To certain ideologues, evidence doesn’t matter. The overwhelming scientific consensus supports high-quality early childhood education. It would be hard to find an expert in the field of child development who opposes it.
Yet the Wall Street Journal managed to find a non-expert to speak out against this evidence- based policy, apparently because Néw York City Democratic candidate Bill de Blasio supports it And wants to raise taxes on those who earn more than $500,000 annually to pay for it.
Susan Ochshorn, one of the best informed advocates for early education, politely shreds the arguments against it.
But the editors of the WSJ should also consider the benchmarking project of the conservative Economist magazine. It reviewed 45 nations in relation to their provision of high-quality, affordable early childhood education, and the United States ranked 34th.
If we want children to start school ready to learn, we must be prepared to pay for it. Don’t complain about test scores if poor kids if you aren’t willing to pay to give them a fair chance at the starting line.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I must play devil’s advocate with this.I approached Bill deBlasio saying that the wrong or damaging early childhood program would be worse that leaving the child with the mother. Judging the fools that are looking to test these kids and offer direct instruction, this is a reason why I opposed smaller classes. Children will have more peer support as the monstrous curriculum is imposed on them with a large class and staying out of the system as along as possible. Originally the Finnish did not permit direct instruction until age 7 for developmental reasons. As long as the publishers call the tune, I will continue to oppose these ideas.
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“the wrong or damaging early childhood program”
ABSOLUTELY! We really need to start talking about quality, and not quantity.
Pushing kids to “develop faster” so they are prepared to take a standardized test is cruel and inhumane; to do as a societal solution is beyond reprehensible, and will go down in history as the days of the “Great Abuse!”
Non-childhood experts who clearly don’t care about children should not be in charge of this.
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There are many kinds of direct instruction – unfortunately the most common connotation for this is providing information to be memorized. Teachers need to know more about instructional design and be allowed to design their curricula. In Finland early childhood education focuses on helping kids become confident and competent learners, and also teachers at school support the learning process.
Student-centered education helps kids be ready to learn. http://notesfromnina.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/student-centered-learning-and-teaching/
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Maybe the WSJ’s editors were too busy kicking sand in their classmate’s faces at recess in their early childhood.
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I am also on the fence over early childhood education as a necessity for every child. It feels like it’s another one of those areas where our education system has gone too far over the edge. The difference between a good quality, developmentally appropriate preschool experience and a bad one is huge. In the push for productivity, aren’t we just advocating for an early education system to provide childcare for workers at taxpayer expense, while moving our children into the school-to-factory system earlier and earlier?
In the 60s when I started school, there were still many places, especially in rural areas, where there was no kindergarten and kids started at 1st grade. Where the school system and community is set up for this, the kids do just fine. They just start the education readiness at a later age and move through slower at an individual pace. My experience with my own children is that we push our kids too hard and fast, too early, and this manifests in problems at around middle school (which now also starts earlier than ever).
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I am not sure The Economist should be thought of as a conservative magazine, at least by US standards. The magazine has endorsed the democratic candidate for president in the last several elections, called loudly and often for the closure of the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, and has advocated for a hefty carbon emission tax for well over a decade. These are not positions that conservative media in the United States will typically take.
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I was going to say the same about the Economist. It may be ‘conservative’ but not in the US sense.
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I wish I could say I was surprised that Wall Street doesn’t support pre school. Really, what’s important to the, the bottom line.
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The right wingers and libertarians say that class size doesn’t matter and throwing more money at the PUBLIC schools is not a solution, blah, blah, repeated over and over. And yet the elite private schools where the Wall Street moguls send their kids have very small class sizes and are awash in money and financial support. Finland is a solidly middle class country with a very low child poverty rate. The US is a country with huge income inequality not seen since the 1920s and with a child poverty rate of about 23%. Finland has universal health care and all kinds of social programs that we can only dream about. During the 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was 91% and the effective tax rate was about 51%. We should return to that level of taxation to finance the public services we need.
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How about the idea of online early childhood? Learning to play with virtual toys with virtual friends?
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Will they get virtual lice?
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This is just another attack on deBlasio. The NYTimes recently ran an editorial about Pre K that made so sense at all. Again, a veiled attack on de Blasio because NYers did not follow their endorsement. My school took away the Pre-K program because of the loss of funding. I clustered Pre-K and saw how much these children needed in terms of social skills and basic knowledge. Without Pre-K, these children will not be ready for Kinder.
Some of the comments I am reading makes me think these people are not teachers. Any one who calls for larger class sizes is being abusive both to the students and teachers.
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Weird
How is a child supposed to “be ready for kindergarten”.That’s what kindergarten is all about. Our minds have been cloned by the publishers
I did an overlay on five kindergarten classes where the children were learning letters and doing art work around them, very little playtime and socializing. All of the teachers read the same crappy stories about a caterpillar, all imagination for teachers have been crushed.When are we going to put a stake in the heart of Dr. Seuss. These books were written to include preordained words, not real literature.Cat and Hat were two of them.
