Literacy and Reading

On April 9, 2011, Laura Bornfreund spoke on a panel titled "Teaching Teachers to Teach Reading" at the annual meeting of the Education Writers Association conference in New Orleans.

Bornfreund highlighted findings from the Early Education Initiative’s latest report “Getting in Sync: Revamping Licensure and Preparation for Teachers in Pre-K, Kindergarten and the Early Grades,” emphasizing (for this particular panel) the differences in reading courses between K-5 and P-3 teacher preparation programs.

Two weeks ago, we asked you to choose which pieces of new research you'd like us to explore here at Early Ed Watch. You had a choice of two research posters from among a list of 10 that were presented at the recent biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Montreal.

The connection between early education and high-school completion has always seemed obvious to many of us who follow the research on how children learn. When children are immersed in high-quality early education and get the support they need to read by third grade, the chances are much greater that they will succeed in school.

A report published yesterday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation provides more evidence to back this up. The 15-page research brief, “Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation,” analyzes data from a national study that tracked 3,975 students from their early elementary years through adulthood. It found that reading proficiency in third grade was a significant predictor of whether a student would struggle to finish high school.

Last week, PBS's education correspondent John Merrow blogged about a video he produced about preschool haves and have-nots in Chicago. The post has attracted 16,000 views -- far more than usual, Merrow says -- and the video is well worth watching. But the segment never makes any reference to the schools that these children attend after their year or years in pre-k. It represents a huge missed opportunity to tell a story that is missing from the national conversation on how to make smart early ed investments: how to ensure continuity in quality.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the U.S. Department of Justice reached an agreement with the Arizona Department of Education that will require the state to change how it classifies students who are not proficient English speakers.

The new classification system will likely enable more students to become eligible for language services, after a distinct drop in the number of children who were eligible during the 2009-2010 school year.

Every two years, child development experts from around the world gather at a huge meeting convened by the Society for Research in Child Development. Last weekend, SRCD held its latest meeting, and Early Ed Watch was there soaking up new information to report on in future blog posts and to inform our analysis of education policy. Plenty of headlines grabbed our attention, but we couldn't be at every session since hundreds of pieces of research were presented concurrently.

We're betting that you, our readers, have strong feelings about what you may want us to delve into more deeply. So we're asking for your help.* Let us know what you would like us to write about by choosing two sessions from the list of 10 below. Make your choices by midnight on April 12. We'll report on the winners next week and blog about the research over the next month.

The problems of Title I funding have been making their way into the news lately, helped in part by a symposium last week at the Center for American Progress that grappled with what’s wrong with schools’ use of this annual appropriation of $14.5 billion in federal dollars. The symposium showcased several papers – one written by New America’s own Jennifer Cohen – that provided details on how this federal program falls short.

Just 10 days before that event, at a journalism seminar here, another expert took the microphone to expound on Title I.

The following is an excerpt from a post at our sister blog, Higher Ed Watch:

For some time now, education schools have come under fire for the quality of teachers they prepare and graduate. Just this fall, multiple critical reports have been released, calling for these programs to improve clinical practice and coursework in the developmental sciences, and better reflect the issues, initiatives and reforms that are becoming more popular in school districts. In addition, U.S. News & World Report and the National Council on Teacher Quality announced a joint effort in January to rate the 1,400 education schools across the country.

Last week, we at the New America Foundation's Early Education Initiative added our own analysis on problems with the preparation and licensing of teachers who work specifically with young children in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, first-, second- and third-grade classrooms

It’s never easy to tell a clear story about the federal budget and how it works, but this year the challenge is particularly acute. So we’ve asked one of our experts here at the New America Foundation to help clarify and explain the progress, or lack of progress, that Congress is making in its work on approving a federal budget that will fund programs in early education and other areas.

If you had to pick the hardest nuts to crack in early education policy, what would they be?

That was the question that animated discussions near the end of our policy forum last week. Everyone who attended -- which included about 70 people from school districts, national advocacy groups, philanthropic foundations and research centers -- was assigned to one of six roundtables. Each table had the same assignment: From a list of subject areas, they were asked to choose two that evoke the most challenging problems among educators and policymakers in the early education space. Here's what they had to choose from: