The Economist magazine has published a major international survey of early childhood education.
The survey establishes the importance of early childhood education, which is supported by extensive research.
It says:
“This Index assumes that all
children, regardless of their background,
legal status and ability to pay, have a right to
affordable, quality preschool provision.”
Then, it ranks 45 nations by their provision of early childhood education.
The United States is #24, tied with the United Arab Emirates.
Can we expect to see editorials across the U.S. about this shockingly poor performance?
Can we expect to see a Hollywood film–documentary or fictionalized–about this shameful statistic?
Will we soon hear reformers insisting that all three- and four-year-olds should be able to participate in a high-quality program that has well-prepared and credentialed teachers and small class sizes?
Now that’s a reform movement we could all support.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And don’t forget the assessment component that will be used to calculate the value added by those highly qualified teachers!
What is the basis for this #24 ranking?
If you read the linked survey, you can see how they did the calculation. The main ingredient is access to pre-K schooling with qualified teachers.
The debate is already on about what constitutes quality early childhood education and, private schools not withstanding, in NYC and thanks to NYS for including common core in pre-k, it is not a good thing.
In our continuing effort to “win the gold medal” in education, we have lost sight of what it means to be a child in the United States.
Despite volumes of research on the subject of early childhood learning, many have pushed down the curriculum into pre-k so far as to make it not a community of learners but small people struggling to memorize useless information will do nothing to enhance right brain thinking and develop children into adults who are able to be actual thinkers rather than drones.
Children develop along specific biological pathways. Some develop some parts of their development sooner than others. Children are not on a trajectory of development. Some will start speaking sooner but take a little longer to get all those gross and fine motor skills. Some will be “ready” for the challenge of a super structured classroom that we see today and others will need a more experiential environment.
I have posted before that I teach pre-k in a NYC public school and have seen the decline in developmentally appropriate practices over years.
This last year the cots were removed from my room because resting took away from instruction.
This was tried several years ago when NYS mandated no naps, fewer trips to the bathroom and less hand washing, citing that in pre-k we were losing 60% of instructional time with all those frills. Pre-K teachers ignored the mandates and eventually the state rescinded. Sadly, they are back again.
There was a time when every child in my class was celebrated for his/her personal accomplishments. Today each child is judged not by what they can do, but rather by what they can’t do. This makes no sense.
Many children in pre-k are seen as “at risk” simply because they are not meeting some arbitrary benchmark on a statistical timeline. The “suits” need to read “Leo the Late Bloomer”
I don’t want want to sound paranoid and think everything is a conspiracy, but some days it’s difficult not to think that way.
I teach in a NYC community where there is high poverty and all the collateral damage that goes with it. I think quite often my students are set up to fail so those who have big money and big titles and no educational background point and say, “see, these children are not capable of learning more than just rote learning” The “suits” can create low level employment for thousands, some of whom had more capabilities but were shuttled into a narrow educational tunnel from which escape is very difficult.
Once again, I invite those who would take away from my students all the things that their children enjoy in their schools, both public and private, to create schools that look like the schools their children attend rather than create what I sometimes call “practice prisons”.
Anne,
It’s not conspiracy, but ruling class consensus, driven by self interest and ideology.
Indeed it is. Their children will have only the best. But for the rest? Drill and kill.
We (in Louisiana) are already hearing hints that our state superintendent, John White, wants to focus on early childhood education next—-he ‘focused’ on k-12 this year and the result is a near complete privatization of public education. My best guess on why the elites of the education reform circle want to focus on early childhood ed is: IT IS AN ARBITRAGE OPPORTUNITY WITH FEDERAL FUNDS$$ to gain.
Super White is draining our state funds and now the federal coffers are in sight.
Isn’t there a push to use standardized tests on little children too? That’s how we do education here in the U.S. The reform industry will provide the holes, school workers filling those holes will replace “educators” with all their fancy ideas. Public education gets “Bain”-ed…who will get to say “We built that”? Who would want to admit it?
Dan, absolutely is there a push to use standardized tests on young children which research shows is basically worthless. Nothing replaces authentic assessment by educators through observations during the course of the school year. Statistical norms are just that-data points on a graph. They don’t say anything about a child’s curiosity or sheer joy and recognizing a word on a page for the first time and exploring art media and creating the most wonderful works of art. They don’t say anything about a child’s excitement when she “gets” addition or the idea that sounds are like waves in the ocean.
To those with the purse, these are meaningless. How wrong they are. These bean counters are leaving a legacy of ashes of a once amazing public and free educational system. How sad for them. I, and other teachers, will leave a legacy of people like Jonas Salk and Neil Armstrong and all the others who had teachers who understood education.
Diane this fact has already been presented to you. The fact it does not make you feel the need to do something more than write a blog going after anyone who tries to help is sad.
Saw this from Australia today and wanted to bring it to your attention – this seemed like a good place to post it. I appreciate the emphasis on teacher’s role “in school” and how that tends to be ignored in the influence sound bites. If it weren’t for using the US as a measuring stick I would have thought it was from the US. http://theconversation.edu.au/a-political-education-hijacking-the-quality-teaching-movement-9017
“. . . that all three- and four-year-olds should be able to participate in a high-quality program that has well-prepared and credentialed teachers and small class sizes?
No, no and a hundred more nos. Why can’t we let kids be kids. Let me use that ever present Finnish example. Children don’t start formal schooling until the age of seven. Maybe we could learn something from them, eh?