TKW Consulting

One-third of American children enter kindergarten developmentally behind their peers and without the skills necessary to succeed at grade level. This isn't just a problem for these children and their families; according to education experts, it is an issue of national concern.

To help solve this problem, Jumpstart - a national non-profit organization focused on intervening early in the lives of at-risk children through intensive early education programs - has created a way for every adult and every child across the country to raise public awareness about the early education gap that exists between income levels.

Today, the organization announced Jumpstart's Read for the Record 2007 Campaign at a reception hosted by Pearson Education and the Pearson Foundation during the International Reading Association's annual convention. The Campaign will create the largest "shared reading experience" ever by breaking the record set on a single day in August 2006, when 150,000 people read the same book across the country as part of Jumpstart's Read for the Record inaugural Campaign.

The one-day reading event will take place on Thursday, September 20, 2007. The official Campaign book is a limited, custom edition of the Penguin Young Readers Group classic The Story of Ferdinand. People of all ages across America will join Jumpstart's Read for the Record Campaign to address the current early education crisis.

"We are happy that again this year we're able to launch this important Campaign at the International Reading Association annual convention," said Jumpstart's CEO, George Askew. "Reading is one crucial component of early education, and when children begin behind their peers, catching up, especially without additional assistance, is difficult and unlikely. In addition to awareness, Jumpstart's Campaign will raise funds to support the organization's programs, which serve preschool children from more than 60 low-income communities across 20 states."

Last year, Jumpstart's Read for the Record raised more than $1,000,000 to support the organization's early education work in low-income communities. Most of these funds came directly from sales of the limited, custom edition of the official Campaign book, which was underwritten by Pearson, with 100 percent of proceeds benefiting Jumpstart. Jumpstart's Read for the Record participants will be able to purchase this year's official Campaign book, The Story of Ferdinand, later this year at Toys "R" Us and American Eagle Outfitters stores, as well as through the Hanna Andersson Website and retail stores. Again, this year, Pearson funded the publishing of the Campaign's custom edition.

In addition, beginning today, the Pearson Foundation will match online donations made during Jumpstart's Read for the Record Campaign, now through September 20, 2007, by giving copies of The Story of Ferdinand to donors as a free gift.

"Today's announcement is the beginning of another record-breaking year," said Pearson Foundation President, Mark Nieker. "Pearson people were thrilled last year to join local record-setting events, and proud to help Jumpstart raise funds during Jumpstart's Read for the Record Campaign. We're hoping to increase the total amount raised this year by making the book available online beginning today." He added, "Pearson's partnership with Jumpstart is one additional step to ensure that our country's at-risk children are not forgotten, and that we provide them with the resources they need to be successful when they get to kindergarten."

The Campaign's Website, http://www.readfortherecord.org/, provides information about donating books to Jumpstart children, as well as hosting and joining shared reading events across the nation. Beginning today, official custom- edition copies of The Story of Ferdinand can be ordered there, and at Pearson's official support site for Jumpstart's Read for the Record Campaign, at http://www.pearsonfoundation.org/.

Jumpstart's longstanding relationships with its national multi-year partners - American Eagle Outfitters, Pearson, and Sodexho - are key components of its ongoing efforts to help at-risk children, and support of the 2007 Campaign is just one of many ways in which these corporations make Jumpstart's work possible. Jumpstart's Read for the Record is further supported by its Campaign sponsors: Hanna Andersson, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, NBC, Penguin Young Readers Group (publisher of the limited custom edition of The Story of Ferdinand), and Toys "R" Us.For more information about getting involved, visit http://www.readfortherecord.org/.

About Jumpstart
Jumpstart is a national non-profit organization that engages preschool children from low-income communities in an intensive early education program to improve their cognitive and emotional development, ensuring they enter kindergarten prepared to succeed at grade level. Jumpstart's foundation is its research-backed curriculum, active learning approach, and one-to-one adult- child interaction. Jumpstart trains adult mentors, primarily college students, to work in exclusive yearlong relationships with the children. By providing the children with undivided attention, reading with them, and working with them on academic and social skills, Jumpstart mentors increase children's vocabularies, enhance their ability to read and learn, and improve the quality of their social interactions by the time they enter kindergarten. In 2005- 2006, children who participated in Jumpstart programs increased their literacy, language, and social skills by 26 percent.

