I remember almost all of them but I am in my late 50’s. I wish I could go back to those days for just one summer day and be 10 yrs old. My grandson is growing up in a completely different world today.

It is a completely different world. It was a great place to grow up and that doesn’t have to end. With some engineering, it can be both worlds, because some of today’s world is really nice to have – like dentistry for kids. Remember how terrible it was to have seven cavities and knowing you’d spend the whole summer in and out of the chair of horror? I suppose I should be grateful they couldn’t do root canals in those days.

I remember flat tires and missing events because no one came along to give you a ride. Of course rides from strangers were safe in those days, there were no cell phones, so you either waited or walked. But when you walked, you could stop by the gas station and get an inner tube that was free and the guy would blow it up. If your parents drove you, which was nearly unheard of, they wouldn’t stop at the gas station. So you walked a lot. You had to wear bathing caps in the pool even when the boy’s hair was longer than the girls’.

Remember how roller skates would come off at the worst possible time and the bruise was terrific? If you fell, oops. Now there are analgesics for scrapes and cuts.

Remember when the elastic failed in your swimsuit, and the cotton suit was instantly three sizes too big? You got ONE swimsuit, and if you tore it, that was your tough luck. You got one pair of school shoes a year and if your feet grew – too bad. Shoes were expensive.

Do you remember your first stockings and how you had to endure that thing that kept them up? Much less the monthly nightmare. I’m sure the combination sent souls from purgatory in droves. I remember sewing the runs in my stockings, nail polishing them to stop a run, and borrowing some from my mother who wore a size smaller – that was a trip. When panty hose came it, it was like wearing ballet tights – it was great.

You had to wear a skirt every day to school or some hideous school uniform designed by some nun who hadn’t worn street clothes for fifty years, and when you rolled it up to look like the world, the ring around the middle looked like a spare tire. I remember I got this neat outfit that had this pair of shorts covered by two panels – one in the front and one in the back. I thought I was in heaven. The school principal thought I was devious.

I remember the nuns in traditional garb that I respected with all my heart, and when they arrived in those awful new habits, sans rosary, it was a complete shock – mostly because the old flowing rigging was magnificent, and the new one just bad taste. They stopped getting the seats on the bus, and parents eyed them with a whole other look.

I went to school with a girl who was mentally retarded because she had hit the dashboard on her first car ride from the hospital as a newborn – no car seats in those days. Do you remember that your parents ever drove over sixty miles and hour? Our speed limit at home on the island was 5 or 10 mph. We had a Taunus in those days.

It was always safe to go out and play, and we never locked a thing. If there had been keys, we would have lost them. We had 18 doors in our home on the island.

Does anyone remember that “hot” meant open a window and “cold” meant put on a sweater? We were lucky because we lived on an island for a long time that had a steady climate of about 65 degrees – nobody ever got hot or cold. When we moved to Pittsburgh, I couldn’t believe the summer heat.

TV out west was a couple of hours a day. We got the TV in about 1957. It took six weeks to repair it. Today, when the TV breaks, you just buy a new one. Computers have replaced the car engine. It’s a lot cleaner and it’s indoors and families don’t have to endure a myriad of cars jacked up on cinder blocks in the front yard. Now you can have computers jacked up the dining room table for months instead.

What are our favorite things about the 21st century? Relaxed clothes, computers, email, nearly free phone service, the availability of new and interesting food, and the fact that cancer doesn’t mean instant death? Anybody relate?

What would be a good meshing of old and new? Times. The old work week of 9-5 would be a help. Kids went to school at 9:00, and Dad left for the office about 8:30. He always walked, took the ferry at the bottom of the island. I don’t ever remember my father taking the car.

That morning with the family was a good way to start the day. It was not race and dash out of the house at 6:15. I think children were healthier then because they were able to wake up on their own and they had time to think before going off to school.

Evening dinners, something you can count on with the family would be a nice touch stone. And whole Sundays without stores would be a good start as well. If offices shut down at 5:00 and people actually went home, it would help families be families.

The old and the new – it’s probably been a thought provoker for 40 thousand years.

I absolutely LOVE, this article. For a school that has twice the number of boys to girls, it’s obviously a problem we are well suited to accept.

