Archives for category: Early Childhood Education
« Older Entries

Michigan Passes Historic Increases for Education

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2023 //
2

Michigan is in track to make record investments in the quality of life for children and schools.

My friend Mitchell Robinson, a member of the State board of education, shared the following good news:

The State of Michigan passed a third consecutive historic education budget last night—and did so with bipartisan support, meaning the changes included in this budget can go into effect immediately.

It’s amazing to see what a state education budget can look like when you have pro-education legislators in charge–and teachers chairing the House and Senate Education Committees and the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on PreK-12.

The budget includes:

•universal school meals

•foundation allowance increase of 5% — the largest in state history

•fully funded special education programs

•expanded Pre-K programs

•student teacher stipends for K-12

The budget also appropriates $11 million to a K-5 Music Education Pilot Program that provides funding to school districts that currently do not have elementary music instruction to hire certified music teachers.

Budgets are about more than dollars—they are moral documents; and in Michigan we are showing that we value our children, our families, and our future by directing funding to programs and initiatives that strengthen our schools and communities.

edbudget2023.jpeg
Categories Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Early Childhood Education, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Michigan, Supporting public schools

Nicholas Kristof Does Not Know How to Fix Education

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2023 //
136

Nicholas Kristof is a columnist who is terrific on many issues but consistently wrong when he writes about education. As far back as 2009, I criticized Kristoff for a column in which he called American education “our greatest national shame,” citing Eric Hanushek’s since-discredited work on teachers (the best get students to produce high test scores, bad teachers don’t). Peter Greene took Kristoff to task in 2015 for being an educational tourist, making quick visits and issuing pronouncements that are wrong. I also chastised him in 2017 for endorsing for-profit schools in Africa.

Now, he has outdone all of his previous gaffes. He has discovered the amazing, miraculous, astonishing transformation of Mississippi.

Based on the impressive rise of 4th grade reading scores on NAEP, Kristof proclaims that Mississippi has lessons for the nation.

With an all-out effort over the past decade to get all children to read by the end of third grade and by extensive reliance on research and metrics, Mississippi has shown that it is possible to raise standards even in a state ranked dead last in the country in child poverty and hunger and second highest in teen births.

In the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a series of nationwide tests better known as NAEP, Mississippi has moved from near the bottom to the middle for most of the exams — and near the top when adjusted for demographics. Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math.

Its success wasn’t because of smaller classes. That would cost money.

It wasn’t because of increased funding.

It wasn’t because Mississippi reduced child poverty.

It wasn’t because of desegregation.

It was because Mississippi embraced the “science of reading,” strict discipline, relentlessly focusing on test scores, and using behavioral methods that sound akin to a “no excuses” charter school.

In 2000, Mississippi received a gift of $100 million from a Mississippi-born tech entrepreneur to launch a statewide reading initiative. In 2013, the legislature invested in full-day pre-K, where children got a start on letters, numbers, and sounds.

The 2013 legislation also enacted third-grade retention. Any child who didn’t pass the third-grade reading test was retained. Most researchers think retention is a terrible, humiliating policy. But Kristof assures readers that failing students get a second chance to pass. 9% of students in third grade flunked. He considers this policy to be a great success, inspiring third graders to try harder, citing a study funded by Jeb Bush’s foundation (Florida also practices third grade retention, which lifts its fourth grade reading scores on NAEP).

Kristof writes:

“Mississippi is a huge success story and very exciting,” David Deming, a Harvard economist and education expert, told me. What’s so significant, he said, is that while Mississippi hasn’t overcome poverty or racism, it still manages to get kids to read and excel.

“You cannot use poverty as an excuse. That’s the most important lesson,” Deming added. “It’s so important, I want to shout it from the mountaintop.” What Mississippi teaches, he said, is that “we shouldn’t be giving up on children.”

The lessons: it’s okay to forget about poverty; forget about segregation; forget about funding. Rely on “the science of reading” and third-grade retention. It’s cheap to follow Mississippi’s lead, which Kristof considers an advantage.

But!

