documented on measures such as the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment is that preschool enhances social-emotional maturity. What detracts from that are other dynamics occuring in proximity of time, such as family relationships, poverty, and again, lack of a continuum of care for social-emotional developmental curriculum into the public school system.
So, if the wall Street Journal has examined what even psychological studies have not looked at, the multiplicity of causal relationships post preschool, then we should heed the article's cricisms. However, if the article makes the same logical error that has been made over and over the years, then what needs to be done is to identify what IS working in preschool and apply it in public elementary education. Pointing the finger backwards to preschool only serves as a distraction from the failings of elemtary education to sustain the momentum of gains previously made. It is paramount to saying, if my mother hadn't gotten pregnant and delivered me, I wouldn't have had this car accident just now. True...but absurd.

My question is are the public preschools in the states mentioned using developmentally appropriate practice?

Also with the number of children in some sort of out-of-home care/education increasing each year how do we know what the impact is when children are in lower quality settings?

We in the Early Care and Education setting need all the funding possible to help raise the quality of the work we do.

Seems to me the preschool activists are correct that much of what is called preschool is poor quality daycare. In addition, the lack of parent/child connection in our hurried, stressful world, the crowded public school classrooms, and the leave-no-child-behind emphasis on test scores are likely culprits as well!

It is my belief that, until the cost of quality childcare is considered by policy makers to be part of the cost of doing business, rather than social welfare, classrooms will have too many children per teacher, teachers will lack needed training, and high turnover will continue.

If we as a society are going to include women--who make up about half of the human race--in the world of work and governance, the workplace must accomodate the need of both parents to be available to their children when necessary. A well-balanced society is one that meets the basic needs of its members and nurtures its most vulnerable members, young and old.

These are major issues, requiring major changes, that we as a people must consider as we elect a new president. It is time for those of us who recognize the importance of meeting the needs of children and families to not only speak up to others, but become active in creating solutions.

The White House Project, a training project targeting young women and girls, is designed to create a pipeline of women leaders in policy and elected office, and open doors for those concerned about these issues.

Thank you for presenting a critical viewpoint. You are quite right; we need to know and understand why people might be critical of the concept of universal preschool, or the preschool experience itself. While many of us feel we know why such research does not reflect the positive experiences children generally have in a high quality preschool environment, the fact remains that it is not our goal to raise test scores, but to encourage healthy development of the whole child.

The ability of the individual child is what the article misses. Wether a child attends preschool or doesn't neither determines or means that each child is equal in their ability to learn or that this years crop of children are going to all be geniuses. There has been a belief for years that children should not be tested before their 10th year of age due to burn out, readiness and maturity and this has been a factor to why some parents decide to home school their children. Maybe the ability to read out load should be the factor instead of standarized testing. Most of our Pre-K 4 class is putting words together before leaving us and you can't tell me that this does not help them when they get to school. A graduate from our Pre-K will tell their Kindergarden teacher that "White" is not a site word because he/she can sound it out. I believe it is the contrast to the teaching, the enviroment, and the ability of the child that factor into the results of the 4th grade exams.

One of the reasons children's scores are stagnant, in my view, is because there is limited resources available for EC educators, specially in daycares. Our research conducted for three years, which included providing research-based professional development to daycare providers in all content areas along with a developmentally-appropriate curriculum that included materials and mentoring turned out to be highly successful. The need is at the early years...No dought about it. If we don't provide the appropriate "instruction" to EC educators and the material necessary to implement a "standards-based curriculum" (and instruct the EC teacher "how to"), the children are at a loss and will not succeed. As the demand for mothers to be in the workplace increases, the same demand should be applied to the proper education of their children. How do we accomplish that? We need to raise the salaries of these EC educators who receive nothing (minimum wage) just because they have no preparation...Preparation? They 've been taking care of kids because the majority of them want to make a difference in the children....they love children! Just as much as we, mothers do! Our government needs to consider that now a days, it's both sexes that are at the working force...and we should stop sex discrimination. Are there too many women trying to get ahead? Is educating our young children a threat to men because it entails mostly women educators? (Maybe, to men in politics). In all, it has to do with having the available resources and early training to get a generation of kids that can represent us all (both sexes/cultures/ religion) successfully and in which will be our right leaders for our nation...

