Posted on 01/05/2008 4:55:42 AM PST by Amelia
Early childhood experts and parents expressed support yesterday for a measure before the D.C. Council that would extend pre-kindergarten programs to 2,000 more 3- and 4-year-olds in the city.
Although researchers and education advocates at the council hearing agreed that pre-K can boost academic achievement in later years, debate centered on what constitutes a high-quality program for D.C. students.
..."Pre-K teachers with BA degrees achieve better results," said Libby Doggett, executive director of Pre-K Now, which is advocating for expanded early childhood programs in the city. "Permitting some classrooms to do it one way and others to do it another way is the wrong approach," she added.
...Education experts say that many low-income students arrive in kindergarten already behind, unfamiliar with the alphabet and numbers, because they lack family support.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
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Millions of parents teach their kids their ABC’s. It doesn’t take a degree. Go back to the old way. Change the age of entry to K. No need to add another year or two to the education system...particularly on that end.
“Millions of parents teach their kids their ABC’s. It doesn’t take a degree. Go back to the old way. Change the age of entry to K. No need to add another year or two to the education system...particularly on that end.”
This isn’t so much about educational attainment in learning A-B-C’s, as it is about teaching dependency on government. Some parents aren’t providing “family support”, so the DC government is going to step into that role.
I imaging it won’t be long until we see very early Pre-K education starting maybe 10-15 minutes after the umbilical cord has been cut.
This has been the plan all along.
Go back to "bring your own lunch". The gov will provide the "milk".
I agree that parents can do this. One point of the article is that many low-income parents in areas like D.C. are not doing this.
Some of the parents are only children themselves, some are substance-abusers, some are working and not taking care of their children - but in a number of cases, the children aren't getting the "basics" one would expect before they begin school, and they start school way behind.
I'm really not sure what the answer is - do you take these children away from their parents at an early age? How do you justify that? Where do you put them? Or do you provide what the parents aren't providing through programs such as Pre-K, or do you wait until the students begin school and provide extra remediation then?
Or do you just let them continue to fail?
I don't pretend to know the answer, but I don't think there is necessarily an easy answer, or one that will work for all children.
The problem is that the preK advocates think there IS one solution for ALL. This is how all nanny-state programs begin. They use poverty to get the program initiated in “poor” areas. They use competiveness as an excuse someplace else. As more parents do put their children in preK, more then feel obligated. This is what they are counting on. And while this is happening, we have daycare workers forming unions. What do you think the next step is for them? Before long, you’re going to be required to have a degree in parenting before you are allowed to give birth.
If you'd seen some of the teenaged parents I've seen, you'd be inclined to think that at least a license might be a good idea.
In fact, I've had a number of students who were parents well before they were of an age to get a drivers license.
And this is the other purpose - to keep women in the workforce.
“Their mothers also benefited. They “were more likely to return to school [to finish high school] when their child went to kindergarten and [more likely to be] employed and employed in a higher-status job,” he added.”
“at least a license might be a good idea.”
Then give as much assistance as possible to those mothers by providing services at community centers.
This is the irony of it. Many children do not need preK type programs, which were originally designed just to help poor children catch up, but middle class parents feel their children are missing an edge if they don't get the programs too. If middle class children also use the programs, the disadvantaged children just remain behind...
I do believe that many middle-class parents see the programs as much as free daycare as anything else ("Why should I pay to put my child in daycare if the state is providing these programs anyway?")
Ideally, the mothers would be married with husbands who would support them and their children. In the real world, many of them had babies at 14 or 15 with some boy who may now be in prison or dead, but could have also been 14 or 15 with no job skills, and is probably not in the mother's or child's life at this point.
If the mother dropped out of school when she had her baby, is there a net benefit to society for her to go back to school and get a diploma and a better paying job? Or is that her problem?
Do you know there is a school in the northern part of our city that prohibits kids from bringing peanut butter to school in their lunches? Yes, because in the event Johhny shares with Susie, and Susie is allergic to peanuts, they have a problem.
I’ve been fighting Universal PreK in my area (NYS) since the mid-1990s. A few months ago, the school district sent a one-page questionnaire to all households. It gave no information whatsoever on preK. At the bottom of the sheet was one question. Do you have children you would be interested in placing in a preK program. Please list their names. That was it. 48 children’s names were rec’d. Not enough, really. Now the question becomes do we initiate a program with only 48 children? I am furious about the way this was done. You are right. You have young mothers who do not understand what is going on within the education community who perceive this as free daycare - and the NEA, along with preK teacher advocates are certainly willing to let them think this because it furthers their agenda.