Kristof minimizes Mississippi’s eighth-grade scores on NAEP. He writes: “One challenge is that while Mississippi has made enormous gains in early grades, the improvement has been more modest in eighth-grade NAEP scores.”

That’s an understatement.

Eighth grade reading scores in Mississippi have gone up over the past two decades, but scores went up everywhere. In the latest national assessment (NAEP), 37 states had scores higher than those of Mississippi on the NAEP eighth grade reading test. Only one state (New Mexico) was lower. The other 13 were tied. In Mississippi, 25% of the state’s students in 2019 (pre-pandemic) were at or above proficient, compared to 20% in 2003. Nationally, in 2019, 29% of students were at or above proficient*.

In 2019, 42 states and jurisdictions outperformed Mississippi in percentage of students at or above proficient in eighth grade math, eight were tied, and only two scored below Mississippi. 24% were at or above proficient in 2019, a big increase over 2009 when it was 15%. But Mississippi still lags the national average, because scores were rising in other states.

Has Mississippi made progress in the past decade? Yes. Is it a model for the nation? No. When impressive fourth grade scores are followed by not-so-impressive scores in eighth grade, it suggests that the fourth grade scores were anti Oakley boosted by holding back the 9% who were the least successful readers. A neat trick but not an upfront way to measure progress.

It seems fairly obvious that the big gains in NAEP in fourth grade were fueled by the policy of holding back third graders. Jeb Bush boasted of the “Florida Miracle,” which was based on the same strategy: juice up fourth grade scores by holding back the lowest performing third graders.

In 2019, fourth graders in Florida scored 7th in reading and 5th in math on NAEP, by scale scores. However, Florida’s eighth grade scores, like those of Mississippi, are middling, compared to other states. Florida eighth graders ranked #35 in eighth grade math. In eighth grade reading, 21 states and jurisdictions ranked higher than Florida, 21 are not significantly different, and 10 were below Florida.

Florida’s eighth grade reading scores have been flat since 2009; so have its its eighth grade math scores. Florida is a state that has gamed the system. Mississippi is following its lead.

Mississippi has made progress, to be sure. But it is not a national model. Not yet.

What’s worrisome about this article is that Kristof asserts that poverty doesn’t matter (it does); funding doesn’t matter (it does); class size doesn’t matter (it does). In his account, states that want to improve test scores can do it without raising teachers’ salaries, without upgrading buildings, without spending a nickel to improve the conditions of the schools or the well-being of children. Children who are hungry, lack medical care, and are homeless or ill-housed are not likely to learn as well as those who have advantages.

Does this explain why so many rightwingers love “the science of reading”? Publishers are rolling out new programs. Education can be reformed in the cheap. Can’t expect taxpayers to foot the bill, can you?

Kristof’s fundamental error is his determination to find miracles, silver bullets, solutions that fix everything. He did it again.

The U.S. Department of Education appends this disclaimer to every NAEP publication.

*NAEP achievement levels are performance standards that describe what students should know and be able to do. Results are reported as percentages of students performing at or above three achievement levels (NAEP Basic, NAEP Proficient, andNAEP Advanced). Students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level on NAEP assessments demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter. It should be noted that the NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards (e.g., state or district assessments). NAEP achievement levels are to be used on a trial basis and should be interpreted and used with caution. Find out more about the NAEP reading achievement levels.

Categories Accountability, Class size, Early Childhood Education, Education Reform, Fake, Florida, Literacy, Mississippi, NAEP

David R. Taylor: “Anti-Abortion” Is Not “Pro-Life”

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2022 //
2

Retired Texas educator David R. Taylor reminds his readers that to be anti-abortion is not the same thing as being pro-life.

Those who are actually pro-life treasure each child after they are born by making sure they have good nutrition, good healthcare, good public schools, and a secure home.

In Texas, the anti-abortion forces lose interest in children as soon as they are born.

The Governor, Greg Abbott, the Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the two senators demonstrated after the Uvalde massacre of School children that they were sorry as could be, offered lots of thoughts and prayers to bereaved families, but would do nothing whatever to restrict the sale or possession of military-grade weapons to civilians. The 18-year-old killer in Uvalde bought two AR15s on his 18th birthday. The AR15 is not for hunting. It’s for killing. Anyone who enables killers to have easy access to military-style weapons is not pro-life. They are pro-death.

