Here is an example of where the money is going from the huge childcare grant from Welborn. To me it seems a far cry from childcare. If the childcare world of providers does not already know that story time is essential as a part of early learning, we are farther behind than I thought.

By JOHN MARTIN Courier & Press staff writer
May 16, 2006

Evansville’s education roundtable is working on initiatives to increase the number of local college degrees awarded and push high school graduation rates higher.

To accomplish the latter, the roundtable chaired by Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel is focusing on preschoolers. The Welborn Baptist Foundation has contracted with the National Center for Family Literacy, based in Louisville, Ky., to assist the roundtable in developing a communitywide early literacy program.

An efficiency and effectiveness study done this year for the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corp. recommended the creation of such a program. EVSC Superintendent Bart McCandless said ages 3 to 5 represent “a tremendous brain-development stage,” and when those children are exposed to books and other learning opportunities, “the better they will do” in school.

The National Center for Family Literacy’s senior director, Cindy Read, said her staff will do needs assessment studies in Evansville and develop an action plan for the roundtable.

That plan will have several planks, one of which will involve getting information to parents about ways to help young children learn to read, said Phyllis Bussing, director of the Diocese of Evansville Schools.

Bussing and EVSC Assistant Superintendent Cathy Gray co-chair a roundtable subcommittee on improving high school graduation rates. Early childhood reading, said Gray, “was the main thrust of our conversations.”

The other subcommittee roundtable, on higher education degree attainment, is utilizing resources of the National College Access Network to develop a plan, said Ivy Tech Chancellor Dan Schenk, who co-chairs the panel with Evansville businessman Robert Koch.

The National College Access Network is a nonprofit organization that will expose the roundtable to model programs aimed at improving college access, Schenk said.

I couldn’t believe I was reading this. It’s what I’ve been working on for WFIE. I can’t imagine docking pay because a teacher is ill or has an ill child. It would be tantamount to theft. But this is what the childcare world is all about.

The Capitol Times
Madison Wisconsin

Ruth Schmidt: Paid sick leave is crucial for child care providers
By Ruth Schmidt

Passing the sick leave ordinance would have a positive impact on child care and education programs. The issues inherent in the proposed sick leave ordinance affect child care providers in Dane County in competing and compelling ways.

As small businesses, a majority of child care centers operate with little to no profit margin or as nonprofits with no reserves. In theory, providing paid sick leave to their work force has the potential to further financially stress a system already woefully underfinanced. Yet we know that most child care centers in Madison already do provide this benefit. Why? Because the early childhood community understands that adequate paid sick leave is critical to sustaining the public health of our city, which in turn sustains families, children and those who care for them.

Child care providers see the personal face of this issue, and they see it more often than is acceptable in this city today. They see the face of a worried parent bringing a sick child to care, hoping they will not be turned away, forced to choose between staying home to care for their child and losing a day’s wages, perhaps a job, because of absence. They know the personal struggle of a low-income mother or father who cannot make the best choice for a sick child because of economic constraints imposed by a business climate that disproportionately disadvantages the low-wage work force.

Family child care providers and centers alike know this all-too-familiar scenario. More than any other sector, it is perhaps the people who provide child care and education and the children themselves who are affected by employers’ decisions not to provide paid sick leave.

What are the ramifications to the child care work force when one analyzes this issue from a public health perspective? It is helpful to peel away layers of factors that complicate this issue.

First, we know that children in early childhood programs are often sick. Illnesses such as colds, flu, pink eye and diarrhea are some of the most common brought into child care centers, family child care homes and preschools. Not only does this expose other children (most with still-developing immune systems) to these illnesses, it exposes every child care worker.

Second, we know that individuals in the child care work force in Wisconsin are less than half as likely to receive employer-provided health insurance benefits compared to the general Wisconsin work force 24 percent vs. 67.7 percent.

The result is that workers who are frequently exposed to illnesses lack adequate health insurance to get medical attention when they are ill. It is documented that uninsured individuals receive fewer preventive services, less care for chronic illnesses and poorer hospital-based care.

The stark reality is that uninsured adults tend to be sicker and at higher risk of premature death: 25 percent higher mortality rate at age 65 than insured adults.

Add to these factors the fact that the child care work force in Wisconsin earns only 64 percent as much as the state work force as a whole (the median hourly wage for a child care worker in Wisconsin in 2001 was $8.31), and you can begin to understand the crisis that early care and education professionals face routinely in performing their jobs.

