Preschool?

Obama said a lot about early childhood education in the debate the other night, and this morning I woke up to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle. Universal Preschool Hasn't Delivered Results

"A comprehensive study last month - commissioned by the government itself - concluded that, barring at-risk kids, there was "no statistically significant difference" between the educational performance of second-graders who attended preschool and those who did not... [even though] the Tennessee program is regarded as the gold standard of preschool - meeting 9 of the 10 criteria for a high-quality program set by the National Institute for Early Education Research."

Interesting. (Granted, authors Shikha Dalmia and Lisa Snell work for the Reason Foundation and, I would imagine, are pretty staunchly in the McCain camp. I suspect they will be getting some furious feedback from SF Chron readers.)

In thinking about it, I don't think it really matters to me whether or not early childhood education raises test scores. I think that kids need to be prepared for kindergarten - social and academically, and one of the ways to do that is through an early childhood program like Head Start or any of the many other great programs around the nation. If the programs in Tennessee were considered the "gold standard" of preschool, then I am confident that those kindergarteners came in the door with a leg up on kids who didn't attend preschool.

I feel like this is particularly important in poor and urban neighborhoods where parents may not have the resources or the time to understand and facilitate child development, to read to their kids every night, to encourage language and phonics acquisition, etc. Geoffrey Canada's Baby College and GEMS - they are doing this work full-throttle, giving kids a "head start" from even before birth. Here's the link to the Harlem Children's Zone Page www.hcz.org and to an awesome article about Baby College specifically. The Baby College

I could write another post entirely on Harlem Childrens Zone and Geoff Canada... he, along with Michelle Rhee, is another of my "Educrushes." Paul Tough's new book on his work is really excellent, and I've been enjoying reading it in bits and pieces when I have a free moment.

In other good news... as of this morning, I am done with my 37 page midterm paper on Mik! I can't tell you how excited I am to hand that in in Seminar today. Woohoo!