Boys are louder, more reckless, harder to get to cooperate, harder headed, and definitely more interested in “nasty stuff” like the study of insects up close and personal, than most of the girls – some exceptions. They are more likely to hit first and ask questions later, throw a toy across the room, laugh when it’s not acceptable – like prayer time – get dirty and resist washing, and they have absolutely no bathroom shame. When you tell a boy there’s probably worm poop under his fingernails, he thinks it’s neat. The girl next to him will shiver with disdain. When one boy jumps from the tallest platform in a daredevil leap, every boy wants to try it. The girls stay with the steady thrill of mastering another skill, like jungle gym.

Teaching twice the boys than the girls means paying attention to a curriculum that’s go, go, go – with plenty of outside play. It also means limiting boys to certain play stations because otherwise the girls would get little or nothing. Boys have a way of taking over.

Here is an excellent article called Biology’s Revenge:
by Rich Lowry

The surest way to get attention in American society is to become a crisis. Boys are now on their way to achieving this dubious but indispensable distinction with the new cover of Newsweek, “The Boy Crisis.”

It is to be hoped that the crisis establishes a simple truth that is astonishing anyone ever forgot — boys and girls are different. Or as Newsweek puts it, “Boys are biologically, developmentally and psychologically different from girls — and teachers need to learn how to bring out the best in every one.”

A crisis always needs its own politically correct argot. A neurologist quoted in Newsweek takes a step toward establishing one here with his statement, “Very well-meaning people have created a biologically disrespectful model of education.” Thus, the boy-in-crisis has a rallying cry, “Don’t disrespect my biology!”

That’s what has been happening for years. Feminists have wanted to believe that, given the right socialization, boys would give up their stubborn fascination with earth-moving equipment. As someone once said, “You can have your own opinion, but you can’t have your facts.”

Similarly, you can have your opinion about what gender should be, but you can’t have your own brain chemistry. Newsweek notes how in the womb, the brain of a male fetus is bathed with testosterone.

As any parent knows, that makes him different from a girl. If pedagogy systematically ignores those differences, it will be a disaster. Newsweek recounts the indices: Boys are twice as likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities than girls in elementary school; the number of boys professing a dislike of school has risen 71 percent from 1980 to 2001; men constitute 44 percent of undergraduates on college campuses, down from 58 percent 30 years ago.

If school overemphasizes sitting quietly and language skills; if recess is eliminated; if discipline is eroded; if the books feature consciousness-raising instead of action-packed narrative — then boys will be bored, disaffected and disruptive. Classrooms have to be made more boy-friendly — with more discipline, more competition and more activity — so that boys are no longer treated, as one expert put it to Newsweek, “like defective girls.”

A reason for this latest crisis is that just as girls had begun to pull even with boys in the 1990s, feminists hyped a crisis over girls doing poorly in school that caused an overreaction harmful to boys. One of the chief culprits was scholar Carol Gilligan, who is given space in Newsweek to address the boy crisis. She writes disapprovingly, “For some, the trouble boys are having with schools becomes grounds for reinstituting traditional codes of manhood, including a return to the patriarchal family.” It is clear, however, that patriarchy is exactly what many boys need — lots of patriarchy, up close and personal.

“One of the most reliable predictors of whether a boy will succeed or fail in high school,” Newsweek reports, “rests on a single question: Does he have a man in his life to look up to?” It continues: “An increasing number of boys — now a startling 40 percent — are being raised without biological dads. Psychologists say that grandfathers and uncles can help, but emphasize that an adolescent boy without a father figure is like an explorer without a map.”

Other educational theorists argue that boys would be fine if they could be made more touchy-feely. But Christina Hoff Sommers, who wrote the prescient The War Against Boys five years ago, calls boys “the last of a vanishing breed of Americans who don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about their feelings.” Instead of trying to change that, we should accept boys for who they are.

What we have witnessed recently — with more evidence of the differences between men and women, and the importance of the old-fashioned two-parent family — is biology’s revenge. If we deny what is deep-down in our nature, people get hurt — in this case, the rambunctious boys missing out on the great adventure that is learning.

Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review and author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.

Edith’s new friend and her son’s mother in law from Australia sent this to her, and she (Edith) sent this to me. I love it. And yes I remember all these things. I had to remember the word exchange between the English- Australian version and ours like lolli is candy and petrol is gas and sand shoes are thongs ( for the feet!)

Anyway, for those of you who remember these memories, have a ball. And post your memories.

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN…?

All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?

It took five minutes for the TV warm up?