Passing the sick leave ordinance would have a positive impact on child care and education programs. Sick children would not need to attend child care or school, making it less likely that other children or staff would get sick. This could reduce the spread of illnesses in the city and could actually reduce the need for child care staff to take sick leave.

Child care programs that do not currently offer paid sick leave to their staff will incur costs to implement such a policy, a cost that is likely to be passed on to parents. This is a justifiable trade-off to protect the health of individuals in our community.

When did it become acceptable to expect child care workers to sacrifice wages, health benefits and a healthy workplace to care for our children, even our sick children? Child care workers have historically shouldered this burden, and as an industry we have struggled to calculate the cost of this sacrifice.

Paid sick leave does cost money. No one disagrees with this. But it makes so much sense for the sake of children, working parents, child care providers, centers and schools trying to provide loving, healthy, safe environments. Therefore, the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association supports the proposed sick leave ordinance.

Ruth Schmidt is executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association.Published: May 12, 2006

Strong readers will be strong because parents are strong readers. If children see parents read, they will also read. If TV has taken the place of reading in a home, then books will have a lesser value, and the stretch to investigate reading will be too far to go.

A preschool program with undirected play won’t do a thing for reading readiness.

Preschool for All Will Help More Kids Become Strong Readers in Elementary School

California Chronicle Beverly Hills California
California Political Desk
The California Political Desk provides information, news releases, and announcements obtained from communication and public relations offices throughout the state.

May 10, 2006
Top Education Leaders Release New Report, Support Prop. 82 as Smart School Reform.

May 10, 2006 — California’s leading educators today called on voters to support Proposition 82, the preschool for all initiative on the June 6 ballot, as a critical strategy to ensure that more California children enter kindergarten ready to read and succeed in school.

“Providing quality preschool programs to all children is one of the smartest investments we will ever make to help our children succeed in reading, and throughout K-12,” said California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell. O’Connell and other top educators said their support for Prop. 82 is inspired in part by a growing body of research showing that reading difficulties in young children are preventable, and that quality preschool is a critical strategy in preventing them.

That research is highlighted in a new report, Building Blocks of Reading, released today by the non-profit, nonpartisan Preschool California (available at www.action.preschoolcalifornia.org/).

The report includes an introduction signed by the current and former state superintendents of public instruction, a bipartisan team of former state secretaries of education, and the heads of the California Teachers Association, California Federation of Teachers, California Kindergarten Association, and the association of California county superintendents of schools.

Many of those leaders gathered today at a preschool in Sacramento, where they read to 4-year-olds during circle time and formed a united front for Prop. 82.

“Any classroom teacher will tell you that attending a quality preschool gets children off to a strong start in school,” said Barbara E. Kerr, president of the California Teachers Association and a kindergarten teacher. “Kids need to master reading in order to do well in school, and preschool puts them on the reading path.”

According to the California Standards Test, an annual exam given to all students, 37% of California third-graders are failing basic reading (county- and school district-level reading scores available at www.action.preschoolcalifornia.org/reading/). Educators say that reading would improve if more children had access to preschool programs that lay a strong foundation for literacy.

“Every child deserves the chance to get ready to read,” said Armando William Argandoña, president of the California Kindergarten Association, a former preschool and kindergarten teacher and presently a literacy coach at Eastman Elementary School in East Los Angeles. “Too many children enter kindergarten lacking reading readiness skills and rich oral language. These are two important stepping stones needed on a child’s literacy journey. We need to expand students’ access to this critical lifetime skill starting in preschool.”

Building Blocks of Reading compiles extensive research showing that a quality preschool experience provides a springboard to strong reading skills in later years by fostering early literacy. Studies show that children who attend quality preschool programs are stronger, more advanced readers than their non-preschool counterparts.

Through developmentally appropriate learning–through-play activities with trained teachers, quality preschool helps all children, regardless of family background, to develop important social skills as well as build important pre-reading skills that predict their later reading ability, including earlier recognition of letters and words, an important factor in reading readiness; greater awareness of printed language and increased vocabulary.

Once they enter K-12, children who have been to quality preschool benefit from higher reading achievement test scores in elementary school; lower rates of being held back a grade or designated for special education; and higher rates of high school graduation and college attendance.