Since 1993, thousands of Jumpstart mentors have helped more than 50,000 children from low-income communities around the country enter school ready to learn at grade level. Jumpstart has earned a four-star rating from Charity Navigator and is the recipient of the Fast Company/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Award (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007) and the Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy's Directors Award. For more information about Jumpstart, visit http://www.jstart.org/.

About Pearson
Pearson plc (NYSE: PSO) is an international media company. Its major business operations are: The Financial Times Group, which has an international network of business and financial newspapers and online services that are read by millions of business executives and investors every day; Pearson Education, the world's leading education business, which helps teachers teach and students learn at every stage and in every part of the world; and Penguin Group, which is one of the pre-eminent names in consumer publishing, with an unrivalled range of fiction and non-fiction, bestsellers, and classic titles.

Jumpstart and the Pearson businesses share a passion for education and inspiring people to reach their full potential. These shared goals and values led Jumpstart and Pearson to create the Pearson Teacher Fellowship in 2001. Each year, the Pearson Teacher Fellowship provides the opportunity for a select group of achievement-oriented college graduates to enter the early education field by becoming preschool teachers in Head Start and other early learning centers serving at-risk children. For more information go to http://www.pearsonfoundation.org/.

Casey has become a leading advocate for early education

Two weeks ago, Sen. Hillary Clinton announced that as president she would push for
federal money

Last week, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. moderated a forum in Scranton on his bill, the Prepare All Kids Act of 2007, to establish federal funding for preschools.Spokesmen for the two Democratic senators say the timing of their events was a coincidence.

By the time either initiative becomes federal law, Mrs. Clinton could be president.

But Mr. Casey, who introduced his bill 10 days before Mrs. Clinton spoke up, has already
started accomplishing his first goal.

He wants the 2008 presidential candidates talking about early childhood education, he said after the forum at the United Way of Lackawanna County.

“A presidential campaign is a tremendous opportunity to highlight this issue,” he said.

With campaign promises serving as a reminder, the freshman Democratic senator’s push for pre-kindergarten funding and increased funding for state Children’s Health Insurance Programs signals that young children are among of his major priorities.

“This is an issue that he really feels passionately about,” said Larry Smar, Mr. Casey’s director of communications.

Children’s issues got little attention during Mr. Casey’s campaign against Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum last year, although Mr. Casey’s plans were on his campaign Web site, and he hosted a conference focused on children.

“He was one of the few candidates who talked about early education at all in the campaign,” said Kelly Swanson, a spokeswoman for Pre K Counts in Pennsylvania, an initiative begun to advocate for preschools.

The attention to CHIP, as the children’s health insurance program is known, is in character for Mr. Casey, whose fondness for it has familial roots. His father, Robert P. Casey Sr., launched Pennsylvania’s version as governor in 1992.

In five months, expanding CHIP has surfaced on Mr. Casey’s agenda more than any other issue.

Financed by state and the federal government, CHIP covers — free — more than 4 million children nationwide, including about 150,000 in Pennsylvania who live in households with incomes twice the federal poverty level, about $41,000 for a family of four.

President Bush is proposing about $5 billion in CHIP funding in the year starting Oct. 1 and almost $5 billion more the year after that, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank.

Mr. Casey and Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts; Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.; and Max Baucus, D-Mont., want a five-year, $50 billion appropriation, or about $10 billion a year. That would cover the 6 million children who aren’t covered now, Mr. Smar said.

The four senators sponsored a successful budget amendment in March naming CHIP expansion as the Senate’s top health care priority.

The early childhood initiative is more Mr. Casey’s own...

Antibacterial soap vs. hand sanitizer

I recently taped a note to the soap dispenser in the office kitchen to warn my colleagues that the soap contained the chemical triclosan, a troubling antibacterial agent.

But products with triclosan, which aren't any more effective than soap and water, aren't just a waste of money; the chemical is endocrine disruptor, generates chloroform under common conditions and is turning up in wastewater, breast milk and fish.