Early Stimulation[Pre-school] is more than just math and science;it is the first preparation steps for life[school included]in socialization,emotional,spiritual,creative,physchomotor,cognitive, language,and other care related programes.The difficulties that the higher academic order[post pre-school] of reseason that Shikha Dalmia and Lisa Snell are refering to should be addressed to post pre-school curriculum development and its delivery and implementation systems.The issue of the teacher preparation for the post-pre-school grades;the issue of the other influences outside the designated learning environment ie home,parents and the community where the children come from;and the nature of curriculum support and instructional materials are some of the key areas that Shikha and Lisa should be addressing

It's amazing that the Wall Street Journal did not take into account the ever-increasing number of
non-English speaking immigrants flooding into our schools when compiling their statistics and condemniing preschool---either private or public!

Unfortunately what is often excluded from many of these tests scores is how much funding is invested into making these programs effective with properly trained teachers. How do you keep teachers that have strong backgrounds in Early Childhood Education when thay are making merely minimum wage?? If you want to see effectiveness in these programs start treating and paying those trained in ECE as professionals!!!

Has anyone ever stopped to think that the Federal requirements on scores have risen however, the funding has not. I also believe that if you take a child's ability to learn through play out of the equation, they are not as successful. If the study only took into account programs that use Teacher bases curriculum, that is the cause for the lower scores.

I was disturbed by the headline of the article titled "Protect Our Kids from Preschool". Although there may be some merit to this discussion with regards to questioning why universal preschool is not leading to success in the masses, I would certainly not go so far as to suggest that preschool can be bad for kids.

Unlike some parents who may be financially privileged and would like to stay home with their children, several parents do go to work because they have to. To suggest that one is potentially harming their child by placing them in preschool is absurd as there is much evidence that points to the benefits of early childhood education. Although I would agree that a play-based environment would be the most beneficial to a very young child, I don't disagree with the idea of teaching them some of the 3 Rs in their day.

The article also points fingers at the K - 12 system suggesting it is broken. I think that this is an insult to teachers in the United States that work tirelessly every day to ensure their students are achieving successes in their classrooms. I would think that the finger should be pointed at the Bush Administration and their draconian measures to supposedly ensure "no child is left behind" by testing students to death!

I thought of Exchange Everyday as a place where information posted supports learning in the early years. I was disappointed to read this e-mail as I have worked both as an Early Childhood Educator and as a teacher in the K - 12 system. I know of several educators who strive to make a child's day in both preschools and public schools as engaging and positive as possible. The fact that this information was published by two researchers is beside the point. Exchange Everyday should be posting articles that support the premise of universal childcare not condemn it.

I'm sorry to all those I offend, but I'm afraid I agree just based on the 2 school systems I am exposed to--my granddaughter, for example, doesn't want anything to do with reading after Open Court for a year in pre-K (though she was beginning to read before she began). I'm afraid I've seen such bad examples of learning through play that I'm burned out on the idea of universal pre-K, especially full day!!

A longitudinal study based in New Zealand investigated quality levels in ECE environments and last year released findings about it's subjects who are now around 16 years of age. It found that quality ECE environments are still benefiting those young people who attended even into their mid teens. The benefits have been both academic and social, and apply regardless of the subjects background.

Check it out here:
http://www.nzcer.org.nz/default.php?products_id=1840

* In the last half-century, U.S. preschool attendance has gone up to nearly 70% from 16%. But fourth-grade reading, science, and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — the nation's report card — have remained virtually stagnant since the early 1970s.

This is actually no surprise to those who are familiar with the Curriculum Comparison study (and the Perry Preschool Study). Curriculum Comparison study showed children who attended a more teacher directed program (ie Distar) had serious social and learning issues later on. High quality programs showed a positive effect in later elementary school years/life.
Perry Study showed children with high quality experiences did benefit.

* Preschool activists at the Pew Charitable Trust and Pre-K Now — two major organizations pushing universal preschool — refuse to take this evidence seriously.

