Congress has begun debating how to revamp the No Child Left Behind Act and one of the nation’s newest superintendents has an idea lawmakers should keep in mind: Education reform begins with child care, preschool and prekindergarten.

“If you want to reform high school, you need to reform early childhood. You don’t reform high school in high school, you reform very early on in life,” incoming Minneapolis Public School Superintendent Gregory Thornton told Milwaukee’s Business Journal.

This comment highlights the idea that early learning could play a pivotal role in the discussion about how to improve the federal law that governs K-12 education. As lawmakers begin to hold hearings, there are key questions about that role, including: Will the PreK-3rd movement translate its momentum into concrete changes that integrate pre-k with early elementary grades?  How will President Barack Obama’s commitment to quality early learning be reflected in any new law?

While preschool and prekindergarten ideas will likely be part of the debate, this is an opportunity for the Obama administration to translate its commitment into change. The test will not be how loudly Obama and his congressional supporters support any changes, but ultimately by how legislators weave early learning reforms into a final bill.

Will the bill strengthen links between pre-k and kindergarten, first and second grades? Will it contain new support for early learning teachers to get training and earn college degrees? Or, will these and other efforts be drowned out by battles over how to measure teacher effectiveness?

Unlike other educational reform ideas, there seems to be wide support in Washington, D.C., this year for quality early learning. The legislative battles over No Child Left Behind should tell us how deep that support really is.

We will keep an eye on what should be an interesting debate.

First Lady Michelle Obama gave the fight against childhood obesity a major boost when she took a leading role last month, and one of the places she may want to focus on is preschool, the National Institute for Early Education Research suggests this week.

While parents may think preschool is a place where their kids race around, run and play, a study found students engaged in “moderate to vigorous exercise” only 3.4 percent of their day at preschool. Granted, there are other things to do beyond run around outside, but the level found in the Children’s Activity and Movement in Preschools Study seems way too low.

Researchers also highlighted one of my favorite topics: well-designed open spaces in early learning. They found open space, fixed equipment, ball and object use “are associated with high levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity.” – Preschool’s Role in Fighting Childhood Obesity. 3/9/10.

“In view of the high levels of sedentary activity observed, the researchers call for careful attention in designing outdoor spaces for preschoolers. Designs should include sufficient open spaces and specific outdoor play materials associated with increased levels of physical activity.”— Preschool’s Role in Fighting Childhood Obesity.

What are parents noticing at their preschools? Are your kids getting enough exercise? The story is short and worth checking out.

Child Care Economics in the News: Another writer tackled one of my other favorite topics in The economics of child care: Why do long waiting lists persist?The story offers reasons why child care doesn’t fit the supply-and-demand model from Ohio State University professor David Blau, who edited a book entitled The Economics of Child Care. The reasons include the idea that many child care services are not run as typical businesses and that many parents “aren't willing to pay a premium for high-quality child care…,” according to the Vancouver Sun article. It is another easy read worth checking out.

The Early Learning Challenge Fund – potentially worth $8 billion over ten years – might make it to President Barack Obama’s desk this year as part of a massive health care reform bill, K-12 Politics reports.

Congressional leaders are considering packaging health care reform as a reconciliation package that also could include the early learning fund legislation, which passed the House but stalled in the Senate this year, according to the Education Week’s insightful blog. Check out K-12 Politics for all of the details.

Washington State News

• Op-Ed: Let’s give kids the best start we can  – 3/4/10, Port Orchard Independent
• Letter to the Editor: Early Head Start a keeper – 3/3/10, Spokesman Review
• Study Of State’s Child-welfare System Show Families Having Trouble Meeting Basic Needs – 3/3/10, Seattle Medium
• Parents often miss early autism signs – 3/2/10, The Spokesman-Review
• Baby Bonding – 3/1/10, The Spokesman-Review
• Reading time is special time with children – 2/28/10, The Olympian