Nearly everyone’s Mum was at home when the kids got home from school?

Nobody owned a purebred dog?

You’d reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?

Your Mom wore stockings that came in two pieces?

All your male teachers wore ties and female teachers had their hair done every day and wore high heels?

You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and petrol pumped, without asking, all for free, every time?

Cereals had free toys hidden inside the box?

It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents?

They threatened to keep kids back a year if they failed. . .and they did?

When a 57 Holden was everyone’s dream car?

No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?

Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, “That cloud looks like a .”

Playing footy with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?

Stuff from the shop came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?

And with all our progress, don’t you just wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savour the slower pace, and share it with the children of today?

When being sent to the principal’s office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home?

Basically we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn’t because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc.

Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat!

But we survived because their love was greater than the threat.

Send this on to someone who can still remember Nancy Drew, Laurel and Hardy, The Famous Five Secret Seven, Biggles, the Lone Ranger, Phantom, Roy and Dale and Trigger.

As well as summers filled with bike rides, cricket games, Hula Hoops, monkey bars, jilgying, visits to the beach and “conversation” lollies.

Didn’t that feel good, just to go back and say, “Yeah, I remember that”?

I am sharing this with you today because it ended with a double dare to pass it on. To remember what a double dare is, read on.

And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and too young to care. How many of these do you remember?

Lolly cigarettes, pogo sticks, marbles, Home milk delivery in glass bottles with aluminium tops Newsreels before the movie, Sandshoes, Telephone numbers with letter prefixes….(ABD 601).
45 RPM records, Hi-Fi’s, Metal ice cubes trays with levers, Mimeograph paper, Cork pop guns Drive ins, Valiants, Washtub wringers, Reel-To-Reel tape recorders, houses made of cards, Mechano Sets, THAT awful pink slab of bubble gum, Penny lollies, 35 cent a gallon petro?

Do you remember a time when… Decisions were made by going “eeny-meeny-miney-moe”? “Race issue” meant arguing about who ran the fastest?

It wasn’t odd to have two or three “Best Friends”?

The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was “boy or girl bugs”?

Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a ging?

Saturday morning cartoons weren’t 30-minute commercials for action figures?

Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles?

The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team?

Playing cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle?

Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin?

Water balloons were the ultimate weapon?

If you can remember most or all of these, then you have lived!!!!!!!

They need to add a car wash, a dry cleaners, and a dollar store. Is childcare really something that we use as a stop and drop? Anyway, I was mildly horrified by the thought; thought you would be too.

By Chris Sikich
January 18, 2006
NOBLESVILLE —

The plan commission told a developer Tuesday that it must work with the city’s staff before receiving approval for a commercial project on 18 acres at the southeast corner of Hazel Dell Road and Indiana 32.

Joseph Scimia, attorney for Peacock Hazel Dell, said the project won’t be a strip center.

Businesses that could include a drugstore, gas station, restaurant and child-care center would have separate buildings. Scimia expects there to be 53,000-55,000 square feet of businesses, in all.

He asked for a bigger sign and a reduction in the city’s rules about development setbacks from the street. The developer wants the project to sit back 30 feet, instead of 50, to accommodate the L-shaped property.

Joyceann Yelton, city senior planner, said the staff had some problems with a few elements of the development.

No citizens spoke at the meeting against the project.

Plan commissioner Beverley Hasenbalg said the project should be delayed to give a nearby strip center that is nearly empty time to find tenants.

Commission president Karen Goldstein told Scimia she wanted to see the project in line with the staff’s recommendations.

The commission voted 5-4 against sending an unfavorable recommendation to the council, and then voted 7-2 to send the developer back to work with the city’s staff and to continue discussion on the project to the next meeting. Seven votes are needed to take action on resolutions.

For the most part, early childhood teachers will work with many different kinds of children and families, but the topics of this training program offer a training most generally not used. It would be a sad day if this was the kind of training teachers needed most. I thought it was interesting, however.

Spotting developmental problems, problems in behavior stemming from neglect and ignorance, getting a child back on the right road, would make a better group of training programs.

Grenada Broadcasting Network, St. George Grenada

CHILD CARE TRAINING PROGRAMMES BEGIN HERE TODAY.

A series of training programmes for staff members at Child Care Homes in Grenada begins today.

The training which will be held throughout the week is organized by the Child Welfare Authority and the main facilitator will be Dr Pat Lager, a Volunteer from the Florida Association for Volunteer Action in the Caribbean and the Americas.