Tragically, too few California children have access to quality preschool programs. Just 20% of California 4-year-olds are enrolled in a quality preschool program the year before they start kindergarten. Private programs can cost more than tuition at a state college, and 75% of publicly funded programs have children waiting in line to get it.

“Quality preschool has been out of reach for too long,” said Preschool California President Catherine Atkin. “By voting for Prop. 82 on June 6, Californians can support smart school reform and make sure all families who want good preschool for their children will have access.”
Preschool California is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization working to achieve quality preschool opportunity for all 4-year-olds in California. www.preschoolcalifornia.org.

The Daily Star
Metropolitan

Poor Have Little Access to Better Education

Speakers tell publication ceremony of HalkhataStaff CorrespondentPrincipal Secretary to the prime minister Kamaluddin Siddiqui yesterday expressed deep concern over the division in education system saying its consequences will be dangerous if the division between the rich and the poor is not minimised on an emergency basis.

Kamaluddin Siddiqui said the rich are sending their children abroad or educating them in the best educational institutions, whereas children of the poor are getting education at lower standard institutions.

“As a result children of the rich are getting better jobs depriving the poor and this deprivation will bring dangerous consequences,” he cautioned while speaking as chief guest at a publication ceremony of Halkhata, an annual report on primary education by Sushikkha Andolon, a citizens’ movement on quality education.

The principal secretary said irregularities in teachers’ recruitment, low standard textbooks and lack of teachers’ training have downgraded the standard of education.

He specially blamed the authors assigned by the National Textbooks Curriculum Board (NTCB) for making many mistakes in the textbooks.

“I had to blacklist a number of such teachers as they failed to play their due role in writing text books,” he added.

The demand of the poor for quality education should be strongly articulated, Kamal said, adding that the Sushikkha Andolon is contributing to the process by creating awareness among the people at all levels.

Speaking as special guest Bangladesh Bank Governor Salehuddin Ahmed said education today has become coaching-centred and teachers-centred where the poor have little access to better education.

Mismatches between the need for education and curriculum of the textbooks are also a setback for better education, he said, adding, “Money is never a constraint for education sector, but what we need is goodwill and participation of all.”

Considering quality education as the crucial challenge AKA Shamsuddin, secretary to primary and mass education ministry, said early childhood education, participation of citizens in primary education process, regular monitoring of school activities by thana and district level officials are must to meet the demand.

Activating the school management committees, building adequate infrastructures and reducing the teachers’ involvement in non-educational activities are also important to fulfil the goal of quality education, he said.

Presenting the annual report on primary education Sushikkha Andolon member Khandaker Sakhawat Ali said allocation for primary education has increased, but it is not utilised properly.
He suggested community’s participation and regular school visits by eminent personalities of the localities as a means to create awareness for quality education in the society.

Education expert Mamataz Jahan considered nutrition of poor children, completion of syllabus and complementary activities for primary education are some major conditions for developing quality education.

Presiding over the publication ceremony Prof Wahiduddin Mahmud said Bangladesh has achieved a number of successes in different sectors including reduction in birth and child mortality rate and increasing enrolment of girl children.

“This is a revolutionary change in comparison to African and some South Asian countries, but we need to sustain the achievements,” he said.

Hua Du, country representative of Asian Development Bank (ADB), said a number of measures including building infrastructures, balancing teachers-students ratio and training of teachers have been undertaken to ensure quality primary education under the Second Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP II).

Modernisation of madrasa education can contribute a lot to the development of quality primary education in the country, said Hua Du of ADB, one of the donors in PEDP II.

Co-ordinator of Sushikkha Andolon Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman, Prof Amirul Islam of North South University, Prof Bazlul Mobin Chowdhury of Independent University and Muhammad Mohsin of Plan Bangladesh also spoke on the occasion.

The enthusiasm is there, now let’s see the program.

Billingsgazette.com

Guest Opinion: All-day Kindergarten Valuable, But Raises Funding Concerns

Gov. Brian Schweitzer has announced his support for an initiative to make all-day kindergarten available across our state. Rural schools are well aware of the compelling research that continues to point to the importance of early childhood education, and we support the governor in identifying this priority. Many of our schools have been leaders in innovative programs designed to expand early childhood and kindergarten opportunities across our state.

Our support of all-day kindergarten and the increased funding that this will involve at the state level are, however, something that rural schools consider with mixed emotions. While the increased funding necessary for this worthy program will be touted by many as they point to the state’s increased commitment to adequately funding K-12 education, the harsh reality is that this new increase, like much of the money handed to schools during the 2005 special session, continues to be distributed using a completely broken and illogical system of school funding.

Rural schools worry that the great failures of the legislative process during this interim period will continue to haunt Montana as we strive to fairly and adequately fund schools, both large and small, across this state. The fact is that the Quality Schools Interim Committee established by the 2005 Legislature failed in its mission to design a new school funding system after months of agonizing meetings and thousands of taxpayer dollars spent on the process.

Here’s just a few (of the dozens) of the issues and challenges related to our state’s continued use of a broken system that would shock the private citizen, taxpayer and business person if the same were true of their personal finances or business accounts:

Our state has never penciled out what it actually costs to provide the quality education as identified by the full Legislature during the regular session in Senate Bill 152. In short Montana has no clue what it should actually cost to provide a quality K-12 education as guaranteed by our state constitution!

Montana has virtually no useful information with regards to school facilities and buildings and how these critical capital expenditures relate to providing a quality education.

Funding provided by the 2005 special session, channeled through the same old broken distribution system, placed over 100 schools districts across our state in the situation of needing to return to the local voter to ask to return to previous budget levels or to request a modest increase over last years funding levels. Projections on the funds that would be given schools included huge seemingly illogical increases for some districts while slighting others, forcing them to return to local voters.All-day kindergarten deserves to be a priority for the state of Montana.

Rural schools will swallow hard and support this worthy program knowing full well that the increased funding will not be distributed fairly to our schools because of a broken funding system that, despite a Supreme Court opinion, still has not been fixed.Dave Puyear is the executive director of the Montana Rural Education Association representing school districts across the state and headquartered in Helena.

Indiana – in the southern part – has a problem with day care. Apparently it is not age appropriate to teach very young children – that’s a kindergarten job. If early childhood educators can’t find room to teach children who attend day care, why should there be funding?

Group Says Indiana Lags in Funding for Preschool

A national early education group on Wednesday singled out Gov. Mitch Daniels among leaders of states still in the “pre-k wilderness.”

The report from Pre-K Now, a Washington-based advocacy group, says governors in most states are proposing expansions of state-funded prekindergarten programs for the third year in a row. But Indiana is among 10 states that offer virtually no money for preschool.

“Governor Daniels presides over a state with a more stable revenue projection than it did just one year ago,” Libby Doggett, the group’s executive director, said in a news release. “Leadership and continued discussion of young children’s educations is still very much in need in Indiana.”

Romania Says Child Care Woes Not Rampant

May 11, 2006

ASSOCIATED PRESS

TIMISOARA, Romania — Romanian health officials acknowledged problems Wednesday in caring for disabled and abandoned children, but disputed allegations by a U.S. human rights group of widespread neglect and abuse.

The government confirmed findings in a report by Washington-based Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) that children had been living in inhumane conditions in a psychiatric ward for adults in the eastern city of Braila.

Officials said the Braila case was uncovered in 2005 and authorities have since closed the hospital and moved the children to a new facility.

“I was in Braila and I saw that the conditions there were absolutely inhumane,” said Bogdan Panait, who heads the National Authority for Protection of Children’s Rights.

He conceded that problems still existed and said some of the most serious shortcomings should be resolved this year.

The western city of Timisoara’s Center for Nutritional Recuperation also was criticized in the report.

On Wednesday, toddlers there napped on quilts, wearing clean pajamas in modern wards with clean, tiled floors.

Local officials disputed the group’s findings.

The report is “confused, incomplete and irrelevant to the situation in Timisoara,” said Mihai Gafencu, who manages the center.

MDRI experts reported that the 65 children housed in the facility weren’t allowed to get off their beds because the institution was short-staffed.

Gafencu, who is also deputy chairman of Romania’s Save the Children group, said MDRI had visited the hospital in February, while children were resting and napping after lunch.

Romania’s poor treatment of those with mental illness, especially children, became known after leader Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown and executed in 1989.

Lest we forget…

Prezent – Images from Romanian child care centers

A team formed of Prezent weekly reporters and journalists from the American TV station ABC went to several children care centers to see the living conditions of mentally disabled children.

The American journalists were interested both in the children who were mentioned in the report made public by the Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) organization, quoted on Wednesday by the New York Times but also in the children in other centers that had not been visited by the American organization.