While I can't speak for the Foundations themselves, they probably are very aware that there are serious ramifications to children's learning abilities if attending low quality programs. However, there is an abundance of research that show high quality programs DO benefit children's academics and social standings later on in life. Their push is for high quality preschool programs.

*But the results from Oklahoma and Georgia — both of which implemented universal preschool a decade or more ago — paint an equally dismal picture. A 2006 analysis by Education Week found that Oklahoma and Georgia were among the 10 states that had made the least progress on NAEP.

They will be able to add Florida to that list very soon as another state who implemented Universal Prek (Voluntary) and will not show improvement. Here is the problem.....Providers must use state approved curriculum. There are only two on the entire list that are emergent curriculum. The others are extremely theme based and even direct instruction. So that is the first reason why children are still failing. Second, while the providers are told to use the approved curriculum, very little is done by many of the Coalitions to TRAIN providers. Teacher training is the key. Many providers say they are using a curriculum on paper but no one from the state of Florida can enforce this. As long as their scores remain ok (DIBELS/ECHOS), no one can require them to implement a curriculum. The question remains....not what curriculum are you using, but how well are you using it?

* And a study of Tennessee's preschool program released just this week by the nonpartisan Strategic Research Group found no statistical difference in the performance of preschool versus non-preschool kids on any subject after the first grade.

Not all preschool curriculums are created equally. If they had only looked at high quality programs they would have found a difference. When you lump low performing in to the mix it brings everyone's statistical average down..

* If anything, preschool may do lasting damage to many children. A 2005 analysis by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, found that kindergartners with 15 or more hours of preschool every week were less motivated and more aggressive in class. Likewise, Canada's C.D. Howe Institute found a higher incidence of anxiety, hyperactivity, and poor social skills among kids in Quebec after universal preschool.

Yes, again, look at the Curriculum Comparision Study. We have already known this for years! Everyone is quick to jump and say "yes! all children deserve prek!" yet (for Florida at least) they have forgotten to implement a power piece of high quality care and that is to provide high quality teacher training. http://www.highscope.org/Content.asp?ContentId=241

Finally, for those who don't think research is important, it is. Think about a doctor not using the latest medical research when treating patients? The same is true for educators. If you aren't aware of the most current research on children's learning, then you are actually hurting their development.

Why is it we act as though preschool must be all about academics? Is it not enough that we have a safe, secure, place (in a quality setting) which allows children the opportunity to develop a love of learning, inquiry, and literature? It is so much more than quantitative research tells us.

A few years after HeadStart, there was another report that indicated that the program had no impact on academic achievement. Universal preschool is not a fix that will insure academic success for all children, regardless of what happens to them afterwards.

When I read this article, I wondered if all of the teachers and assistant teachers were well educated having acceptable skills. Would the programs meet accreditation standards? Were programs rich in first hand experiences that supported dispositions such as curiosity, inquiry, persistence? Did the programs have clearly define goals, implementation that supported the goals and ongoing assessment? Were parents fully involved?

There is a knowledge base that enables early childhood professionals to do a good job and get good results. Unfortunately, funding is not always sufficient to hire classroom teachers and staff with the specific knowledge and skills necessary to achieve the goals. Then the idea itself is blamed, rather than the inadequate input of resources.

When Robert Fulghum wrote "Everything You Need to Know You Leran in Kindergarten" he was just a little bit off. One of the basic things you learn about children between birth and five years old is that they learn through play and that is the foundation for everything.

I work very hard to put together classes that teach family child care providers how to have quality programs in their homes. I work closely with centers and cneters going through the accreditation process so I know that there is quality care out there with good preschool programs.

The best sign is when you touch base with kindergarten teachers and they tell you they can tell the children who went to preschool as opposed to those who didn't by their socializationa skills and how prepared the children are to move forward with their reading and writing.

My hat is off to Obama for being the only candidate who seems to believe that education begins at birth and believes in early childhood development. George and Laura said they believed in it but their actions said otherwise.

That is what I hope to work with Parent Voices in California to get politicians to understand that education is not K-12 it is birth through 12 and beyond.

Kudos to all the preschool teachers and family child care providers out there who are passionate about children and facilitating their development, we give them educational roots and K-12 gives them wings.