Topics to be discussed during the sessions include:

“Understanding Child Development and behaviour associated with Abuse”

“Dealing with Aggression”

and “Working with Children with disabilities.”

The highlight of Dr Lager’s visit is a guest lecture for the first class in the
“Introduction to Social Work Course,” at the TA Marryshow Community College.

It takes place on Thursday January 26th. Her subject for discussion will be “Choosing your path in Social Work.”

We had such a lovely time ice skating yesterday. The children loved every second.

Only one Oops when David fell and split his lip. Otherwise, the falls amounted to very little.

It was cold, but the kids loved the freedom of the ice. Some turned out to be real pros taking to the ice with fearless energy.

I was surprised that not one of the children was frightened. There were few obstacles.

Six of our parents went along, and they seemed to have a good time as well.

The staff at the ice rink gave the children buckets so they would have something to hang onto, and the kids took delight in making those buckets go as fast as they could.

This was an essential part of the fear-free morning. This child had skated with her family the day before, and she didn’t need a bucket. Children don’t need a lot of time to learn. It shows how much kids learn at this early age.

The joy in the faces was unbelievable. It was as if they had been freed from all kinds of normal restraints and could really let their spirits fly.

Mr. Tom came along, and he showed the kids how to move even faster. He was a hockey player, and he flew over the ice in split second control.

Miss Grace, Justin’s mother, was kind enough to get us organized, find skate sizes to match shoe sizes, and the rink people thought we were wonderful. Miss Grace was wonderful as well, and she gave some of the kids pointers.

I think the real achievers were the youngest. They showed their stuff by taking off like little HB Andersons! The teachers spent most of the morning laughing with delight. It was a brilliant success and well worth doing again.

Here’s yet another state program funneling money into teaching providers how to become better providers. None of these students are college educated from the beginning. Is it true that college educated women don’t seek jobs working with very young children? Is it a matter of income? What’s the education status in Europe? What are the requirements for working with very young children? It would be interesting to compare.

Sunday, January 22, 2006
Program aims to improve child care
By BETTY ADAMS, Blethen Maine News Service

By any measure, child care is big business.

A calculation by the state shows Maine parents whose children are in day care earn more than $850 million a year. In Kennebec, Sagadahoc and Franklin counties, those people spend an average of more than $100 per week for day care. That’s the equivalent of two semesters of tuition at the University of Maine.

Because of the high stakes in high-quality day care, the state has made big investments in improving the child-care picture, putting money and resources into training and education for those who run day-care facilities.

“One of my beliefs is that child care should be seen as part of the infrastructure of any area,” said Martha Naber, education program coordinator at Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield. “It has been likened to roads, bridges and sewers.”

Naber says good child care is a benefit to the consumer.

“Without good child care people feel confident with, they can’t work well. People are absent from work related to child-care issues.”

Naber says highly trained child-care providers gain greater professionalism, learn new ideas, engage children in new activities and improve the environment.

That’s where the state program Roads to Quality comes in. If providers have completed 180 hours of training in the program, they qualify for up to nine college credits in the early-education degree program at Maine’s community colleges.

“We have had 65 students graduate in the last four years with an associate’s degree in early childhood education,” Naber said. “Some are right out of high school, some are nontraditional students, people who worked at Hathaway, and people from other industries, SCI and Dexter. They are wonderful students, highly motivated.”

Naber says students get scholarship money from various sources, including the Finance Authority of Maine and a Department of Labor apprenticeship program.

Roads to Quality typically pays providers $300 per course, which covers tuition, fees and some books, Naber says.

Karen Corson, who runs Wee Care 2, a home-based day care center in Athens, completed the Roads to Quality program. After the educational portion, an observer visited Corson’s home, checked daily lesson plans, read surveys by parents and rated the program.

But Corson is concerned about raising the bar too high on training for day-care providers, saying there is a limit to how much parents can pay. A proposed state program that would rate Maine day-care programs “would make providers’ prices go up,” Corson said. “And this area (Somerset and Kennebec) cannot stand for the prices to go up, in my opinion.”

Another help in improving the skills of child-care providers came in 2003, with a $100,000 Early Learning Opportunity Grant for Kennebec and Somerset counties.

The state also funnels $640,000 in federal money every year into education, accreditation support and career development through the Roads to Quality program, according to Carolyn Drugge, state child-care administrator. An additional $2 million annually supports resource development centers that identify and respond to child-care needs in the state.

I got this from Susie E:

Hey everyone I see there is a bone marrow drive set for next Saturday from 0800 to noon at Tri-State Athletic Club in Evansville, IN. If you cannot be a donor or don’t care to be a donor at least tell other family members and friends that may be interested in becoming donors. You never know, you may be able to save someone’s life in the future by donating stem cells.

Thank You
Mark J Schneider

Lots of us donate blood, platelets, time, $ and education knowledge to those who are suffering or those who have less than we do. We are having a blood drive at school March 24. Please think about giving. If you can’t give blood, like me – it triggers migraine – think about going to the blood center and giving platelets. Giving platelets is a simple gift, but it means so much to someone who doesn’t have any. When you donate, you can sign up for the bone marrow doner program. Age is not a factor. Iron might be for some women.

On this blog, there are two sites to visit when you visit – the breast site and the hunger site listed in the links under Charities. By just visiting and using your mouse to touch the donate button, you will help someone get a free mammogram or a free meal.

Judy

judy; i am intrigued as to what your thoughts are on the photos you post?…..one of the big issues here in the UK is the one about anonymity (perhaps this is a bit too PC; here students, for example, are expected to “blur” childrens faces if they submit pictures in their assignments) but there are current big issues here about child protection/safeguarding…have a look at this

Not sure where you hail from – probably Nottingham. I’m not sure what the crime is there, but here where we are it’s about as safe and comfortable as it gets. Our community is a conservative effort of good living. At the same time we have an outstanding police force, and they have NEVER not gotten their crim and the blockheads know it. The combined efforts of city, county and state have done such a good job, our community is nearly lock free, and that means our children can go out to play.

As I drove up to the airport to pick up my daughter a few years ago, and parked nearly on top of the terminal, left my car open, nearly left my purse in the car, I realized just how free I am in this town. I can go anywhere at anytime and not fear for my safety, my children’s or my grand children’s safety.

At the same time, there is nothing you can’t get here – except there – that’s a joke. Sometimes you have to go to another airport if you want a direct flight someplace.

This picture is looking out our back door. We built here because we are on the cusp of “down town” but still in horse country, and that’s good for the kids. A few minutes south, and you’re in the Ohio River, a few north and you’re at a mall. What you are looking at are mulch pits – the truck tires. We put in a garden every year for the kids. The field behind us is a horse boarding field.

As far as the pictures go, I never mention a name. They’re just pictures, and they are primarily anonymous. I can’t imagine how dull it would be not to enjoy a real picture – to have all the faces blurred. That really doesn’t make sense to me. Are local magazines expected to do the same? Can you imagine buying a magazine and having all the faces blurred? The last picture posted here was the partnership that built the school. That’s me in the apron.

Safety shouldn’t be a prison sentence. We often show the kids pictures posted, and they are always delighted. It kind of makes their day. But if parents asked me not to post pictures of their children, I wouldn’t, of course.

Besides that, we have a watchcat. He doesn’t like strangers. His name is Maestro, and he weighs about 18 pounds.

Freedom is a real part of our life here at the school. We go a lot of places and do a lot of things with the kids including lake swimming, rock climbing, and taking off to another city like Louisville or St. Louis to see interesting things. We have a close working relationship with our parents – we’re a family place, and this blog is a part of that.

One of the things I encourage is that families share the blog pictures with their relatives who might live in a distant city and may not be able to follow the daily activities of their grandchildren. This is one source for them that I hope brings them closer. If the blog helps distant relatives keep in touch at work or at home, by seeing pictures of their grand kids, nieces, nephews and sometimes children and their friends it’s an achieved goal. Seeing the smiling face of a child has got to mean a lot.

Sorry you are so restricted. That’s a shame. Sounds a bit like Brave New World.

To parents:

Tomorrow is ice skating day. We’re off for a winter trip to the ice – it should be a slippery event. Parents are welcome to join us at 9:30. Can’t wait to see some of the efforts. I’ll take pictures, of course, and post them. Have children wear long sleeves, and mittens that fit! Mittens that fit a child are about three inches long. You can get these at the Dollar Store and at children’s shops. Children should wear their school sweatshirt if possible. We are still expecting the new sweatshirts to come in. There was a printing error. Children need two layers to avoid wearing a coat. Kids should wear a stocking hat.

