Sharing Web Resources

NIEER

I decided to follow the NIEER blog..."Preschool Matters...Today!"

  I found an article called (Almost) Everything You Wanted to Know about Pre-K in the Federal Budget".  The Department of Education is requesting $75 billion over 10 years.  State funding would be based on the number of families with 4 years olds at or below poverty.  The budget also asks for $750 million in discretionary funds for Preschool Development Grants for the 2014 year.  This money would be for states to create or expand a high quality preschool system serving 4 year olds from low and moderate income families.  The Department of Health and Human Services budget has $1.4 million for Early Head Start, $200 million to support high quality care, and $15 billion over 10 years to support home visiting programs. 

I then followed a link to see "What's New".  Here I found an interesting article called, "The Push for Pre-K: Has the time come for universal early education?"  This article gave information on both sides of the argument.  The first contributor, Rachel Sheffield, is a research associate from the conservative Heritage Foundation.  She co-wrote a paper stating that pre-k and head start do not get the results to justify spending in Obama's preschool initiative.  She goes on to say that we should focus on the children being delayed because they are brought up in single parent families rather than focusing on programs.  More discouraging, is a report by the Department of Health and Human Services which suggests academic gains made in early head start fade by third grade.  W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institution for Early Education Research at Rutgers University rebuts by pointing to the recent Chicago Child-Parent Center Study.  This shows children of preschool programs graduated at a higher rate.  It showed a 7 - 1 return on investment.  He adds that it keeps a child from being put into a costly special education program when they reach kindergarten or first grade.

I get very angry when I read articles like this that slam the early education field.  I noticed that the two sources against funding for early programs don't have the early education background that W. Steven Barnett has.  Background is a great indicator of knowledge, and, in my opinion, I would much rather take the advice of those in the field such as W. Steven Barnett. 

I also noticed many of the links on the home page of the NIEER site where very familiar topics - - access, assessment, outcomes, English Language Learners, Governance and Accountability, Quality and Curriculum, and  State Pre-K Evaluations to name a few.  Every topic we are discussing can be found on this website.  It is a wealth of information.