Early Ed Watch

This is the second post in a series on winners of the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC), the Obama Administration’s competition to spur improvements in early learning for children up to age 5.  Earlier this week, we wrote about states’ plans to use quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS). In this post, we’ll look at how states plan to evaluate those systems. Later posts will explore plans to improve early learning standards, develop the early childhood workforce and implement kindergarten entry assessments.

State and federal policymakers seem to have bought into the idea that rating systems are the best mechanism to encourage early learning programs to improve their quality and assist parents in selecting centers that will best prepare their children to learn.

Decades ago, as researchers began to study what young children might learn from educational TV, they often found that "co-viewing" -- the act of parents and children watching together -- was strongly associated with children learning from what they watched.  Today, although TV is still the number-one type of media used by young children, new forms of media are begging new questions.

As digital media and new technologies start to capture the attention of early educators, it’s important to ask: Do we know whether any of these gadgets and gaming programs actually help children learn? 

In his State of the Union Address last week, President Obama focused on building a more skilled workforce. One of the proposals he made was for “states to require students to stay in school until they graduate or turn 18.” It was a surprising and an ill-advised suggestion, and while it may not immediately sound like an early education issue, it does have some bearing on how we educate young children.