All-Day Pre-K
If pre-k programs are expelling children at a rate three times greater than the suspension rate of students in K-12, then the recent Yale study * is confirmation that (1) three to six-year-olds need guidance and (2) expulsion is, in effect, counter-productive to providing that guidance.
All-Day Pre-k is not school, although children are exposed to subject matter and academic skills, according to Lisa Ross, Federal Policy Director at Pre-K Now. And, all-day pre-k offers human development opportunities, which children might not receive, otherwise, until kindergarten or later. In other words, all-day pre-k provides the guidance for three to six-year-olds that expulsion takes away. Moreover, Stephanie Rubin, State Program Director for Pre-K Now, says the potential value of pre-k has attracted the interest of economists who are examining the fiscal aspects of pre-k and the short- and long-term impacts on local and state-based businesses. The preliminary the economic analyses are revealing that all-day pre-k is worth the cost (results will be released in the near future). Ross and Rubin discussed the status of and prospects for pre-k at the Education Policy Forum ** luncheon on June 10, 2005.
Pre-K Now recently released Leadership Matters: Governors’ Pre-K Proposals, Fiscal Year 2006 (http://www.preknow.org/documents/LeadershipReport.pdf). The report is an evaluation of all 50 U.S. Governors and the mayor of the District of Columbia, their budgetary proposals, and their State of the State remarks on voluntary pre-k for all.
Ross and Rubin also described the most important issues in pre-k programs:
• tremendous variations across programs, especially among the philosophies
of child care, the federal Head Start program, private and parochial programs,
and public pre-k,
• integration of services,
• the tension between quality and size, and
• targeted versus universal approaches.
Ross and Rubin emphasized the benefits of pre-k, which have been demonstrated in four outstanding studies:
• High/Scope Perry Preschool–Barnett, W. S. (1996). Lives in the
balance: Age-27 benefit-cost analysis of the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program.
Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press.
• Abecedarian–Promising Practices Network. (2003). Carolina Abecedarian
Project. Retrieved August 22, 2003, from http://www.promisingpractices.net/program.asp?programid=132
• Chicago Child-Parent Centers (CPC)–Chicago Longitudinal Study.
(2002). Chicago Longitudinal Study Newsletter 2, June 2002. Author. Last access
June 19, 2005, http://www.waisman.wisc.edu/cls/Chicago.htm
• Tulsa Public Schools Pre-k Program–Tulsa Pre-kindergarten Program,
Contact Harriett Patterson, mailto:patteha@tulsaschools.org
* Gilliam, W. S. (2005, May). Prekindergarteners left behind: Expulsion rates
in state prekindergarten systems. New Haven, CT: Yale University Child Study
Center.
Retrieved May 20, 2005, from http://fcd-us.org/PDFs/NationalPreKExpulsionPaper03.02_new.pdf
** The Education Policy Forum is organized by the American Educational Research Association (http://www.aera.net) and the Institute for Educational Leadership (http://www.iel.org/) and presented at the U.S. Library of Congress on the second Friday of each month.
Stephanie Rubin (mailto:srubin@preknow.org) and Lisa Ross (mailto:lross@preknow.org) can be contacted at Pre-K Now, 1150 18th Street NW, Suite 975, Washington, DC 20036.
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Page Updated: June 20, 2005
