Pre-K

In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Peggy Orenstein voices the worries that many middle-income parents are having about kindergarten: Have we gone overboard in trying to make sure our students are academically prepared? In her piece, "Kindergarten Cram," Orenstein asks: "What was the rush?" "How did 5 become the new 7, anyway?"

Here's some good news for pre-k even in difficult economic times: This month the state legislature in Alaska, one of twelve states that does not have a state pre-k program, passed Gov. Sarah Palin's proposed $2 million pilot pre-k program.

You voted. We investigated. In a blog post earlier this month, we asked you to choose what research most piqued your interest among 10 relevant posters released at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.

Child care is expensive, and for many families, economic hard times have made quality child care unaffordable. Stories are emerging about how parents are being forced to pull their children out of care, find alternative arrangements, or even quit work because the cost of child care has exceeded what their paychecks provide. Other stories describe how emptier classrooms impact providers, how infants are particularly affected (because caring for infants requires more staff and is therefore more expensive), or how fewer children in well-supervised care has led to an increase in cases of child abuse or neglect. ABC News produced a video about how this is impacting middle class families who can't pay for care but still make too much to qualify for child care subsidies or Head Start. Earlier this week New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote about fewer children being able to gain access to necessary health services.

Hispanic children are the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States, yet they are doing worse in school than any of their peers. They need urgent attention, says a new Social Policy Report from the Society of Research in Child Development, which recommends many steps to be taken by government, educational and community organizations.

Two of the boldest calls to action are to:

• Establish and strengthen dual-language programs, which have been shown in recent studies to be more effective than English-only programs at bridging achievement gaps for Hispanic children.
• Provide more pre-kindergarten programs to Hispanic children, who have been shown in some studies to be less likely to attend preschool.

You voted. We investigated. In a blog post earlier this month, we asked you to choose what research most piqued your interest among 10 relevant posters released at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.

Looking for story books to propogate the messages of Earth Day tomorrow? With the budding interest in all things "green," children's books with environmental themes are cropping up everywhere. We've rounded up a list of lists to help early childhood educators find the best books for the festivities.

If you have favorites, or know of additional resources, we'd love to hear about them and our readers would too. Please feel free to add them to the comments under this blog post.

Earlier this week we reported on the National Institute for Early Education Research's 2008 State of Preschool Yearbook, which found that states made significant progress in improving pre-k quality and access last year. We also noted that pre-k advocates are very concerned that the current budget crises in the states could derail progress on early education that has been made over the past few years.

[Voting concluded at 9 a.m. on April 9. Thanks for your input. Based on your votes, I'll be working on #9, #4 and #1. (See my note in the comment field for the full tally.) Stay tuned! -LG]

By the time the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development concluded in Denver on Saturday, thousands of research projects had been presented and discussed, critiqued and disputed. Even the most conscientious attendee at the conference could not have learned about even a fraction of them.