Ambitious Vision: Principal Leadership in PreK–3rd Learning Communities
The National Association of Elementary School Principals has published an ambitious vision of the principal’s role in PreK–3rd reform. This report, Leading Pre-K-3 Learning Communities: Competencies for Effective Principal Practice, outlines six competencies that together form a comprehensive approach to leading early learning partnerships. This approach will require district support in addition to principal leadership. The full…
Putting Seattle’s Pre-K Ballot Initiatives in Context
While most of the country’s obsessive politics-watchers will be surveying a variety of hotly contested Senate, House, and gubernatorial races on November 4, the early education community will have an eye trained on Seattle, Washington. Voters there will have not one, but two early education programs on the ballot. See Connor Williams’ piece on New America…
Quality of Words, Not Quantity, Is Crucial to Language Skills, Study Finds
From yesterday’s New York Times: It has been nearly 20 years since a landmark education study found that by age 3, children from low-income families have heard 30 million fewer words than more affluent children, putting them at an educational disadvantage before they even began school. The findings led to increased calls for publicly funded prekindergarten…
Massachusetts Full-Service Program Yields Results in Elementary Schools
By the start of middle school, The Afterschool Corp. estimates that children in poverty have received 6,000 fewer hours of learning outside of school—both enrichment and support—than their middle-income peers. While many programs target low-income students who are struggling academically or emotionally, it can be more difficult to find enrichment activities to build on the…
Revised Foundational Competencies and Essential Experiences, Birth-3rd
Massachusetts has issued a revised version of its Foundational Competencies and Essential Experiences document and is seeking feedback by the end of this week. From the website: Massachusetts has embarked on an exciting journey – the development of a comprehensive birth through grade 3 policy agenda – that will result in the implementation of innovative…
CAYL Institute’s 10th Anniversary and Related Resources
Congratulations to Dr. Valora Washington and the CAYL Institute on its 10th anniversary. Its community of practice now includes over 600 fellows. I attended the anniversary celebration a couple of weeks ago, where the strength of its fellows network was very much in evidence. See the summaries of the keynote speakers comments in the newsletter below. In addition to links in the newsletter to MassBudget’s Children’s Budget site and the Subprime Learning reports, see these resources from MassBudget and the New America Foundation:
Building a Foundation for Success (MassBudget)
Report Finds Limited Support for Early Ed in School Turnarounds (New America Foundation)
School Year Begins, States Enhance PreK-3rd Continuum with Race to the Top Funds (New America Foundation)
Click for the CAYL Institute’s Special Newsletter …
Expanding Prekindergarten, Not Forgetting Kindergarten
Is New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio’s method for expanding Pre-K a model for other cities? Six experts’ views on the implications of NYC’s PreK expansion for other cities. The View from 3 Feet 4 year-old experts talk about the value of preschool in this video, a project of the Massachusetts-based Schott Foundation’s National…
School Turnaround and Early Learning: New SIG Regulations
The New America Foundation’s EdCentral provides a helpful summary: New SIG Regulations Ramp up Focus on Early Education
The Way to Beat Poverty (Kristof and WuDunn)
Commentary from the Sunday New York Times: One reason the United States has not made more progress against poverty is that our interventions come too late. If there’s one overarching lesson from the past few decades of research about how to break the cycles of poverty in the United States, it’s the power of parenting…
Parent-Child Home Program in the Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about the Parent-Child Home program, which operates in many communities in Massachusetts. For all the energy poured into [New York City’s] preschool expansion, some researchers and early-childhood advocates say that the most at-risk children need help with literacy much earlier than pre-K. While skeptics question whether these…