My helpful little note lasted about three minutes before someone ripped it down, but several people stopped by my desk asking how to find soap without triclosan. People were also confused about the difference between waterless hand sanitizer and anti-bacterial soap.

If you're confused as well, here’s a little primer to help you sort it all out.

Hand sanitizers
Alcohol-based hand sanitizers, found in schools, hospitals, day-care centers, health clubs and grocery stores, can be a great substitute for hand washing if soap and water aren't available, as long as they contain more than 60 percent ethyl alcohol or isopropanol or a combination of the two.

And though they can kill bacteria, they differ from products labeled "antibacterial," which require water.

Available in a squeeze bottle or pump, sanitizer gel is alcohol-based and doesn't need to be rinsed off. Just a dime-sized dollop to dry hands kills micro-organisms by stripping away the outer layer of the oil on the skin.

After you've used it, the bacteria don't regrow as fast, which keeps "residual micro-flora that reside in deeper layers of skin from coming to the surface," according to theColorado State University Cooperative Extension.

But hand sanitizers still don't remove dirt; you need soap, water and friction for that. The setting and what's already on your hands also is important, because soil, food and other substances make the gels less effective.

Health-care workers, for example, can use waterless hand sanitizers in place of soap and water because the employees routinely clean their hands several times an hour, and sanitizers encourage compliance, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But the Illinois Department of Public Health says food-service workers should not use them exclusively, especially those handling ready-to-eat food or whose hands are wet or contaminated with fatty materials. Illinois day-care centers and homes, meanwhile, cannot use waterless hand sanitizers as an alternative to soap and running water.

Like any product not meant to be ingested, eating the stuff can be dangerous.

Earlier this year, the New England Journal of Medicine reported two cases of people -- a prison inmate and an alcoholic -- getting intoxicated after eating hand sanitizer. Watch your teenager.

Then there was the story of the 8-year-old girl who licked 10 to 20 globs of hand sanitizer while at a supervised play center at a suburban Chicago health club, an idea that originally came from a classmate at school. She ended up in intensive care for two days.

It's also not recommended for infants, but if you have a teether who has sucked on your hand-sanitized hands, don't panic. "The alcohol part evaporates in just seconds as it air dries ... so your hands may still feel it but there is no alcohol touching your child's lips," said nurse epidemiologist Ed Goodwin at Rush University Medical Center.

One other caution for smokers: It's flammable. Don't light a match if your hands are still wet with hand sanitizer.

If you’re looking for a natural hand sanitizer, with no alcohol or harsh chemicals, try Clean Well which uses a patented formulation of plant oils called Ingenium.

Antibacterial soap
Antibacterial soap, which contains the chemicals triclosan or triclocarban, must be used with water and is marketed as having the ability to kill bacteria. But it's no more effective than non-antibacterial soap and doesn't prevent colds or flu, which are caused by viruses, not bacteria.

Unless you're in a hospital environment, using products with triclosan, a biocide that can destroy biological structures at random, is overkill, like using a jackhammer to kill an ant.

Moreover, triclosan, which mimics the thyroid hormone and is bioaccumulating in the environment, is present in 60 percent of U.S. waterways investigated.

Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to find liquid soap without triclosan. It's also added to toothpaste, deodorant, dog shampoo, cutting boards, clothing, toys and other antibacterial products. The best way around this is to "just rub your hands with plain water," said Sylvia Garcia-Houchins, manager of infection control at the University of Chicago. The key is the scrubbing action.

Or try soaps from Dr. Bronner’s or The Common Sense Farm.

Soap and water
Soap and water is the gold standard, especially if your hands are visibly soiled or you've just changed a diaper and have fecal matter on them.

A common mistake is applying the soap to dry hands. Instead, first, wet your hands. Then use the soap, scrubbing the fronts and backs of the hands and between the fingers for about 10 to 15 seconds. (Hand sanitizers are just the opposite; make sure your hands are dry.)

Soap doesn't necessarily kill germs; it makes your hands slippery so the germs slide down the drain, Garcia-Houchins said.