Here we go again. Gosh, it's election time. Gosh, it's about money. Gosh, it's time to slant research and use "opinion" to make news. Nothing new in this story, just same old stuff. Those of us who are in "the know" understand this, the sad part is there are millions of others who will only hear this opinion and that is what makes our job such a challenge. We must always continue to educate the community, including policy makers and policitians, about the need and benefits of QUALITY early childhood programs for every child.

Measuring "academic" success only, compared with "developmental" sucess is not to anyone's advantage. The personal relationships gained in a high quality preschool is not really measurable except by understanding the self-acceptance, verbal competence and abilities to work and play with others Those are some of the life skills needed for academic success, too. Play, and the success that is offered through play, is serious business

I think the broader issue here is how these kids' (study participants) academic success is measured....by a standardized, biased test that requires only those that can memorize and attend to an ardious test. It goes against everything preschool is about which is learning through meaningful experiences. That is how our children should be measured in their success!

To label an article as an "opposing view" without any disclaimer that that article was written by someone for / of a think-tank (Reason Foundation) with an explicit purpose of furthering conservative politics (and which is for CUTBACKS in PUBLIC EDUCATION) teaches adult and children alike a rather poor lesson about nondisclosure, dishonesty and editorial irresponsibility.

Shikha and Lisa need to read some of the research done by RAND Corporation.
It can be viewed at:
http://www.rand.org
click "Research Area" and then click "Child Policy".

I have been a part of the daycare/preschool arena for many years. As I read this article all the good reasons for preschool came to the front of my mind.
In daycare most children are there due to parents working. Why not the make the most of their time there and introduce them to letters and numbers and all the wonderful things that they will learn in school?
From the preschool side of things, it been paramount in the lives of families that very shy children, children who have never been away from mama, and children who have never had much in their lives. In 20+ years I have only seen a couple of times where it was not working for that particular child. I will go on to say that 95% of the children that I have seen go through preschool first have gone on to be high readers in their elementary schools.
I believe in preschool for the social aspects of it, and for the learning aspects of it.
There are so many fun and profitable things that children can learn in 4 year old preschool, that once they get to elementary school they are limited from experiencing due to space or testing or curriculum expected to be learned in certain periods of time.

Preschool in my view is a stepping stone into school.

Shame on the Wall Street Journal for publishing such an unsubstantiated article, even if it was in the "Opinion" section. I've seen nets with fewer holes.

Thank you for printing this piece, although it shows how astonishingly out of touch The Wall St. Journal is. What are these people suggesting? We are not going back to the fifties. Most families cannot survive with one income; so are they suggesting totally unregulated, unfunded programs?
Aso, their citations of various studies are inconclusive and therefore meaningless. And not everyone believes that increases in math or reading scores on these standardized tests is the way to show improvement and therefore accountability for government spending in early childhood education.
Are the authors also implying that the only meaningful government spending is how we have done things the last 8 years?
Can the government help us "value families" by assisting in the funding of good early childhood education, with meaningful accountability, or just wage war? Where, by the way is this exacting accountability, for the billions spent on the war?

We must examine whether it is the idea of universal preschool/pre-kg programs or the lack of developmentally appropriate programming implemented in the programs. So many school and child care facilities have gotten pressure for school readiness that you are seeing even more "skill and drill" activities which we know are not how children learn. We must fight even harder for what children really need "learning through exploration and play".

Does research ever take into consideration the years in between the
preschool experience and the 4th grade testing. We send children eager to learn into a system that teaches to the test. The kindergarten experience has less time to learn through exploration. The Kindergarten experience is now testing and implementing the push down 1st grade curriculum. Whatever happened to Piaget's research?
Are children wired for the push down curriculum and testing systems? A quality preschool program that allows for children to be children, allows learning through play, and provides opportunities to create a social/emotional experience that is positive can only be an asset to the public system. But then the public system would have to change to bring the love of learning back to children in the primary grades and beyond.