A great thanks to all the parents who brought a dish to the International Event at school.

February is cultural exchange month.

(This is a picture of just one of our paper mache puppet making days. )

I got this Harvard Letter as a press release. I think the article is very timely and very interesting. At a time when the nation seems up in arms and at the same time a loss about what to do with early childhood education, but the grant money is being passed around like free tickets to someplace wonderful, this opens some question doors that should be asked.

When center day care is considered preschool, the questions we must ask are about the curriculum. We need to separate day care from preschool because often they are not the same thing. In the most popular childcare center in my city, the one with all the grant money, there is no teaching at all. I know this because we just hired one of their teachers (with a license) who was not allowed to teach there. If this is happening here, it’s happening all over the country.

When teachers get the credentials, and have their teaching skills suffocated, it makes grant money look like a game of wink and nod. At the same time, it’s no wonder teachers don’t stay in the early childhood field – what for?

Over the years, children who have come to our little place from their place at 4.5 routinely don’t know how to hold a crayon, can’t recognize their name, can’t draw a picture of anything, even a face, and can’t listen to a story mainly because they’ve never heard one. Yet every time there is a grant available, it goes to this place and the end product is new doors or windows that are kept shut. Their play ground is concrete with politely placed toys that you never see a child on. That’s because the first consideration for care is getting these kids off to a 3 hour nap.

So a division should be established between day care and early childhood education. And that division must be made by the people who administrate these places. What is the mission of the center or school? Is it a school, or is it babysitting? Can you legitimately offer babysitting until a child is five and then shove him off to big school not knowing anything and still call yourself an early childhood learning center? It amounts to fraud.

If a center intends to teach, then hire teachers and pay them. If a center gravitates toward babysitting, be frank with parents. “We don’t teach here because our staff is not equipped to teach. Your child will leave our center not knowing anything but what you teach him at home.”

Degrees of Improvement
By Michael Sadowski

Harvard Education Letter
Published by the Harvard School of Education
January/February 2006

Better preparation for elementary reading, writing, and math. Lower rates of special education placement and grade retention. Higher incomes and lower incidence of arrest during adulthood. The short- and long-term benefits of quality preschool education are well documented by research dating back decades.

Yet at a time when recognition of preschool’s importance seems to be growing, the educational qualifications of preschool teachers are steadily declining. Around the country, advocates, policymakers, and teacher educators are struggling to find ways to improve the skills and credentials of those who teach our nation’s youngest students.

Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of Pennsylvania’s Keystone Research Center, is one voice in a growing chorus of researchers calling for higher standards for the nation’s
preK educators. An MIT-trained economist who has examined workforce trends in a wide variety of fields, Herzenberg says preK education stands out as a profession marked by abysmal pay and an exceptionally high percentage of workers without health care and other benefits.

In a recent report for the Economic Policy Institute titled “Losing Ground in Early Childhood Education,” Herzenberg and coauthors Mark Price and David Bradley note:

• Center-based preschool educators (teachers and administrators) have an average hourly salary rate of just $10.00 per hour, slightly more than half that of all female college graduates ($19.23).

• Only about one-third of center-based preK educators have health-care benefits through their jobs, less than half the percentage for all workers nationally.

• The proportion of early childhood educators without health insurance is three times as high as in the overall workforce (21 percent vs. 7 percent) Although educators in school-based preschool may fare somewhat better, the researchers note that school-based preschool makes up a relatively small percentage of the profession (less than 20 percent). As for home-based preschool educators, the researchers say their pay and benefits are even lower.

Declining Credentials

Herzenberg and his colleagues are particularly concerned about the declining professional credentials of preschool personnel. According to their report, in the last two decades the percentage of centerbased preschool teachers and administrators with a bachelor’s degree has declined from 43 percent (in 1983–85) to just 30 percent today, while the number of preschool
educators with only a high school degree or less has risen from 24 percent to 30 percent.

In particular, younger preschool teachers and administrators are significantly less likely to have a bachelor’s degree than their middle- and retirement-aged colleagues, suggesting that these downward trends are likely to continue. This decline in preschool educators’ level of educational attainment has occurred even as the average educational attainment of U.S. workers overall has increased.