Categories Childhood, Early Childhood Education, Equity, Health, Justice, Love

Republicans Stoop to Role of Schoolyard Bully

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2021 //
68

This article by Ed Montini in the Arizona Republic explains the childish behavior of Republican leaders, who engage in taunts instead of reasoned discourse about their agenda. They don’t want to expand Medicare. They don’t want universal pre-K. They don’t support efforts to combat climate change. They oppose paid family leave for families in need after surgery or childhood. They are against a federal guarantee of two years tuition-free community college. They oppose higher taxes on billionaires. They don’t care about voting rights. They don’t want to expand opportunity. They don’t want to reduce inequality. They don’t invest in the future.

What are they for? Tax breaks for the rich.

Since they have no agenda, their goal is to make sure Biden can’t succeed. After blocking everything he proposes (with the help of Senator Manchin of West Virginia and Senator Krysten Sinema), they have nothing to offer other than the schoolyard chant.

Ed Mancini was walking his dog early one morning, and he saw two other dog owners engage in conversation, a man and a woman. As they part ways, the man says to the woman, “Let’s go, Brandon!” then turning away.

The woman is puzzled and asks Montini if he knows what that phrase means.

So, first thing in the morning I am called upon to explain this recent cultural phenomenon to one of the few American grown-ups who has managed to remain a fully functioning adult, while most of the rest of us have been transformed by social media into crude, smart-alecky 8-year-olds.

There’s that Southwest Airlines pilot

This particular sign was a the Boston College-Syracuse football game Oct. 30. A fan’s juvenile jab at President Joe Biden.Joshua Bessex

For instance, the woman had not heard about the Southwest Airlines pilot who recently signed off on a flight, telling passengers, “Let’s go, Brandon.”

Or about how the whole thing began when a race car driver named Brandon Brown won a NASCAR race and, while being interviewed on TV, the crowd started chanting, “F–k Joe Biden.” The flummoxed interviewer suggested they might be saying, “Let’s go, Brandon.”

After that, the phrase became a way for grown-up 8-year-olds to say the f-word about Biden without actually using it.

Really.

Elected Republican politicians in Washington, D.C., started using the phrase.

Donald Trump began selling “Let’s go Brandon” T-shirts through his Save America PAC for $45, and grown-up 8-year-olds in America actually purchased them.

$45.

There are adults who channel their 8-year-old selves by bringing signs saying, “Let’s go, Brandon” to public events, as well as some who scribble the message in paint on the rear window of their automobiles….

How to answer someone who says such a thing

Of course, we all learned as children that infantile behavior tends to draw some type of backlash….

After I explain the whole “Let’s go, Brandon” thing to the woman who’d been walking her dog she says, “That seems incredibly childish. How are you supposed to answer someone who says such a thing?”

I tell her that, as a grown-up, she would be best served simply ignoring it.

As for the rest of us, suffering as we do from social-media-induced age regression, I’d respond, “I’m rubber and you’re glue …”

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

Problem viewing email? View in browser

Categories Accountability, Biden, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Early Childhood Education, Education Reform, Environment, Republicans

Harold Meyerson on Biden’s Half Full, Half Empty Plan

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2021 //
25

After months of negotiations among Democrats over the fate of President Biden’s historic $3.5 trillion proposal, a compromise seems to have been reached (although nothing is certain). At the insistence of Democratic Senators Manchin and Sinema, the size of the ambitious plan has been cut in half. Many of its parts were cut away, including two years of free community college and 12 weeks of paid family leave for medical reasons (the U.S. is the only major nation that doesn’t provide it). Three Democratic members of the House killed the provision to lower prescription drugs. And of course the Republicans opposed everything.

This is how Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect described it.

World’s Biggest Half-Full, Half-Empty Glass

Biden’s bill is historically great and bitterly disappointing.


