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The benefits vary, experts say More public schools providing free, high-quality pre-K programs
By KAREN UHLENHUTH
The Kansas City Star

Lots of American children, at least one third, aren’t cutting it in kindergarten. They don’t know their letters and numbers, or even how to hold a book right side up.

They don’t have the self-control to wait in line or take turns, and don’t get on well with other children. Although it’s just kindergarten, there’s evidence that children who are behind before they get to school tend to spend a lifetime lagging.

Now a potential solution is gaining traction across the country. It’s known as universal pre-kindergarten. The idea is to provide high-quality preschool, free, for every 4- and possibly 3-year-old, with the goal of getting the children better prepared for formal schooling.

A leg up is not guaranteed, however.

The benefit of pre-kindergarten depends on the nature of the school and the nature of the child. The drive for universal pre-kindergarten emphasizes the need for well-trained teachers and high-quality curriculum — neither of which is a given in preschools today.
In general, though, the movement is spreading.

Consider that:
•For the current fiscal year, 26 state legislatures approved $600 million more than the preceding year on their pre-kindergarten programs.
•In May, the Illinois legislature approved three years of funding to provide pre-kindergarten to 3-year-olds. Free pre-kindergarten is now available to about 68 percent of the state’s 4-year-olds, and that percentage is increasing steadily.
•Oklahoma, Georgia and Florida are in the vanguard of the movement, providing pre-kindergarten to all 4-year-olds.

The movement hit a road bump in California last week when voters rejected 61 percent to 39 percent a proposition to provide free preschool to all 4-year-olds and to pay for it by taxing the state’s highest-income residents. Nevertheless, proponents promised that they would keep pushing for it.

In Kansas, the Legislature this year allocated $2 million for a pre-kindergarten experiment. In seven Kansas counties, including Wyandotte and Johnson, pre-kindergarten will be available to about 600 children starting this fall. An evaluation will follow.

In Missouri, it’s mostly just talk at this point. No additional money was appropriated during the latest session for the state’s Missouri Preschool Project, which serves about 5,000 children without regard to income. However, the governor is appointing a coordinating board for early education, and legislation that passed this spring requires several state departments to work together to define “high quality” preschool.

Evidence of the benefits is plentiful. A study of 3,500 children in Missouri several years ago found that youngsters from low-income families who were exposed to the Parents as Teachers mentoring program and then attended a high-quality preschool “were about as school-ready as middle-class children,” according to Ed Zigler, a founder of Head Start and the longtime director of what Yale University now calls its Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy.

Anthony Stoops is a believer. His son Quentin, now 5 and kindergarten-bound, blossomed during 14 months of pre-kindergarten provided by the Independence School District.

“He became more outgoing and confident. And he seemed to learn something every day,” said Stoops, who lives in Independence. “He’d come home and just tell you things, and you’re like, ‘Where’d you learn that?’”

During a year and a half in the school district’s pre-kindergarten, Leah Savona learned to make friends and amassed as much knowledge as children a year older than her, according to Leah’s mother, Stephanie Savona of Independence.

“It got her ready to be in a classroom environment,” Savona said. “She definitely wouldn’t get that at home.”

Experts say that the benefits of pre-kindergarten vary with children’s socioeconomic status and how they otherwise would spend their days. A team of researchers from Stanford University and the University of California-Berkeley studied about 14,000 children nationwide who entered kindergarten in 1998. They found that the children from the very poorest households made the biggest cognitive gains — about eight or nine percentage points. Middle-class children gained about a third less than that in reading skills and about half as much in math skills.

While cognitive effects were positive, albeit to varying degrees, the study hinted that preschool might delay children’s social and emotional development, at least under certain circumstances. In particular, the researchers found that children who started in center-based care in the first couple years of life, or who spent more than 30 hours a week there, tended to be angrier, more disruptive and less able to get along.

The researchers cautioned that preschool, “even for short periods of time each week, hinders the rate at which young children develop social skills and display the motivation to engage classroom tasks, as reported by their kindergarten teachers.”

However, it’s important to note that the study surveyed children in a wide range of care settings, not all of them high-quality.

The researchers concluded: “As policymakers move to offer all families access to free preschool, children from middle-class families will likely experience modest benefits in terms of cognitive growth. Children from the very poorest families may catch up some, if
resources are focused on their communities.”

Although much evidence shows the benefits are greatest for the most disadvantaged children, many children who arrive at kindergarten ill-prepared (about 48 percent) are from homes that are at least middle class, according to Don Owens, spokesman for the advocacy group Pre-K Now.

His group contends that free preschool provided only for children of low-income families ultimately will lose political support.Yale’s Zigler agrees.

“People don’t want to pay for programs for other people’s children,” he said. “I’ve jumped on the universal bandwagon because I’m convinced the only time poor children will get quality preschool education is when all children get it.”

Oklahoma and Georgia, the pioneers in universal pre-kindergarten, began offering it to just low-income children, but since have expanded it to all children.

“They learned that you have to have a broad constituency for these programs to be maintained,” Zigler said.

Whether universal or targeted, publicly funded, high-quality pre-kindergarten is gaining supporters outside the ranks of longstanding early-education advocates.

“Right now, the big advocates for these programs are not people like me,” said Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research. “They’re economists and businesspeople.”

Arguments on universal pre-kindergarten
PRO:
•Many children don’t do well in kindergarten and could benefit from a year or two of early instruction.
•At least one study showed that children from the poorest households made the biggest cognitive gains from pre-kindergarten.
•Children who experience pre-kindergarten and who come from “at-risk” families are more likely to stay in school and steer away from crime.
CON:
•One group of researchers concluded that preschool “hinders the rate at which young children develop social skills and display the motivation to engage classroom tasks.”
•Children from middle-class families probably will experience only modest cognitive growth, the same study said.
•Pre-kindergarten benefit is not a sure thing. It all depends on the nature of the school and the nature of the child.

// posted by Tammy Wachter @ 3:19 PM