Early Lessons: a radio documentary

What has been the biggest, fastest expansion of public education in American history? Preschool. A new radio documentary by American Radio Works, Early Lessons, examines how early child care and education are changing public schools.

Starting with the Perry Preschool Project in the early 1960s researchers have begun to note how quality early learning can have a lasting impact on the lives of individuals and bring positive outcomes for society. Early Lessons describes how the Perry Preschool Project was conceived and the surprising outcomes from the study. It's fascinating to listen to the teachers from the Perry Preschool talk about how they developed their developmentally appropriate curriculum. They were focused both on giving the children the confidence and desire to learn as well as mastering skills that would help them improve their IQ scores, a measure that was believed to be crucial for a child's future success.

The results from the Perry Preschool study has also changed how we define the success of a program. The results from the project indicated that while the IQ score gains can "fade out" over time, the program participants benefited in other ways not measured by IQ - more likely to own a home, have a savings account, stay out of prison, have a higher paying job and more. These other benefits have an even greater impact on the community as a whole, beyond an individuals supposed IQ score, this is where the return on investment can be measured.

The Perry Preschool Project continues to be a cornerstone piece of research that influences public policy in Minnesota and around the nation.

The challenge is taking the good pieces of the Perry Preschool and replicating them in cost effective ways. Pieces like the quality of the program and the developmental appropriateness of the curriculum are more easily measured and can be replicated. The more challenging thing is to replicate the activities and lessons that gave the children the skills and motivation to continue to do well in school and later in life.

On the American Radio Works website you can listen to the documentary, download the audio or read the transcript.

Change the first 5 years and you change everything

Child Poverty in Minnesota Increases

The Children's Defense Fund - Minnesota has released their 2009 Kids Count Data book, The Building Blocks for Successful Children. According to this research, 140,000 children in Minnesota lived in poverty in 2008 - an increase of more than 20% from 2000. These numbers do not include any additional families that may have fallen into poverty due to the current economic recession. CDF estimates that an additional 44, 000 - 56,000 children could now be counted as living in poverty.

Poverty is a significant predictor for a child's future success in school and in life. Without investments in the early years to lay a solid foundation, these children will struggle to become our future leaders.

From the CDF press release:

KIDS COUNT Fact Sheet

Losing Ground:
• 11 percent of Minnesota’s children lived in poverty in 2008.
• 24 percent of Asian children in Minnesota live below the poverty level in 2007, the worst among all 32 states participating in KIDS COUNT with enough Asian children to produce reliable estimates.
• 88,000 Minnesota children did not have health care coverage in 2008, an increase from 2007.
• 270,247 (33 percent) Minnesota children received free/reduced price lunch during the 2008-2009 school year.

Gaining Ground:
• Students dropping out of school has declined 57 percent since 2000.
• 6,277 children were abused and neglected, a 33 percent decrease from 2002.
• 10,895 children were arrested for a serious crime, down from 15,398 in 2000.

The Children's Defense Fund - Minnesota also has county-level data that shows how children are living compared to other years.

US House Approves Legislation to Support Quality Early Learning

It was an exciting week last week, as the US House passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (H.R. 3221) by a vote of 251 to 171 on Thursday. The bill includes $8 billion for the new Early Learning Challenge Fund which would provide competitive grants to challenge states to build comprehensive, high-quality early learning systems for children up to age five. The Senate is expected to take up their version of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act soon. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, be sure to thank the Minnesota representatives who voted in favor of the legislation, Reps. Ellison, McCollum, Oberstar, Peterson and Walz. You can be connected to your representative by calling (202) 225-1904 or find out who represents you by clicking here.

Senator Harkin is New Chair of HELP Committee

The sad passing of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) last month left vacant the chairmanship of the powerful Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP), which oversees the Child Care and Development Block Grant, Head Start, education for young children with disabilities and special needs, Title I, and Higher Education.

We are pleased to announce that longtime friend to Minnesota and champion of education, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has graciously accepted the chairmanship, while Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark) will replace Sen. Harkin as Chair of the Agricultural Committee, which is responsible for child nutrition programs including the Child and Adult Care Food Program. Read his announcement here.

Innovation for Family, Friend and Neighbor Care continues

Today in Minnesota is the second of a two day national meeting on Family, Friend and Neighbor (FFN) care. The meeting is put on by the national Build and attendees from various Build states are attending. Ready 4 K is the home of Build in Minnesota. According to the National Build Initiative, the goals of the meeting include:

• Increase dialogue and build momentum among all stakeholders to advance support for Family, Friend and Neighbor (FFN) caregivers.
• Provide a forum for peer-to-peer and expert information and strategy sharing to examine emerging models and the lessons that can be taken from them.
  
• Foster an understanding of how to integrate FFN care into early childhood systems and how to create and advance a policy agenda for FFN care.
• Foster an understanding of how the strengths of FFN care relate to our long-standing conceptions about quality and quality improvement, particularly related to cultural compatibility between a child’s family life and his/her child care life.
• Stimulate thought about next steps to forward our shared agendas in the field.