In some of these centers, the patients are given a correct medical treatment, they live decently and are given proper food, in other centers (which were not quoted in the MDRI report but were visited by the ABC-Prezent team), the buildings are almost collapsing on the children and the latter are beaten almost daily.

The feature made by ABC-Prezent was broadcast by ABC on May 10 and was also quoted by the Washington Post. The team of journalists was accompanied by one of the MDRI investigators. It has to be noted that, despite the hurried excuses made by the Romanian authorities, none of the images presented are from 2004 or older, as they were filmed in the last couple of months and the more recent were shot at the end of April this year.

The Prichindel center in Alexandria is well supported financially and the children here live in decent conditions. The 16 children have a doctor and live in rooms of one or two people. The investment in Prichindel was of one million euros and the patients are carefully treated. They call the nurses “mom” and the latter actually behave like mothers.

Unfortunately the situation is not the same in all such centers in Romania. In the center in Costesti, Vrancea County, there are 46 children and only four nurses in one shift. The hospital is in renovation and the patients survive in conditions that are hard to imagine. In some of the beds there are two children sleeping. The team of reporters found a room with “vegetable-children” which were eating thread.

“What can they do? They are consuming their energy,” a nurse “reassured” us, being not at all worried by the children’s behavior.

We had an interesting day today. It was rainy, so we stayed indoors for breakfast, and after breakfast, we put the kindergarten and first grades together and played a new bingo game with words. I made the bingo game with the words we have been studying in my class. There were about 40 words in blocks on a page. Every child got an 11 x 14 sheet and a handfull of pennies.

I called out the words one by one, and the children scrambled to find the word on the page and put down their penny. Then they turned to their neighbor to see if they could help. I was excited to see Jackie Snyder get up every word and show the preschool children at the next table where they could find the word. Not one teacher suggested that anyone help another, but several children including Ty acted with such social awareness, I was thrilled.

One of the big day cares is closing in EVV. We’ve already gotten some calls. It’s hard to explain to people exactly what we do and why. Today’s activity with the word bingo would have been an excellent explanation. We’re a cohesive group that cares about the next guy.

With all the studies, the comments, the cries for 4-K across the nation, it always stuns me that the same old day care plan is the only thing that can be discussed. When nearly forty places on the map can easily be identified by the children, when four year olds can do addition, can find words on the page, when they can learn a foreign language, the same old day care plan seems really fraudulent – almost like theft.

What are parents paying for when the learning is non existent? Miss Kelly told me that in her former teaching gig, she was told not to teach the children anything, that teaching and learning were not “age appropriate” and that learning was for kindergarten. This is from the best childcare in EVV.

Teaching and learning is for everyone. We all read Jabberwocky the other day, and Miss Jana and Miss Kelly laughed as they slowly managed Lewis Carroll’s words. I laughed too and gave my own rendition of a few lines that sounded different from the others, but then I’m on the other side of the great vowel shift, so my pronunciation is slightly different. Just then, Mrs. St. Louis came from the kitchen with the whole thing memorized and trilling off her lips like a rosary prayer. It was really a funny occasion, and all the teachers learned while the children watched. This is what they should see, this is what learning means. It was great exchange.

There are so many occasions when we learn from one another and the children should be part of that, so how do you explain all that to new people?

It’s always a combination of classroom activities and play activities. When you combine the work and play, the children learn best. Children like to work at things – provided they are discovering new information and new angles on play.

Picking the Right Preschool
Amanda Dobbins / Parenting

Carey Killian of Portland, Ore., was torn about where to send her daughter to preschool: one that spent a lot of time on academics, to prep Skylar for kindergarten, or one where the kids were mostly playing?

Many parents worry that their children will miss out or fall behind if they don’t learn letters and numbers in preschool.

This couldn’t be further from the truth, says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., coauthor of “Einstein Never Used Flashcards.” “Children learn by doing, exploring and having fun,” she says.

Learning faster isn’t necessarily better.

When you visit a school, ask these questions to get a sense of whether it’ll be a good fit for your child:

What do the lesson and activity plans look like? Find out if there’s an emphasis on things like singing and sharing.

Are there goals that kids are expected to reach during the year? Watch out for ones that seem too strict (count to 20 by December) and look for more socially oriented ones (play well in groups).

How much structure is there in a day? Kids do well with some order in their days, but there should be plenty of time for free play.