Guess what the title of the book was?
Children deserve authentic and imaginative stories.They will not appear in
Bill DeBalsio’s program unless someone gets to him
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I’m wondering if levels of childhood poverty and a legacy of slavery and discrimination were considered when the WSJ writer made the leap that early childhood education was not quite a good investment. Just wondering.
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So after $8 billion spent on Head Start we have…
“However, the advantages children gained during their Head Start and age 4 years
yielded only a few statistically significant differences in outcomes at the end of 1st
grade for the sample as a whole. Impacts at the end of kindergarten were scattered
and are mentioned below only when they appear to be related to the 1st grade impacts”
“There were also a few subgroups of children that showed patterns of unfavorable
impacts. The group that showed the most widespread unfavorable impacts was 3-
year-olds whose parents reported moderate depressive symptoms. These children
experienced negative impacts across the cognitive, social-emotional, and health
domains.”
Click to access hs_impact_study_final.pdf
End of story.
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Cynthia Weiss, Headstart is not considered high-quality by European standards. Instead f hiring specialists with advanced tailing, we use Headstart as a job training program and hire parents of the children to work in them , despite their lack of education. Then we conclude we tried early childhood education and it didn’t work. No, we tried doing it on the cheap and it didn’t work.
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“No, we tried doing it on the cheap and it didn’t work.”
Truer words were never spoken, and it applies to more than preschool.
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I think how public schools handle Pre K are different than Head Start. First, public schools have early childhood specialists with a Masters teaching the class. 2nd, they are older than 3. (Many states have increased the age for entering kinder which is something I agree with because of the new curriculum.) Also my school went from 2 half day pre-K sessions to a full day, Kinder was changed to full day many years ago. There are so many variables in measuring the effects of Pre-K. That is why I do not appreciate these studies. Having children in a public school setting helps the teacher and student because appropriate services can be provided at an early age. We know our students’ potential and challenges and we can work with parents to better prepare their children for the years ahead.
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Pre-K education is delivered in many forms, not just Head Start. Pre-K education is delivered by public schools and private sites as well as Head Start. Along with the different forms of pre-K are differences in their programs as well – rigor, population, expertise of the staff, and full day vs half day. DiBlasio isn’t talking about Head Start only. I believe he is talking about full day pre-k programs offered by the school district.
This Peer Reviewed research study, “Preschool Education and Its Lasting Effects: Research and Policy Implications” shows the benefits of a school based Pre_K program. HighScope is the program used in my school district and it is a quality program delivered by quality teachers.
Click to access PreschoolLastingEffects.pdf
Just one excerpt from the study:
“The Perry Study followed 123 children from preschool well into adulthood. Researchers ability to study nearly the entire original group over time allows confidence in long term findings. The initial cognitive advantage of the pre-school program was seen to decline over time, partly because the public school experience appeared to help the control group catch up once they entered Kindergarten. While there was no persistent effect on IQ, the study found a persistent effect on achievement tests through middle school, a finding consistent with results from the meta-analysis of all relevant research literature. In addition, the preschool group had better classroom and personal behavior as reported by teachers, less involvement in delinquency and crime, fewer special education placements, and a higher high school graduation rate. Through age 40, the program was associated with increased employment and earnings, decreased welfare dependency, and reduced arrests.”
In my opinion, those are big benefits attributable to pre-k.
So I don’t think the Head Start research is the end of the story!
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Young children are beginning to assert control over their own lives at around 2 and 3. That is why “the terrible 2’s”. In his execellent book “Scattered” by Gabor Mate. He says that this is normal and should be recognized, if not he blames the mother and her “terrible 30s”. Now lay on top of that a formal school setting, real emotional damage.
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Sorry, I mean $180 billion, not 8 billion.
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According to wikipedia, in Finland early childhood education is not mandatoryis used by almost everyone:
“Education in Finland,” Wikipedia:
Finland has had access to free universal daycare for children age eight months to five years in place since 1990, and a year of “preschool/kindergarten” at age six, since 1996.