We need to focus on the original cause of the societal problem and that is that there are too many middle class mothers in the workforce. It was the traditional middle class mother at home networking with other mothers who maintained the stability of our neighborhoods and our society in general. When middle class moms entered the workforce en masse in the mid-to-late 80s, that is when we saw an increase in most of our problems. Prior to that, the problem was fairly contained.
“Or do you just let them continue to fail?”
Much as I really, really don’t like that answer, I think that’s where we’re heading. In the long run, the U.S. is simply not going to be able to afford to be a grand welfare state. With the ability to move funds essentially at the speed of light and to employ talent internationally with the click of a mouse, the ability to raise the revenue to support a welfare state is being diminished.
The question in my mind is whether the end of the welfare state is going to be a soft or hard landing. I tend to think the latter. A company or talented individual can move faster than you can tie them down, but that is not widely acknowledged.
You could make the argument that some of these kids need to be taken out of these toxic environments and be put...where? Go take a look at one of the adoption websites and you’ll see that there are already lots of kids that aren’t getting placed. I think that the point where this ends is when the welfare system ends. It won’t be pretty.
I don’t favor pre-K programs in the government schools. I’m not much of a fan of post-K programs in the government schools, either. In my view, we make a reasonable attempt at remediation once the child enters government school around age 5, while recognizing that we don’t have the resources to act as de facto families for thousands if not millions of children where no family can really be said to exist.
Until the welfare system does end, we will continue to be amazed at how a few hundred dollars a month can negatively influence behavior.
I have young friends in another state who are well educated, middle class parents. Their state has a program which provides toys, books, and parenting classes for young parents, designed to improve the parenting skills and educational achievement of the underprivileged and uneducated classes.
My friends are not the sort of parents for which this program was designed, nor do they "need" the program, but they participate because they "can" and because they want to get the "freebies" in addition to items they purchase for their children.
I agree that having mothers at home would help with many of society's problems.
“Go back to “bring your own lunch”. The gov will provide the “milk”.”
In principle, I agree. Sadly, I briefly worked a job at a Boys & Girls club when I was right out of college.
I was shocked by the number of kids who never got fed at home.
Their only meals were what they ate at school, and what we could scrounge up for them at the club.
“As more parents do put their children in preK, more then feel obligated”
And no one seems to be paying attention to the study that showed when you pre-school aged children go beyond a certain number of hours in a structured program (I believe it was somewhere around 15 hrs.) it is actually detrimental to the children.
In the long run, the U.S. is simply not going to be able to afford to be a grand welfare state...The question in my mind is whether the end of the welfare state is going to be a soft or hard landing. I tend to think the latter.
Of course, we have the illegal immigrants doing the "jobs Americans won't do" in part because the Americans who lack skills either can make more money on welfare or have the entitlement mentality that tells them such work is oppressive and beneath them -- or maybe it's just not "fun".
I agree that changing that mindset is not going to be at all pretty. Not at all.
In my view, we make a reasonable attempt at remediation once the child enters government school around age 5, while recognizing that we don’t have the resources to act as de facto families for thousands if not millions of children where no family can really be said to exist.
It doesn't seem to me that we are really making "a reasonable attempt at remediation" in most cases, but I agree that it's necessary.
I also think that it's unreasonable to expect schools to be able to function "as de facto families for thousands if not millions of children where no family can really be said to exist", but that does seem to be the case today, especially in our urban schools.
“Go take a look at one of the adoption websites and you’ll see that there are already lots of kids that aren’t getting placed.”
And some well-meaning parents are trying to return the older children they tried to provide for.
Why?
Because they weren’t prepared for a violent child making death threats - or exposing their other children to drugs.
It is a very complicated problem, and there is a great mass of damaged children with no one to look out for them.
I agree. Besides homeschoolers, no one seems to be fighting against this. It isn’t “PC” and you start the “Mommy Wars all over again.” Men don’t want to touch it. They are afraid to irritate their feminist wives.
” Men don’t want to touch it. They are afraid to irritate their feminist wives.”
Well...there are all types out there.
Some of it is feminist wives...and sometimes the husband can demand his wife “carry her own weight” (I have one of those in my family) - We even see that mentality from some female-hating freepers.
Most often it is a joint decision between the two to pursue a lifestyle that places income/housing/vehicles/lifestyle that automatically rule out one parent staying home to care for the children.
And the nagging fact remains...a government program that funds structured programs for preschoolers for long hours during the week are funding something that will harm these kids.
This is the age group that needs unstructured playtime at home with a parent who loves them more than any teacher with a bachelor’s degree.
Every study I have seen shows that any pre-K benefit disappears by 3rd grade. It doesn't seem sensible spend large amounts of time and money only to effect a temporary change.
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