A study currently under way at California’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, among others, will investigate the downward trend in preK educators’ educational attainment, but Herzenberg has some theories about the causes. First, he believes the field’s persistently low compensation has not kept up with other career options for college-educated women and has thus made maintaining high professional standards difficult. (Women make up the vast majority of the preK teaching force.) Second, Herzenberg says that due to population trends and increasing numbers of women entering the workforce, the number of young children who now attend preschool has grown dramatically in the last two decades.

“When it was a smaller field, ECE [early childhood education] had a highly qualified workforce,” Herzenberg says. “But as the field has tripled, it has been hard to hold on to
this workforce.”

New Jersey Raises the Bar

One state that has made a massive effort to upgrade the educational qualifications of preK teachers in certain districts is New Jersey. A 1998 state Supreme Court decision in a long-standing educational equity case (Abbott v. Burke) required the state to fund high-quality full-day preschool for all three- and four-year-olds in New Jersey’s 30 lowest-income districts. Among the provisions mandated by the court—including class size capped at 15, teaching
aides in every classroom, and developmentally appropriate curricula—was the requirement that all preschool teachers have at least a bachelor’s degree, specialized training in early childhood education, and state certification in the education of children from preschool through grade 3.

The court gave preK teachers working in the so-called Abbott districts four years—later extended to six years at the recommendation of early childhood education advocates— to obtain a bachelor’s degree and the appropriate preK–3 certification if they wanted to continue teaching
in the districts. This meant that many teachers who had not been on the other side of the desk for years—even decades—had to become college students again.

Ellen Frede, an associate professor at the College of New Jersey and former assistant to the commissioner in the state’s Office of Early Childhood Education, says that prior to the court ruling, only about 35 percent of the preschool teachers in the Abbott districts had a bachelor’s
degree. “And that was 35 percent of many fewer classrooms and many fewer teachers,” Frede notes, pointing out that the preschool student population in the districts has grown dramatically in the period since the court ruling.

Yet a decision that might have precipitated a workforce crisis instead resulted in a tansformation of the preK teaching profession. A large majority of preK teachers in the Abbott preschools took on the challenge to obtain a bachelor’s degree, in part because the reward for doing so was considerable: the same salary and benefits for preK teachers as for elementary school teachers in the same district.

The state also made the degree programs accessible, both financially and geographically. Through the state’s Commission for Higher Education, teacher education programs received funds to help expand their early childhood faculties and offerings, and prospective students received substantial scholarships to help them pay tuition and other expenses. In addition, about 60 percent of the colleges and universities brought classes directly to the Abbott
school districts so that teachers could meet their degree requirements without having to travel far from home.

“Some of the colleges became very creative about offering the courses within the school district,” says Kathleen Priestley, supervisor of early childhood education for the Orange (NJ) Public School District. According to Priestley, all but two of the preschool teachers in Orange have completed the requirements for their bachelor’s degrees, and she expects the other two to do so soon.

Frede estimates that about 80 percent of preschool teachers in the Abbott districts now have a bachelor’s degree and state certification in teaching preschool through grade 3. Researchers note, however, that these credentials go only so far in preparing teachers for preK and early
elementary education. Carrie Lobman, Sharon Ryan, and Jill McLaughlin, three researchers in early childhood education at Rutgers University, recently studied 12 of the 14 institutions credentialing early childhood educators in New Jersey. They found that while these programs’ outreach and recruitment efforts were highly effective, they were lacking in some areas in which preK teachers say they need the most help, such as special education and teaching English-language learners. More attention was also given to early literacy than to areas like math and
science.

Making a Difference

Overall, however, the Abbott initiative seems to be making an important difference in the quality of preK instruction in the state’s highest-poverty cities and towns. A recent report by Frede summarizing a set of evaluations in the Abbott preschools notes “a sustained and dramatic improvement” in the quality of preschool education in those districts. By one measure, the percentage of classrooms scoring in the “very low quality” range dropped from 12 percent in 2003 to just 2 percent in 2005. The evaluation also noted substantial positive effects on children’s development of key early literacy skills.

For Further Information E. Frede. “Assessment in a Continuous Improvement Cycle: New Jersey’s Abbott Preschool Program.”

New York: National Early Childhood Accountability Task Force of the Pew Charitable Trusts. “This article is part of an ongoing series on the education of children from preK through grade 3, made possible through the support of the Foundation for Child Development. For additional information, visit the Harvard Education Letter online resource, Focus on Early Childhood Education, at www.hel-earlyed.