Well—had we not anticipated, had it never seemed, that the Democrats, having won control of Congress and the White House, would proceed to enact paid family leave, expansions of Medicare, a permanent Child Tax Credit, disincentives to fossil fuel use, the ability to negotiate down drug prices, and such—had we not counted on that, then today would be a day of unmitigated celebration. Instead, celebration of the groundbreaking social provisions that actually are in the bill President Biden outlined today—universal pre-K, child care subsidies, incentives for clean energy, commonsense tax reforms that will compel corporations to pay some taxes, and the like—has to be mitigated by the fate of the even more commonsense provisions that now lie on the cutting-room floor.

For me, the most absurd relegation to that floor has been killing the proposal to give Medicare the ability to bring down drug prices. Seldom is a serious change to social and economic policy backed by more than three-fourths of the public, but this one surely was. Reportedly, President Biden has persuaded Kyrsten Sinema to accept a deal so preposterously weak—one that enables Medicare to negotiate down the price of drugs whose patents have expired (that is, after the big drug companies have wrung out the lion’s share of profits on those drugs, and which simply incentivizes those companies to extend their patents)—that few Democrats on the Hill seem inclined to vote for it. (Its merits are so nonexistent that the provision was omitted from Biden’s bill.)

By opposing giving Medicare the capacity to stop Big Pharma from charging Americans vastly more for their medications than they charge the citizens of any other nation, Sinema and three House Democrats effectively killed the one provision of the proposed $3.5 trillion package that would have most reduced the cost of living, significantly slowed the pace of inflation, and quite possibly moved more swing votes into the Democrats’ column than any other.

Leading the resistance to this measure in the House was Scott Peters, the California Democrat whose North San Diego County district includes many of the biotech companies that reap fortunes from high drug prices. While Sinema and the two other House Democrats who joined with Peters can likely be successfully primaried, the economy of Peters’s district is so dependent on high drug prices that he might well survive such a challenge…

One provision of the PRO Act—which, taken as a whole, would have been a new Magna Carta for American workers—has made it into Biden’s bill. The provision requires employers to pay fines ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 when they commit unfair labor practices, such as firing employees for their pro-union activities. Under current law, there are effectively no penalties assessed on employers when they’re found guilty of such practices. By excluding the more fundamental provisions of the PRO Act from Biden’s bill, chiefly because they don’t fit under rules of reconciliation, the employer-employee playing field remains steeply tilted toward employers, but if these fines pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian (an open question), they do reduce that tilt by a decidedly modest margin.

As befits a half-empty, if also half-full, glass.


~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Categories Accountability, Biden, Democrats, Early Childhood Education, Environment, Ethics, Funding, History

St. Louis: Privatizers and Assorted Billionaires Pick Over Bones of Public School System

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2021 //
8

Tracee Miller, a member of the St. Louis Board of Education, writes that she was shocked and dismayed to discover that a proposal to raise taxes for early childhood education was actually a disguised effort to divert more public money to charter schools. The truth leaked out:

Emails exposed via public records requests revealed that not only did the proposal lack specificity around fund distribution, but also that the funds could be redirected to economic projects unrelated to ECE. These articles also named local individuals and organizations affiliated with the deceit, illustrating the depth and breadth of political corruption connected with one ballot measure. Only it isn’t just one ballot measure.

The individuals peddling their agenda under the guise of education equity will continue to steer public dollars toward private programs and gain political capital unless we decide that public education is too important to jeopardize for the sake of private gain. We will all be complicit in the perpetuation of inequity if we choose to let this continue when we know the reality. I feel compelled to ensure, to the extent that I am capable, that the public is as aware of the even broader reach of these local actors. In reading about my experiences, I hope that St. Louis citizens will gain further awareness of the corruption at play in our education system and choose to eradicate that corruption once and for all. The same shadow groups who publicly say one thing yet do another behind-the-scenes, as they did with the ECE proposal, are working to restructure our city’s entire public education system without input from the larger community. It is incumbent upon residents of the St. Louis region to fully unearth the far-reaching influence of these groups, to assess the impact of their operating with impunity for so long, and to ensure that the community leads the way in making decisions that will impact the city’s children and its future.

Because of intense personal pressure, both public and behind-the-scenes, I spent countless hours trying to better understand the connections between groups and the strategies they were using. What I learned will strike fear into the heart of any public education advocate. Since 2018, The Opportunity Trust has funded new charter founders, has steered these founders to specific charter sponsors, and has paid for start-up and strategic planning costs to launch new charter schools or expand existing networks in St. Louis City. They do this even as St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) struggles with under-enrollment and the possibility of school closures. This work has been executed through tactics similar to those used in their attempt to push through the tax increase allegedly for ECE, and for similar self-serving purposes.

In addition to their work in the charter sector, The Opportunity Trust has launched numerous local non-profits and supported three cohorts of fellows, including many individuals connected with the SLPS district and Board of Education (BOE), to study other school systems that have implemented similar reforms. The Opportunity Trust is not a home-grown Missouri organization, and it and its associated organizations are not here to solve Missouri problems. The Opportunity Trust is the local arm of a national organization, The City Fund, whose model seeks to expand the number of charter schools, increase charter enrollment, fund the election of school choice advocates to elected school boards, divide public school districts into factions by treating schools as independent entities that function without the oversight of an elected board, and fund the election of school choice advocates to elected school boards, including at least one current member of the SLPS BOE. The City Fund does not make it clear when it is investing in a city, actively maneuvering funding through non-profits and PACs so that the money and their motives are harder to track.

Who might these “shadow groups” and individuals be? As Miller says, “The Opportunity Trust” is the St. Louis branch of the national group called “The City Fund.” The City Fund started life with $200 million from billionaires John Arnold (Texas) and Reed Hastings (California). It took a few minutes of scouring its web pages to find its list of “investors,” which include familiar names: The Walton Family Foundation; the NewSchools Venture Fund; the Silicon Valley Community Foundation; and other less familiar names, such as the California-based Intrepid Philanthropy Foundation, which supports innovative approaches to teaching, such as Teach for America; also George Roberts, San Francisco-based billionaire and founder of the powerhouse investment fund KKR.

Their agenda is to demand more charter schools, more scrutiny of public schools, and less scrutiny of charter schools. They are there to destroy public schools, not to help them.

Miller writes:

These organizations have made a practice of using distorted data to fundraise and garner support from individuals and organizations who champion the school choice movement. A salient example of this unethical use of data is the past year’s presentation hosted by ednextstl in collaboration with WEPOWER, EdHub STL, Equity Bridge, Forward Through Ferguson, and The Opportunity Trust. The data presented at this community event, where the audience was primarily composed of charter school employees, philanthropists, and self-named equity advocates, was so slanted that a third-party representative subsequently presented on that bias during a meeting of the SLPS BOE.

It is also critical to consider the motives of WEPOWER’s education advocacy campaigns. While budget transparency and community engagement should be pillars of any public education system, these tenets are not specific to traditional public school districts, though WEPOWER treats them as such. As recipients of public tax dollars, charter schools also have a responsibility to the community they serve, yet the group has not included any charter school in the demands they have issued; to-date, SLPS has been the sole target of WEPOWER’s demands. If what they seek to achieve is truly high-quality education for all students, this same level of scrutiny must be extended to charter schools as well. Instead, they have worked harder to push their agenda than they have to truly advance the quality of education in St. Louis, as was made evident in the ECE tax proposal.

Really, it is quite disgusting to see these elites circling the neglected and abused public schools of St. Louis with their discredited solutions that have such an empty track record. Their propaganda is powerful; their track record is abysmal. Will they trick another urban district into abandoning its public schools?

Tom Ultican writes here about the charter vultures descending on St. Louis to pick over the bones of their once glorious public schools. He notes that student enrollment in the district has fallen precipitously since the mid-1960s, when it was 115,543. The drop accelerated since then and it is now under 20,000. Ultican tells the sad story of the reformers who wasted money and opened charters to further enfeeble the district.

 From 2000 to 2020, the student population in St. Louis has again fallen by more than half from 44,264 to 19,222. Some of that decline can be attributed to the continuation of migration to the suburbs which now includes Black families. However, a large portion of the drop is due to the growth of charter schools. The charter school enrollment for 2020 was at least 11,215 students which represents 37% of the district’s publicly supported students. 

Like the national trend, the privatized schools chartered by the state, educate a lower percentage of the more expensive special education students; charters 11.4% versus SLPS 15.1%.

The “reformers” have had their “fun” with the St. Louis public schools. The one thing that they have not done is to improve them. They are raiders of the public schools.

Because of declining enrollment, 11 additional public schools are on the chopping block, candidates for closure. In a recent article in Medium, St. Louis parent Emily Hubbard called on politicians and civic groups to take some pro-active steps to save these 11 schools and what remains of public education. In case they didn’t know how to help the struggling public schools, she offered some ideas:

Here are some suggestions:
* Demand commitments from all your big donors to create an endowment that will fund north city schools for years to come
* Use your strength and connections to demand that county entities pay a white flight/greenlining/educational reparations tax (perhaps that can fund the endowment?)
* Demand a charter school moratorium; refuse to sponsor or delight in these entities that play such a big part in SLPS’s struggles
* Get right to the root cause of another of SLPS’s struggles and provide universal basic income for district families
* Before giving us coats and backpacks, make sure all the parents in the district are being paid fair wages at a job that doesn’t take hours to get to
* Create more non-slummy housing for families that need three bedrooms
* Demand whoever is in charge of it to create a more equitable funding situation than property tax 
*refuse to let charter schools get access to tax breaks and capital that SLPS is unable to access because they are just a plain ol’ public school district
* do what it takes to re-do the de-seg order so that the majority of Black children are able to benefit
* Put your children in St. Louis Public neighborhood schools (and not just the majority/plurality white ones) in a demonstration of solidarity with the families you claim to speak for.
* work out a deal with the city to do something about the unused buildings, free the district from the millstones
* If you want to dismantle the public school system, please just go ahead and say so instead of being all devious 
* if you think your family is too good for SLPS, please just go ahead and say so, instead of dancing around the issue
* repent publicly for not doing the things that you should’ve to care for the children in SLPS’s care, and for doing things that harm the children in SLPS’s care

Is anyone listening? Does anyone care? Will the leaders of the city allow the Wall Street bankers, the hedge funders, and billionaires from California and elsewhere to buy the public school system and close it down?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Corporate Reformers, Early Childhood Education, Education Reform, Lies, St. Louis

Denisha Jones and I Talk about Election and Education

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2020 //
4

Leonie Haimson has a weekly radio show called “Talk Out of School” on WBAI in New York City. She invited Denisha Jones and me to discuss the election results and their implications for education, on the day after the election.

Denisha is a lawyer, an early childhood education advocate, and a professor. She is also a member of the board of Network for Public Education.

Here is our discussion.

Categories Biden, Charter Schools, Early Childhood Education, Education Reform, School Choice, Testing, Vouchers

Sound Advice for Parents of Young Children

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2020 //
9

Denisha Jones, an expert in early childhood education and a lawyer (and a member of the board of the Betwork for Public Education) has prepared an excellent report for Defending the Early Years.

DEY advocates for sound educational practices for young children, and their advice in this report is balanced and humane.

Be sure to read the recommendations at the end of the report.

It begins:

Though the push to online learning/remote schooling was necessary to deal with a global pandemic, it ushered in fundamental changes to the lives of young children, their families, and their teachers. The speed at which schools were closed and how quickly we expected children and families to learn online or at home made it difficult for parents and teachers to prepare children for this new reality adequately. Now that another school year has begun, time to adjust to hybrid or full online/remote schooling has slipped away. As children and families spent their summer trying to regain a sense of normalcy, they now face the reality that a return to schooling as we knew it might not happen for quite some time. Some families will send their children back to socially distant schooling while others will keep them home and hire tutors or teachers and replace traditional schooling with “pandemic pods.” We recognize that all families, regardless of the option they can choose, continue to want the best for their child’s education and health and need support, resources, and guidance. We propose the following recommendations to assist families of young children and their teachers to reap as many benefits from online learning/remote schooling as possible and mitigate the challenges.