I tend to think the academic tests are a poor measure of anything, but how else are we to measure success? As an ec educator/administrator, I believe in quality preschool programs - the tricky part is identifying quality and tying it in a valid way to later successes of individuals - be it academic or social. We can't afford to discount current research if it is valid as it is research that has provided the basis for progress to begin with.

The following was posted on the Wall Street Journal where the article ran. It says they chose children who were developmentally delayed. Here is what the response said:

I was a graduate student/ doctoral candidate on that Ypsilanti project, there were a number of preschool classrooms. I did not participate in the selection of the kids.

The kids were selected who were at the lower end of IQ, IQ was legitimate then even as the racial and cultural challenges to IQ were alive and well. Also, homes were visited by the teachers for aspects of presence or absence of 'cultural enrichment.'

We chose kids in some narrow range of EMR educable mentally retarded, I understand now that 'retard' is another proscribed word. These were kids, as I recall, whose scores were in the perhaps 65-85 range, lower could not be helped, higher could be helped by regular school.

I recall no evidence of parental drug addiction, any more than some general population. These were working class kids in Ypsilanti Michigan, a very small town, south east of Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan.

I was a weekend stoner, in Ann Arbor, at UMich, and also a graduate student, and knew some tiny part of the U stoner culture. We never heard of anything larger of opiate dependency, town or gown.

I encountered opiate dependency in a different childhood intervention study, neonatalogy, prenatal addiction, and interventional community medicine many years later,in NYC.

The question of neglectful parents in Ypsilanti is more interesting. Our view, as I recall, was that cognitive development was a function of stimulus enrichment, sometimes called stimulus bombardment.

We looked for indicators in the home of cognitive stimulus enrichment, or its absence, books or none, time spent with parents teaching or reading to children, or simply doing verbal enrichment, or none, prominence of television or less prominent placement (this was a few gazillion years before wi-fi lo-fi no-fi hand held entertainment devices, etc.), magazines, newspapers etc

The kids were white and black, the funding was originally federal through the then-version of what is now special ed, federal money into the Ypsilanti public school system.

One man's parental neglect is another man's opportunity to teach parenting. This was perhaps problematic, as some teaching of parenting was received as criticism.

Educational testing does claim as a verity that the absence of maintaining these interventions leads to their erosion.

I am pleased that over the years the successful work there has been recognized, even if as a rare example of success. As a statistician, I know that a rare successful outlier can be a false positive, an artifact, and we all knew this, but subjectively we thought we did good.

In the current debate, we are told that we get worser numbers as the pool of children increases. On a methodological note, as recruitment expands, the denominator changes. A smaller and selective denominator may be a more receptive population. Also as recruitment expands, the selection criteria may be waived.

Measurement is always a problem; I indeed wrote a phd on measuring children's behavior change. These days measurement, no child left behind, becomes political as well, teaching the test.

Again, it is a pleasure to this 40 year old work still in prominence. These kids are now probably grandparents, we should track them down....

One wonders though if the diligence of the debunking authors for criticizing one of the apparently few successful outcomes, means that they cannot admit of even a few successes, even if there are many failures. I thought our stuff was ancient history.


Martin Heilweil, NYC

This article is one sided. The field has made significant advances and has a better understanding of quality with in the last five - ten years. To see ECE make the impact i9n student achievement, then the elementary primary grades and preschools need to bridge the gap and begin working together. Children are losing ground due to a disconnect between the four year old programs and kindergarten.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME! I have two children that attended childcare from 6wks til kindergarden. One is in a Honors program and the other scores above average on her NRTs and FCATS.

GUESS AGAIN!

My belief is we (Society) have it backwards young children need to be in QUALITY care young and we as parents need to try our best to be home with them in the "rough educational years" 6 thru 12th grade. This however is not always attainable, that's were QUALITY afterschool programs come into play. Like I said already. ARE YOU KIDDING ME

