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.