Minnesota was chosen to host this meeting partly because of the groundbreaking legislation passed in 2007 that made Minnesota the first state to dedicate money to supporting Family, Friend and Neighbor caregivers. Richard Chase from Wilder Research published a case study of Minnesota's success, State Policies for Supporting Family Friend and Neighbor Care.

There's also exciting things happening around the country. Representatives from Washington state and Illinois also share what is happening in their states. In Illinois, great innovation is happening by using dollars from their Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) to reimburse FFN providers when the children they care for participate in the state's Pre-K program four days a week and have a weekly home visit.

The next steps in Minnesota are:

• to continue DHS FFN pilots with CCDF quality set-aside/ARRA stimulus funding (see Ready 4 K's Milestones article, "Family Friend and Neighbor Grants Renewed")
  
• create a webpage on the Child Care Resource & Referral network website devoted to FFNs
• further work from systems building efforts such as Build and MECCS and state departments to improve quality of FFNs
  

Take Action! US House to Vote on Early Learning this Week!

What’s Happening

This week, Congress is going to vote on the most major piece of federal early care and education legislation in almost a decade. The Early Learning Challenge Fund, included in H.R. 3221, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009, would support critical quality improvements for young children.

The legislation would provide $1 billion a year for eight years to states to develop and enhance high-quality early learning opportunities for all young children, especially those at-risk of not coming to school ready to learn.

This bill, paired with existing supports for current providers, sends a strong signal about the need to invest in comprehensive initiatives at the state level to increase the quality of early learning programs to ensure that children succeed. The bill will also create federal partnerships to help improve the quality of early care and education programs for children from birth to five in all educational settings.

What you can do

Please e-mail and call your US Representative today and urge them to:

Support the Early Learning Challenge Fund included in H.R. 3221, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009. This bill supports critical quality improvements so that young children are prepared for school. It will give states like Minnesota the support we need to deliver high quality early learning programming for young children. Please support the Early Learning Challenge fund in H.R. 3221.

See Ready 4 K's Action Page for more information.

Deadline: End of the day, Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Find your US Representative here (enter zip in upper left corner). If you know your US Representative, you can reach the main Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask to be connected to them.

photo by kimberyfaye

Momentum for Early Care and Education at the Federal Level

More resources to states in support of early care and education are one step further in the political process. Demonstrating a strong commitment to early childhood, Congress is proposing $8 billion over eight years to states in the form of Early Learning Challenge Grants. The Early Learning Challenge Grants are part of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009 (also known as SAFRA or HR 3221). SAFRA passed the House Education and Labor Committee today with a 30-17 vote. The Early Learning Challenge Grants are under Title IV of SAFRA.

What does this bill do?

The focus of this legislation is to encourage states to develop a comprehensive quality early learning system for children birth to five, particularly for children who are at risk of starting school not fully prepared. The system needs to include:

• Early Learning Standards Reform
• Evidence-based program quality standards.
• Enhanced program review and monitoring of program quality.
• Comprehensive professional development.
• Coordinated system for facilitating screenings for disability, health, and mental health needs.
• Improved support to parents.
• Process for assessing children’s school readiness.
• Use data to improve child outcomes.

There will be two types of challenge grants, Quality Pathways grants for states that already have many of the system components in place and Development grants for states that have pieces of a system but need resources to move to a comprehensive system. States can use the grants to further several aspects of a quality early learning system such as professional development of the early learning workforce, a quality rating system, improving the quality of programs, parent outreach and coordination with other programs that serve children and families. Because of the comprehensive nature of the system, all types of early learning settings would be eligible to receive resources including child care, Head Start and school based programs.

What does this mean for Minnesota?

This will mean more resources for our state to help more kids start kindergarten fully prepared. Minnesota has pieces of a quality early learning system and federal resources will help families and children be able to access higher quality early childhood opportunities.

What’s next?

The bill will need to be heard by the full House and take a floor vote. The Education and Labor Committee is hoping to take the bill to a floor vote before Congress takes their August Recess. A companion bill has not yet been introduced in the Senate. The earliest this will happen is this fall. A Senate version will need to be heard in committees and voted on by the full Senate before going to a Conference committee and eventually being signed by President Obama.

What can you do?

Call your Congressperson and urge them to support the Early Learning Challenge Fund in H.R. 3221.

You can contact your Congressperson by calling the U.S. House at (202) 224-3121.

The Message: Please support the Early Learning Challenge Fund as part of the higher education student loan program changes in H.R 3221. It will provide a significant increase in resources for improving the quality of early childhood education in Minnesota. Raising the quality of early learning and development wherever children spend their time is important to their school and lifelong success.

See our Action Alert page for more information.

Links and resources

On Monday July 20, several national groups held a conference call with Dr. Ruth Friedman, Senior Education Policy Advisory to the House Committee on Education and Labor. You can find an audio recording and transcript of the call here.

There is also a summary of the Early Learning Challenge Grants put out by the House Education and Labor Committee and the full text of the legislation.