A couple of key considerations. Mandated programs made to exist and function in areas where it is difficult to hire and retain quality staff, mandated criteria that ties outcome to funding and withdraws funds from programs needing it most, and having poorly run mandated programs that negatively impact high quality private programs in the same region all impact the validity of the broad claims of this article. Having worked in private preschool, corporately owned daycare, school district run daycare and preschool over the last 27 years I would have to say that quality private care yields fantastic outcomes. In our area Head Start meets with good success. Universal preschool isn't mandated here yet, but the lure of free programming where it does exist has impacted enrollment in even the finest privately run schools with the downturn in the economy. Whether those free school district programs yield better outcomes it is far too early to predict.
As far as what quality is. No program will be ultimately successful if it does not teach the way that children learn-through play with open ended active learning options in a highly positive environment. From what little I have seen the school district programs tend to be a mixed lot. I have seen very good quality early childhood programs and watered down elementary school curriculum used for "preschool" in these programs. The article is making sweeping assumptions when the issues are far too complex. No laws should ever be passed on oppinions and sweeping one size fits all judgements will hurt all the way around.

Who knows what the scores may have indicated without Pre-K? Has anyone considered that?

It actually does not surprise me that preschool is not yet showing the types of positive statistical results we would all like to see. Preschool education is still an evolving field and we are just starting out here. I do, however, see a time coming when we will be able to utilize the preschool years to help children become happier, healthier, and better coping individuals. Right now we are allowing the national obsession with test scores direct our growth and development, so this is what comes of it. Some day we will figure out how to make preschool a place where children can be children, they can engage in the arts, and play along in peace with other children. I am confident that day will come and we will will all reap the benefits of it.

It would be wonderful if all families had one parent that could be at home all day with the children before age 5 and provide an enriched environment that offered opportunities for peer interaction and play. This is not the reality. Most families have 2 working parents, and the children attend daycare/preschool. It is our task to provide quality experiences for the children and to allow them to develop preschool skills that will help them become successful in K. There are also many disadvantaged children or children with disabilities that would not have such a background of experience without preschool, and they would start out in K behind the others, eventually leading to behavior problems.

I don't feel the research this article is using has much meaning, as the conclusions are merely the opinion of the authors.

I see many children in preschool that learn social skills and have their curiosity about the world sparked. Quality is the key. Developmentally appropriate is the key. Good teachers and adult interaction is the key.

I am thinking that there is something missing here! Why is there no mention of quality? All preschools are not created equally. There are quality preschools, developed and operate in accordance with best practices (not merely government standards) and there are preschools that do not adhere to such high standards. Quality preschools do enhacne the learning and developmen of young children... we see in the children's actions everyday.

Preschool is not about getting children ready for the 4th grade tests. High quality preschools should be play-based, with content that is tied to meaningful experiences for children. There should be a focus on helping children develop social competence and language skills. At the base of all of this, are teachers who know that respectful and positive relationships are the key to all learning and teaching.
In my expereince, a standard curriculum usually means drilling children on discrete pieces of information that are not connected to their lives. Also, schools may hire teachers who look "highly qualified" to teach preschool, but who utilize a teaching style that is appropriate for el. ed students, not preschoolers. Many do not know how to teach content through a play-based approach.
Another factor is that the type of educational experiences children have after preschool (both in and out of school) factors into their academic success. NCLB certainly has not enhanced that expereince. Besides, since the early 90's, the push-down curriculum movement (earlier, earlier, earlier) has not proven to be helpful. We need to push early childhood approaches up-not el. ed approaches down.

Finally, Obama talks about early childhood experiences from conception on, not just preschool. The years before preschool also help to lay the foundation for all future linterests, motivation, dispositions, and approaches to learning.

I have to point out somethings. There is a broad definition for preschool and it boarders on being called "daycare when you do get into more than 10 hours per week. The purpose of preschool should be teaching children respect for others, themselves, and their environment. It should be about building on self control, self confidence, and self esteem. We should be giving children the words to communicate rather than just telling them to "use their words". Prescool should be the foundation of social and emotional development to get them ready for academic learning. The problem lies in the fact that many parents want to see results academically and also do not want to be running back and forth with their children only after a few hours. This produces preschools where the children are their for more hours than needed for the preschool ages and it does turn more into daycare. They do not have long attention span at this age and need to move and "play". I suggest people keep preschool and daycare seperate and only use a preschool that is 2.5 hours for 2 days for 3 year olds and 2.5 hours for 3 days for 4 year olds. Two year olds should never be in preschool.