Sunday, May 10, 2009
Stimulating preschool education
Elizabeth Strother
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From the RoundTable blog
Roanoke city's school system cut out its preschool program for 3yearolds in the coming year to make budget ends meet, a step back from its efforts to incorporate preschool into its educational mission.
Roanokers shouldn't confuse the loss, though, with the Virginia Preschool Initiative for 4-year-olds, which remains intact -- and might be improved with help from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which readers might know as President Obama's federal stimulus package.
These are early times for states trying to determine how the stimulus money can and would best be spent, but some of the additional dollars that will be available to Virginia over the next two years will be directed at improving early childhood development programs in public and private settings. It will be money well-spent.
The idea is to help preschool-age children acquire the learning tools they will need for success in the classroom and, as a consequence, reduce the need later for expensive interventions to try to salvage children who are failing. Obama is a proponent of high-quality early childhood education as a way to change the country's education dynamics.
Skeptics remain, but a growing scientific understanding of how the brain develops supports the argument that quality preschool can be life-altering, particularly for children we delicately classify as "at risk" -- of failing in school now and of failing in life later, at profound costs to the individuals and to society.
Kathy Glazer, director of Virginia's Office of Early Childhood Development, said last week that the stimulus package did not allocate money specifically for pre-kindergarten, but some social services and education revenue streams can be tapped to enhance early learning.
Virginia will get an added $38 million over two years in its Child Care Development Block Grant, for example. The economic recovery act requires $6.4 million of it to be spent on quality enhancements.
Gov. Tim Kaine, an unsuccessful advocate for universal pre-K access for Virginia's 4-year-olds, has made some progress toward that goal during his term, not least of which was creating the Early Childhood Development office.
The office falls under both the Department of Social Services and the Department of Education on the state government's organizational chart. Its job is to coordinate state services for children from birth to age 5, years when developmental and educational needs are intricately connected and might be met by a web of family, public and privately paid caregivers.
"The whole child care industry's primary focus is providing care for parents while they work," Glazer said. "We're trying over time to put focus on school readiness, like integrating the QRIS," the Quality Rating and Improvement System the state uses to assess Virginia Preschool Initiative-funded classes.
"We're trying to support quality across the whole system, so it's not just baby-sitting."
As with stimulus funding in every area of government spending, the challenge is investing it in ways that will stimulate the economy quickly and have a positive impact beyond the next two years, when the federal dollars will go away.
"Our federal partners are encouraging the state to look at system infrastructure enhancements," Glazer said. The Social Services Department knows there's a need to raise child care reimbursement rates to bring them more into line with actual costs and to help localities reduce their waiting lists of eligible families. "But we don't want to set up families to be cut out when the window closes" on the stimulus program.
Similarly, Virginia's Department of Education has offered local school districts tips on how to use stimulus dollars that only temporarily have pumped up funding for Title I schools -- those with high concentrations of economically disadvantaged, at-risk students, as many in Roanoke have. The DOE notes that, while Congress did not mandate new pre-K spending, it did indicate recipients of Title I funds are expected to use some of the stimulus money for early childhood programs and activities.
Roanoke schools are "investigating several avenues" where stimulus dollars might be applied to its pre-K program, Vella Wright, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, said last week.
The district is looking at professional development opportunities for teachers, for example, and upgrading toddler-size equipment for its preschools. "Right now," Wright said, "the biggest challenge is where classes will be," given the district's newly redrawn school attendance zones.
"Our 4-year-old preschool program is strong."
Better-educated teachers and age-appropriate equipment would help keep it strong years after today's preschoolers head off to high school.
Strother is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.
