Early Ed Watch

Over at Slate this week, I discuss a recent study in Psychological Science that examined how messages about gender and other social categories are interpreted by young children. Previous studies have shown that when children believe that something about them is innate -- such as being good or bad at a particular subject in school -- their performance can suffer, because they are less likely to engage in constructive, hard work to do well or improve.

Education officials around the country are now waiting for the final guidelines for the Race to the Top district level competition, which will award between $15 million and $25 million to as many as 20 school districts across the country. Like previous rounds of Race to the Top, the U.S. Department of Education plans to award schools that promise to make reforms to their standards and assessments, improve teacher effectiveness by revamping teacher-evaluation systems, collect and use better data, and turn around low-performing schools.

So-called “place-based strategies” have been gaining attention for their cross-cutting approaches to delivering housing, education and healthcare in a particular neighborhood or geographic area. The aim is to identify gaps in funding and avoid duplicating efforts. While it is premature to say that the approach is making a difference for young children, it is not too early to examine how various communities are using place-based funds and combining resources from different place-based programs.   

A couple weeks ago, the Census bureau announced that minority babies made up the majority of births in the United States in 2011. I wrote an opinion piece for today's Washington Post about why this symbolic shift should be a wake-up call for the public school system: Student demographics are changing, but policies revolving around how we instruct Engilsh language learners have yet to catch up.