<p>"But we are essentially the only developed country in the world where early childhood education is mainly considered a private responsibility and not a public good. "</p>
I don’t agree with that at all. I think the response is to say “this isn’t the best we can do, what else is there?” </p>
<p>I live in NYC and I see the good and the bad and there are so many amazing educators who are trying to make a difference, but we aren’t moving fast enough or far enough which means that I think the status quo is not the best option.</p>
<p>zoosermom, if you are really interested in those questions, you ought to spend some time on Heckman’s webpage, because he devotes a lot of attention to them. Basically, he’s a conservative economist whose specialty is evaluation. On the whole, there are not a lot of government programs of which he is fond, but quality early childhood education is the exception – a rare case of public investment that is justified on a purely financial analysis. </p>
<p>Things can always be better, and no broad program is going to be a “best case scenario”. But I didn’t read you as arguing that there were ways to get better results. What you wrote was more along the lines of you can’t get any result, so why try?</p>
<p>PCHope: “Early childhood education” and “K-12” are almost mutually exclusive, “K” being something of a no-man’s land between them. We spend very little on early childhood education, mostly remedial programs (like Head Start) that don’t even attempt universal service for the target group. We don’t generally have universal kindergarten, although we are inching in that direction. Most countries now have universal pre-school programs.</p>
You completely misread my posts and added your own bias. I even posted an anecdote that I thought was worthwhile and explained that I thought helping parents was the way to go. There is no basis in my posts for the way you read them. You extrapolated from “this isn’t working” to “do nothing” based on what is in your own head. I said, first, “this isn’t working” and didn’t extrapolate. Then I clarified within the conversation. To me, my posts about the schools having so little time left to educate made it self-evident that I wanted to resolve those other things like social services and healthcare outside of school. Which I do. But you know what? I would also support boarding schools for at-risk kids in some circumstances.</p>
<p>Edited to add: JHS, I think the reason why we are talking around each other is that there were two things going on early in the thread. The response to the specific article and the discussion of the issue as a whole. I think we jumped off the article pretty quickly, but my initial post was specific to the author’s conclusions.</p>
<p>zoosermom, I apologize for missing your post about GED classes for parents, and for failing to understand that you were arguing for more parental services. But I wasn’t just reacting to your “ineffective” post, I was reacting to this: “If a child is from a home that doesn’t provide appropriate parenting, then there is very little that society can do except pray that this child or that one over there will get lucky in overcoming his parents.” Reading your subsequent posts, I think that line really doesn’t capture your thinking.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you are worried about high costs and low measures of effectiveness, you should look at parent-education programs. I think they are a really hard sell. “Helping the parents” is very, very challenging, especially once you move beyond the very small group of parents that volunteer to be helped and stay with it. But lots of education reform strategies, including those in early childhood education, include a lot of efforts to involve parents and draw them into the education process so they have a better understanding how they can help their kids succeed.</p>
It does capture my thinking, but maybe doesn’t go far enough. If the home doesn’t provide appropriate parenting, let’s help make THAT possible instead of working around it. It’s not always possible, but sometimes it is. I would like to help the parents to help the kids and themselves. What I’m saying is that if A is n’t working well, add B and C. As you said, no one solution will work for everyone, so think on a smaller and more individual scale. I also don’t think early childhood education is the be-all and end-all. Yes it’s nice, but let’s not give up on the kids who are older than that. I am not saying and did not say that Head Start should be discontinued. What I am saying is that it is not such a great success that we can point and say “there, we did it.” At best it’s small gains, which is not nothing, but it’s ok to want more than that. My objection is to assume that any criticism of Head Start is an attack on early childhood education or a political statement. I am a big believer in honest and open conversations, even if they aren’t always what one wants to hear. It’s not about not wanting to spend money, it’s about wanting to spend money wisely.</p>
<p>My daughter’s principal was a black woman from a tough, tough neighborhood. I think she had the right idea for her population and families. Which his not to say that anything she did would work anywhere else, but in my opinion, there is a lot to be said for creativity and innovation and personalization. That particular school was a lot more successful than its demography might have predicted and some of it was because of small, innovative ideas that helped change lives on the personal level.</p>
<p>*There is no amount of money that can ensure that all children have similarly cognitively stimulating early childhoods. Unless the state is going to take custody.
*
Of course there is. If we’re talking any amount of money:</p>
<p>-Universal health care coverage to ensure good prenatal care for pregnant women.
-A good social safety net that includes decent food support/WIC for families in poverty, so that pregnant women and their young children can eat healthily.
-Publicly-funded or subsidized parenthood education classes.
-Funds to public libraries that allow poor children to access the same kinds of books and technology that their richer peers have access to.
-Subsidized day care; properly regulated day care centers with trained and well-paid staff.
-Public early childhood education programs that start earlier than age 5 - age 3, perhaps - with licensed pre-kindergarten teachers.
