National Child Education

Apr 20th by webmaster

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One of the most drastic expansions of public education in recent American history unfolded quietly in this decade, as dozens of states added free pre-kindergarten classes to their traditional kindergarten to high school offerings.

 

But the recession appears to have stalled the expansion of state-financed pre-kindergarten programs, according to Steven Barnett, a professor at Rutgers University who is a co-author of a new report documenting trends in early childhood education.

“We had been making remarkable progress, things were going great guns, but as the recession hit state governments, things started to change,” Dr. Barnett said. “It’s gotten so that some people would even consider flat funding to be good.”

From 2002 to 2008, spending on pre-kindergarten by states nearly doubled, to $4.6 billion from $2.4 billion, enabling states to increase enrollment to 1.1 million preschoolers from about 700,000.

That growth came partly because governors and legislatures, convinced of the value of early childhood education, stepped in to fill a gap left by federal inaction. President George W. Bush, who focused mainly on trying to improve achievement among older children, allowed budgets for the largest federally financed preschool programs to stagnate.

But given the economic decline, nine states — Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina and South Carolina — have already announced cuts to state-run pre-kindergarten programs, Dr. Barnett said.

And legislatures are debating cutbacks in some others, including Tennessee and Washington State, he said.

“All of this may produce dire consequences for state pre-K programs,” says the new report, the State of Preschool 2008, by the National Institute for Early Education Researchat the Rutgers Graduate School of Education. “In most states, expenditures on pre-K are entirely discretionary and therefore easier to cut than expenditures for some other program.”

Meanwhile, however, at President Obama’s request, Congress has significantly raised federal financing for preschool education. Mr. Obama promised during the campaign to make large new investments in early childhood education, and in the economic stimulus package, Congress appropriated more than $4 billion for Head Start and Early Head Start programs and for grants to states to support child care for low-income families.

“The big picture here is that for the last eight years, the only game around for early childhood was in the states, because under Bush there was nothing going on at the federal level,” said Cornelia Grumman, executive director of the First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group based in Chicago. “All of a sudden that’s changed. Now the only game is federal, because if you’re a state-funded program relying on your state legislature, well, it’s not a rosy picture.”

The two largest federal preschool programs are Head Start, which serves low-income 3- and 4-year-olds and was begun by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, and Early Head Start, which serves infants and pregnant mothers and was inaugurated under President Bill Clinton in 1994. The combined budget for both programs was $6.5 billion in 2002. In 2008, Mr. Bush’s last full year in office, their combined budget was $6.9 billion.

The National Head Start Association, a nonprofit advocacy group, says that when inflation is taken into account, the financing for the two programs declined 13 percent from 2002 to 2008.

Under the Obama administration, financing for Head Start and Early Head Start has been separated and has greatly increased. The stimulus law includes $1 billion for Head Start, which last year served about 830,000 children, and the 2009 budget includes an additional $235 million.

The stimulus law increases financing for Early Head Start, which serves 62,000 families, by $1.1 billion. That will allow the program to enroll an additional 55,000 families.

Mr. Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan say their enthusiasm for early childhood education is based on research showing large paybacks for every dollar spent on the careful nurturing of poor children.

Mr. Duncan repeated those arguments at a forum on early learning in Washington last week. “For every dollar we spend on these programs, we get nearly $10 back in reduced welfare rolls, fewer health care costs and less crime,” Mr. Duncan said.

 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/education/08school.html?_r=1&ref=us

Do not miss Steven Barnett speaking at the National Child Education Conference & Exhibition!

Apr 08th by webmaster

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The recession could spell trouble for the nation’s youngest schoolchildren, despite positive trends in spending and enrollment for state pre-K programs, according to a report released Wednesday.

At least nine states are likely to make cuts to pre-kindergarten programs including some of the biggest — California, Florida and New York, said Steve Barnett, one of the authors of the annual report on state-funded preschool.

Barnett, director at the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, said enrollment cuts, fewer dollars per pupil, and delaying expansion plans are some of the steps that states are considering. A spokesman for New York Governor David Paterson says the state’s 2010 budget maintains spending on pre-K programs at current levels, but doesn’t have additional money to expand them.

The institute is urging the federal government to match state spending with up to $2,500 for every additional child enrolled in state pre-K programs as a way to grow preschool so that all of the nation’s 4-year-olds can have access by 2020.

Barnett said a good preschool program helps children acquire rich vocabularies and learn about numbers and shapes.

“They also learn how to take responsibility for their actions and to get along with other children,” he said. “These things are the foundation for success in school and in life.”

Currently, more than 80 percent of all 4-year-olds attend some kind of preschool program, according to the report. About half of those go to a public program, either state pre-K, Head Start or special education. The other half attend private programs.

Thirty-three of the 38 states with state pre-K programs increased enrollment for the 2007-2008 school year, the report said.

Oklahoma has nearly 90 percent of its 4-year-olds in a public education program, the best enrollment ranking in the study.

At least seven other states — Florida, Georgia, Vermont, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and New York — have more than half of 4-year-olds attending some type of a public preschool program.

Spending on state pre-K programs increased from $4.2 billion to $5.2 billion last year, said Barnett.

The researchers also ranked the quality of the programs, looking at 10 benchmarks such as class size, teacher-to-child ratios and whether the teacher has a bachelor’s degree.

North Carolina and Alabama were the only two states that met all 10 benchmarks. Louisiana, Maryland, Arkansas, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Washington met nine of the 10 standards, said the report.

• National Institute for Early Education Research: http://nieer.org

Do not miss Steven Barnett speaking at the National Child Education Conference & Exhibition!

Apr 08th by webmaster

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