“Daycare” includes both full-day childcare centers and municipal playgrounds with adult supervision where parents can accompany the child. The municipality will also pay mothers to stay home and provide “home daycare” for the first three years, if she desires, with occasional visits from a careworker to see that the environment is appropriate.[7]
The ratio of adults to children in local municipal childcare centers (either private but subsidized by local municipalities or paid for by municipalities with the help of grants from the central government) is, for children three years old and under: three adults (one teacher and two nurses) for every 12 pupils (or one-to-four); and, for children aged three to six: three adults (one teacher and two nurses) for every 20 children (or circa one-to-seven). Payment, where applicable, is scaled to family income and ranges from free to about 200 euros a month maximum.[8] According to Pepa Ódena in these centers, “You are not taught, you learn. The children learn through playing. This philosophy is put into practice in all the schools we visited, in what the teachers say, and in all that one sees.”[9]
“We see it as the right of the child to have daycare and pre-school,” explained Eeva Penttilä, of Helsinki’s Education Department. “It’s not a place where you dump your child when you’re working. It’s a place for your child to play and learn and make friends. Good parents put their children in daycare. It’s not related to socio-economic class”.[10]
The focus for kindergarten students is to “learn how to learn”, Ms. Penttilä said. Instead of formal instruction in reading and math there are lessons on nature, animals, and the “circle of life” and a focus on materials-based learning.[10]
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Elsewhere I have seen it written that the main objects of Finnish early education are learning to consider the feelings of others and learning to take care of oneself.
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I don’t see how learning these things would preclude “a deeper understanding of math” (in the words of the poster here who calls him or herself, “Teaching economist.”
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Harold,
What things did I say would preclude a deeper understanding of math? I don’t remember the post. Perhaps you could point it out using the time stamp.
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Teaching economist: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/10/18/cody-common-core-is-failing-because-developers-ignored-democratic-process/comment-page-2/#comment-336127
I must confess that I had no idea what you meant by your comment and would still be glad to have an explanation.
I also agree with Finland’s early childhood practices. Children this age learn by imitation and should not be put on the spot.
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Harold,
Let me quote from just a teacher saying’s post:
“Let’s suppose for a minute that the math standards are developmentally inappropriate for younger children. And, let’s suppose curriculum based on the CCS continues to be implemented, unabated for 5 years. As a middle school math teacher, one of the greatest concerns I have is that the gap between the “haves” and “have nots”, those students who reach middle school with a deeper understanding of mathematics versus those who do not, will be wider and deeper than ever before. And, there may be many, many more of the “have nots.””
Just a teacher saying seems to be concerned that the CCS will make the gap “wider and deeper than ever before”. That is what I am addressing in my post.
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Teaching economist said, supposing that the CC is developmentally inappropriate: “is the solution to design a curriculum that prevents the ‘haves’ from having a deeper understanding of mathematics?”
So, teaching economist maintains that in his /or her opinion the CC is indeed truly appropriate for children who already are mathematically precocious (a complete speculation on his or her part), and that to deny it to them is to prevent them from having a deeper understanding of math than they otherwise would? How he or she knows this is not explained. Isn’t it possible, nay probable, that even precocious children could be harmed by inappropriate and punitive teaching and testing?
I would repeat, who, where, and how many are these precocious kindergarteners and first graders for whom the CC is appropriate (in the unsupported opinion of Teaching Economist? By the same token, might not they be socially harmed by not learning how to have consideration of others? Or, say, how to tie their shoes or eat with their mouths shut? (Larry Summers comes to mind).
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Sure I think that a curriculum that is inappropriate for some students might be appropriate for others.
Every three years or so there is a high school student at my local high school taking graduate math classes at my local research 1 university. There was no appropriate class offered in the K-12 system and because they had the opportunity to take the appropriate class the gap was made larger.
Do you agree with JATS that the likely impact of the CCS will be a wider and deeper gap between the “haves” and the “have nots”? If so, why will the gap get larger?
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Every three years or so, there is one high school student who needs to take math at a local university … boo hoo.
Don’t you know how to read???? I and the other people here are talking about kindergarten. Not high school. Not middle school.. Not college. Not graduate school. Kindergarten. How can you generalize from high school to kindergarten?
You are talking out of your hat and also completely missing the point.
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You are asking the general question about the possibility that a curriculum might be completely inappropriate for some students, but appropriate for others. I think the answer to that is yes.
What do you think about the comment I was actually talking about? Let me add some scaffolding to the discussion here.
1) do you agree with a teacher just saying that the common core is likely to widen and deepen the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots”.
2) If the answer to one is yes, do you think the gap will be increased because
a) the “haves” will gain while the “have nots” will stay the same or lose
b) the “haves” will lose less than the “have nots” lose
c) the “haves” will not gain while the “have nots” will lose.
I look forward to your reply.
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There is plenty of empirical evidence that appropriate, high quality preschool education narrows the gap between the haves and have nots. Furthermore, it narrows it more for the disadvantaged than the advantaged. Countries such as France and Finland base their preschool education policies on these studies.
Later on it is too late. The gap will continue to widen regardless of the curriculum. So your talk about high school students is just a lot of smoke and misdirection. Nor do I believe, at this point, that you are in good faith.
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Harold,
Do you agree with poster just a teacher saying that the common core standards are likely to widen and deepen the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots”?