-Publicly-funded summer programs or year-round school (as studies show that much of the learning gap occurs during the summer. Rich kids go off to fancy summer camps; middle-school families find low-cost enrichment opportunities or do work with the kids over the summer, and poor kids hang out around the neighborhood).</p>
<p>It’s been acknowledged health and safety are also integral parts of education. The problem is that assuming that those things are only the responsibility of the parents. If we want strong children who grow into strong adults who can run our country, why isn’t that all of our responsibilities? There’s also something silly about assuming that the only way to change that home environment is by taking custody. We can also provide support services to parents within the home. Even the most loving and highly educated parents are going to have issues if they only make $15,000 a year.</p>
<p>The quote from the article that caught my eye is the following:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Schools are not creating the unequal academic outcomes and schools will not be able to solve this problem. We have to do a better job being good parents.</p>
<p>The gap is very clear. I’ve stated this before. There is Scarsdale, NY about miles due north of NYC, where the average SAT scores, per capita income are among the highest in the country. Many if, not most of the graduates of that public school go to selective to highly selective college. Few commute and go to college rate is about 100% in the 2 years after high school. Then you have Yonkers, in the same county right on Scarsdale borders, and the result of that public school district is a whole other story. So are the test scores, income figures and housing prices. And the college outcomes are not like Scarsdale’s with a few outliers. Still most of the kids do go to college of some sort, and with NY’s excellent local and state school, along with low state tuition costs and TAP, good public transportation available., those kids who want to go to college have the opportunity. </p>
<p>Start moving into the Bronx, say Hunters Point, the South Bronx, and the public schools there are terrible, ghastly. The area is down right dangerous, and seedy is the best that can be said about it. Ironically, there is a fantastic public magnet school in the Bronx that students all over NYC attend…IF they had the test scores, the aptitude, the parental or other adult guiding them and encouraging them so that they can get a seat there. Not to many from Hunter Point going to Bronx Science, and the loss of those who do come from there, just down grade that area even more. That’s a problem with the magnet school systems and school choice in that it leaves behind the most vulnerable, the ones without the parental and adult backing and downgrades that area even more. Anyone who cares and could, would not stay in an area like that and send kids to such school. Those who are left are those whose parents just can’t for whatever reason do anything about that. Not even in Manhattan yet as you go down that road. </p>
<p>I’m not even sure if those kids who could most benefit from programs like Head Start are even getting there. I knew some parents who did take their kids to such programs, and they said that the participation rate was not good in their neighborhood. Some of those programs make it difficult for parents with jobs to take their children regularly. I get the feeling that these programs often benefit those in such neighborhoods who least need it and would probably do fine without it.</p>
<p>"There is no amount of money that can ensure that all children have similarly cognitively stimulating early childhoods. Unless the state is going to take custody.</p>
<p>Of course there is. If we’re talking any amount of money"</p>
<p>No. You can give healthcare, nutrition, etc. but you can’t pay for reading to a child and encouraging education in the home. Money can’t do those things, more’s the pity.</p>
<p>The country of Finland has approximately the same population as metropolitan D.C, but Finland spends only a fraction per capita of what D.C. spends in its public schools. So, I’m not sure what “equalizing spending” is going to accomplish for D.C.</p>
<p>There are any number of programs for those kids who test as “gifted” in NYC. It’s those who miss those thresh holds that are in trouble. Yes, kids are matched with private schools and boarding schools in programs like ABC and Prep for Prep and a number of others. My son’s little Catholic school takes about 5-10% of each class through some program. But what it ends up doing is stealing those kids from the public schools, making their population less rich. And if those kids don’t perform, they spit them right back out. Sybbie has to then deal with those trainwrecks and get them out with a high school degree. See it all of the time. The numbers are better at these privates, IF they do not get thrown out, but out they go if they do not perform. The publics are stuck with ALL of the non performing kids and have to do deal with that issue which is the crux of the problem.</p>
<p>I think the point of the article is that schools are NOT the crux of the problem. The problem starts at home and continues in school. That is why NO amount of money can remedy the problem. </p>
<p>Money can make schools better. But money cannot cure poor parenting.</p>
<p>I imagine money could actually help with poor parenting. How easy do you think it is to be a good parent if you have to work multiple minimum wage jobs to barely support your family?</p>
<p>The thing is, with anything you offer a child, you have to keep it up. Head Start programs show this very clearly. Yes, they have a positive impact, but as the child gets older, the effects start to ebb. No surprise there. Give a kid piano lessons at age 3,4,5, and then pull the instrument, and how well do you think they’ll be playing at age 12? What happens with many of the schools in the at risk neighborhoods, is that provide less , a lot less, than those schools that are in neighborhoods where the parents are vigilant about making sure the school does due diligence, push the schools for more, and keep them on their toes, as well as providing at home. When the cat’s away, the mice will play, and so it is with many schools and teachers. I’ve had to go in and yank some chains regularly, much as I hate doing so, and this is at schools where they should know better, as the parents are on top of these things and the momentum is for the students to be optimally treated. </p>
<p>By the time these kid are high school aged, in some of these neighborhoods, there is hardly a kid in those schools whose parents are capable of getting them the heck out of that cesspool. What does one expect to be left there?</p>
<p>Many NYT commenters understand what I have often pointed out on CC – that since IQ is correlated to income and is heritable, the children of rich people are on average smarter than the children of middle income kids, who in turn are smarter on average than the children of the poor. Here is one of the comments:</p>