1. Do not try to replicate school at home.
This might seem unrealistic faced with another quarter, semester, or year of online learning/remote schooling, but it is essential to recognize that we cannot do at home all the things we do at school. First, parents are not teachers and even if you are a teacher, teaching your child is different than teaching someone else’s child. If you are homeschooling your child during the 2020-2021 school year, then you are your child’s teacher, but if you are working from home, you should not expect to be a full-time teacher, full-time parent, and full-time or part-time employee. Online learning/remote schooling is not traditional schooling. It is a substitute for the educational environment we typically provide children and, just like when your child has a substitute teacher at school, things cannot be precisely the same. Traditional schooling is set up to function very differently than online teaching/ remote schooling. We expect children to spend an entire day in a room with many other children and at least one adult and to complete a variety of tasks in a variety of different formats. Teachers come prepared to facilitate this environment, and, over time, many children adjust to it. Online teaching/remote schooling should not have the same expectations. Yes, children are at home all day, and yes, parents who are working from home need to keep them engaged, but that does not mean we should sit them down in front of a computer or tablet and expect them to do the same things they would do in school. In-person instruction cannot transform into online teaching for young children. Remote schooling should not mean that we expect children to do the same things that they did in school at home. For children, their families, and their teachers to gain benefits from online learning/remote schooling, we must separate the functions of traditional schooling from the realities of online learning/remote schooling.

2. 2. Use screens and technology sparingly and wisely.
Many of us are aware that an increase in screen use can be harmful to young children. But we also know
that Zoom and other platforms provide valuable connections for children whose lives have been disrupted by COVID-19. Even before the pandemic, many families used technology-based communication platforms to stay connected when they lived in different geographical locations. Infants, toddlers, and preschoolers love seeing grandma and grandpa on the tablet, and many love seeing their teachers and peers as well. Thus, we must find ways to incorporate these platforms that maximize their benefits but also limit their exposure. We should
not expect young children to spend more than 30 minutes a day, a few days a week, on technology. Brief opportunities to connect with their teacher and classmates that are engaging and developmentally appropriate are crucial to maximizing the use of technology. Reading stories, sharing items from home, singing songs, watching a puppet show, and playing are good examples of how technology can bring young learners and their teachers together. However, we must keep these sessions brief and optional. We know not all children want or need to be on Zoom every day. Even if the teacher offers daily 30-minutes class meetings, families should be able to decide whether to attend as many or as few as their child can handle each week. We do not recommend longer remote schooling sessions that include online teaching for young children. Just as we did not (or should not) expect young children to sit still at a desk and listen to a teacher for extended periods of time in schools, we cannot expect them to do the same at home. Remote schooling does not mean that all teaching and learning has to happen through direct online instruction.

3. Prepare children to be s 2. Use screens and technology sparingly and wisely.
Many of us are aware that an increase in screen use can be harmful to young children. But we also know that Zoom and other platforms provide valuable connections for children whose lives have been disrupted by COVID-19. Even before the pandemic, many families used technology-based communication platforms to stay connected when they lived in different geographical locations. Infants, toddlers, and preschoolers love seeing grandma and grandpa on the tablet, and many love seeing their teachers and peers as well. Thus, we must find ways to incorporate these platforms that maximize their benefits but also limit their exposure. We should
not expect young children to spend more than 30 minutes a day, a few days a week, on technology. Brief opportunities to connect with their teacher and classmates that are engaging and developmentally appropriate are crucial to maximizing the use of technology. Reading stories, sharing items from home, singing songs, watching a puppet show, and playing are good examples of how technology can bring young learners and their teachers together. However, we must keep these sessions brief and optional. We know not all children want or need to be on Zoom every day. Even if the teacher offers daily 30-minutes class meetings, families should be able to decide whether to attend as many or as few as their child can handle each week. We do not recommend longer remote schooling sessions that include online teaching for young children. Just as we did not (or should not) expect young children to sit still at a desk and listen to a teacher for extended periods of time in schools, we cannot expect them to do the same at home. Remote schooling does not mean that all teaching and learning has to happen through direct online instruction.