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There is no evidence that is does or doesn’t…..but the lessons set forth in the early grades places an assumption that the child comes to school with basic knowledge and skills. And that’s going to be a major problem because monthly and quarterly tests are attached to this new curriculum. It’s too much pressure on a young brain and that in itself will make it harder for those children who need time to process the material. Education should not be a test, it should be a journey. Students have different paths and time frames for learning. CC or any new curriculum needs to also be flexible and standardized testing so many times during a school year needs to stop. Let the teacher put forth assessments that are for the student, parent and teacher instead of a computerized test that goes into the system and labels a student and teacher before the year is up.
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Perhaps you are correct that poster just a teacher saying need not be concerned with the CCS increasing the size of the gap between the “haves “and the “have nots”.
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Diane, if it is early childhood education based on the Common Core I agree completely! If it is early childhood education based on good practices, I don’t have a problem. It is important for ESOL kids to have a program if possible to teach their native language first. I worry about that, but reading, etc. seems to be best if delayed until age 7, not pushed to younger and younger ages. Parents need a break and kids need other kids their own age to meet and play with, a lot of parents and kids aren’t getting that. In poor families, kids might not even have good toys or see another child their age. Time to get people together.
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Yes Finnish education begins early, but I was referring to formal instruction.
The use of the “smart board” in classrooms has turned kindergarten classes into theater,
more than hands on socialization. I saw children dancing to the smart board with a touch screen about the days of the week, which is a daily routine. The child who performed all of the “scripted” activities spoke to me later in the day. When I asked her what day it was, she looked at me with a startled confusion. Teaching time at this age? The smart board programers are directing the teachers. I see the amout of time and energy they put into these smart boards and away from observing their class.
This is what Pre K will bring us.
Only this year, Bloomberg fiired all of the child care workers and privatized the system, which will bring in more programs causing emotional damage. Perhaps this is where the world of hedgefund managers are leading us. DeBlasio needs to realize this. There is no one there for these children.
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You made your case for voting de Blasio. He is the parent of a public school student and is not looking to privatize.
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While I don’t agree with this, I , too, need to make a point about this. I ENJOYED my babies and toddlers and did not send them to an academic preschool until 4 and only for 3 days a week/half day. It was to socialize, separate, play, paint, listen to stories and make friends. At no point did I want them being skilled and drilled and THAT’s what will happen as we now believe learning your ABcs and 123s is not for kindergarten. It just keeps getting pushed down because we have decided that if you aren’t reading by a certain level by third grade you are a loser. I can assure you, Leo the Late Bloomer was written for a reason. And my junior daughter is taking AP physics and pre calc and a host of other APs and excelling without structures preschool. My LD son reads ahead of his 8th grade level even though he didn’t at third grade. I am leery of now requiring babies to come to school to be skilled and drilled even younger than they are now and we know how well that is working out. When my Broadie super mentioned CC$$ is 0-20, I’m sorry, but that gave me reason to pause and be very afraid for children and childhood.
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That’s not what I said. Another reason to no longer respond to you because you just don’t get it!
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Children are being placed in classrooms like mushrooms with no natural light. Shades are drawn to accomodate the use of “Smart Boards”. Cooperative learning and shared reading are gone to accomodate children lined up facing the front of the classroom and the Smart Board script. Only one activity at a time can be performed on a Smart Board, rather than numerous activities that could be available in a classroom, leading to boredom and dumbing down. This would be the nightmare of early childhood.
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This is a nightmare on all grade levels. That’s why we need a new mayor who will put someone with an education background at the head. Or, you can vote for Lhota.-
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Schoolgal
I know Bill personally. he called for an investigation when I was terminated awaiting for an air quality test of my classroom in Queens. Are you still that cute as your picture? j.mugivan@yahoo.com
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I am still adorable Joseph 🙂 And while I completely agree that we are forcing too much on the early childhood grades, without Pre-K, our students will not be ready for kinder. While Bill won’t be able to get us out of Common Core, he may be able to have input into the Pre-K curriculum since I do not believe CC covers that, but I may be wrong. And smaller class sizes do make a big difference. Anyone who advocates against it has no idea what the early childhood and elementary teacher goes through each and every day.
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Schoolgal I am a retired teacher and taught in most of the grades as well as doing an overlay on five K grades. Teachers work hard. Recent visits to some schools show less socialization of children. Teachers are even more stressed, which hurts the kids. Smaller classes are ideal with a rich curriculum. There is much pressure toward direct instruction of literacy, reducing the creative time where teachers can read to children, teach them songs and other informal and entertaining thinngs for children to enjoy the day. The introduction of Smart Boards into an early childhood class is overwhelming and questionable. From my experience I believe that the children with behavioral problems are the “canary in the coal mind”, the most intelligent, chirping, “What are you doing to us?”
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