The report goes on to identify ways that parents can best help their young children navigate these difficult times.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Early Childhood Education, Online Learning

Teachers: Why Not Shift to Outdoor Learning?

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2020 //
32

A group of New York City teachers argue in The New York Daily News that the best way to restart the schools, especially for young children, is to hold classes outdoors. They do not address the problems of rain and freezing weather.

Liat Olenick, Darcy Whittwmore, and Heather Costanza see many virtues in outdoor learning.

Holding classes indoors in a city with over one million students, they write, will create dangerous and unhealthy conditions. Why not grab this opportunity for creative solutions?

Move the younger children outdoors, they say, while keeping high school students online.

Outdoor learning is a tried and tested fit for early childhood. There are all-day outdoor kindergartens in wintery Maine and Vermont, in which children dress for the weather and learn outside nearly every day. Vaunted models of early childhood education like Reggio-Emilia emphasize outdoor exploration because ages 4-8 comprise the crucial stage in which multisensory, interactive learning is essential for children’s cognitive growth. Outdoor learning offers children authentic, stimulating experiences that foster skills like creative problem solving, independence, flexibility and resiliency as they form a deep connection to the natural world. Learning outdoors also offers possibilities for culturally responsive, place-based learning, giving students hands-on, meaningful opportunities to engage and connect with their communities.

In the context of COVID, outdoor learning becomes even more appealing. Elementary students are more likely to live near school, making finding a space that works for families without needing public transit more feasible.

And per current guidelines, the requirements of indoor learning — sitting six feet apart, no contact, no sharing materials, and staying in one enclosed space for hours on end — are not developmentally appropriate for young children.

If we move outdoors, kids will have room to be kids without fear of punishment or infecting someone they love. Given the ongoing criminalization of students of color in schools, we fear the consequences of imposing new, high stakes social-distancing rules on all, but particularly on our youngest students.

We have the space to make outdoor learning work. New York City is home to 28,000 acres of public parkland, more than 1,100 school and community gardens, plus schoolyards, rooftops, cemeteries, beaches, private outdoor space and even parking lots or closeable neighborhood streets which could be spruced up with benches and planters.

These investments in public space might even foster greater equity in our city; experiences in nature are essential for children’s mental health, but green space is often concentrated in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods.

Transforming our streets and playgrounds into possibility-rich outdoor classrooms could be a way to equalize access to nature at a time when many outdoor programs serving children of color have been shuttered.

Outdoor learning will not be perfect. It will require support from schools, parks, neighborhood institutions and families to plan for site-specific challenges. But compare that with our other two options: Fully remote learning, which means zero childcare for caregivers and especially fails our young students, or a blended, classroom model for 1.1 million students that is likely to put our most vulnerable communities in grave danger.

This is our clarion call. We hope it spurs intrepid leaders to consider outdoor learning as a viable option for all of our youngest students during COVID and beyond. Organizations around the country, including New York private schools, are already developing proposals to take learning outside. With a little imagination and support from our city, we could make it happen here — not just for the privileged few, but for all.

Olenick, Whittemore and Costanza are public elementary school teachers in Brooklyn.

Categories Early Childhood Education, New York City, Play, Students, Teachers

A Conversation about the Pandemic and Early Childhood Education

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2020 //
14

Every Wednesday at 7:40 pm EST, the Network for Public Education has hosted a conversation about education. All the conversations are archived here.

In the first one, I discussed my new book SLAYING GOLIATH with Carol Burris.

In the second one, I talked to Pastor Charles Foster Johnson of Pastors for Texas Children about their fight against vouchers and for public schools.

In the third one, I asked Mercedes Schneider about her new book and her skill at investigative reporting.

In the fourth one, I discussed the effects of the pandemic on early childhood education with ECE experts Denisha Jones and Susan Ochshorn.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Creativity, Early Childhood Education, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Play
« Older Entries