National/International News

• Editorial: Preschool is right investment – 3/5/10, The Daily Advertiser (LA)
• Editorial: Child care rating system can be useful – 3/5/10, Appleton Post Crescent (WI)
• 'Crisis nurseries' are a big hit – 3/5/10, Philadelphia Daily News (PA)
• Letter: Saving children: Early intervention is crucial 3/4/10, The Plain Dealer (OH)
• Preschool plan rejected – 3/4/10, Argus Leader (SD)
• Georgia child care can be safer, even more affordable – 3/1/10, The Atlanta Journal Constitution (GA)
• Study: Pre-K programs do little for blacks – 3/3/10, UPI (NAT)
• Hawaii might halt junior kindergarten – 3/1/10, Honolulu Advertiser (HI)
• 1 in 4 parents buys unproven vaccine-autism link – 3/1/10, Associated Press
• Risk of Childhood Obesity Higher Among Minorities: Study found risk factors start before birth, stretch into preschool years – 3/1/10, U.S. News & World Report
• Not child's play: Mary Reed keeps early education front and center – 3/1/10, Boston Herald (MA)
• 'Education is the civil rights issue of our time' – 3/1/10, Essence Magazine (NAT)

Research/Policy

• Teachers: Preparation begins in pre-school  – 3/3/10, Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media Blog: Early Stories
• From England, with worries: toddlers need more support – 3/1/10, Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media Blog: Early Stories
• Dual Language Learners: What Early Educators Need to Know – 2/26/10, New America Foundation Blog: Early Ed Watch

With time running out in the Washington State legislative session, a cut in child care subsidies for poor families remains a $30-million part of a House plan to balance the budget, though the Senate appears to support more funding.

The House budget plan now has a smaller version of Gov. Christine Gregoire’s proposed cut to the Working Connections Child Care program – a move that would force thousands of poor families from the program that provides child care subsidies and support, according to interest groups.

But, over in the Senate, the budget blueprint would preserve funding for the program.

Supporters argue that working but still poor parents would have a far harder time pulling their families out of poverty without this help with often hefty child care bills.

Without work supports such as WCCC, maintaining employment can be difficult if not impossible. According to the state Department of Early Learning, the average cost of a child care center for two children is about $1,177 per month. (Assuming one toddler and one school-age child.) As shown in the graph below, that is over half of the total monthly income for a family earning $24,000 per year. – “Important Work Support in Jeopardy,” Washington State Budget and Policy Center.

While it isn’t clear what will happen to the program, something should happen soon. The regular legislative session is slated to end March 11.  With a long and slow economic recovery now likely, the question is: Will legislators make the connections between working, the need for affordable child care and a stronger economy?

For further reading:

• “Child Care Subsidy for Working Parents in Jeopardy,” The Children’s Alliance, 1/29/10.
• “Important Work Support in Jeopardy,” Washington State Budget and Policy Center.

As budget debates heat up in state legislatures around the country it is a good time to review economic arguments for investing in early learning and Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman’s ideas are a great place to start.

With videos, flyers, pamphlets and a slide show, the University of Chicago economist makes a powerful case for the Heckman Equation, which argues that investing in child care returns 10 percent per annum.

The most economically efficient time to develop skills and social abilities is in the very early years when developmental education is most effective. – Heckman Equation slideshow.

Later on, Heckman presents a graph that shows a declining return as programs shift from the first three years of life to preschool then school and finally job training, which offers the lowest return. Heckman also recognizes “families play a vital role in helping children acquire critical skills at an early age.”

Heckman, who ranks among the world’s most influential economists according to Bing, adds that we need to support those who lack resources needed for their children’s successful development in the first years of life.

Many of these ideas are well-known in the early learning community, but Heckman is among an important group of voices from powerful halls of economic thought, which also includes The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis economist Arthur Rolnick, who argue for greater investment in early education.   These economists look at things differently, and their ideas from the imprecise but critical study of economics are welcome and helpful in the growing debate over creating a higher quality early learning system.

Washington is doing better than many states when it comes to the dental health of its children, a less well known but important part of school readiness and early childhood development.

A new Pew Center on the States report gave Washington a B for its children’s dental health – only 9 states received that grade, while 36 were handed a C or worse. That means our state is doing well, but still has work to do. One area of concern is the finding that 57 percent of children who qualify for its Access to Baby and Children Dentistry program do not receive care. The program works to provide dental care to Medicaid-eligible children through age six.   

Dental health is one of the health issues tied to early learning because if untreated dental problems can impact learning and behavior in school and then social and cognitive development, Pew’s national report said. Ultimately, poor dental health builds one more segment in the achievement gap, researchers added.

School absences contribute to the widening achievement gap, making it difficult for children with chronic toothaches to perform as well as their peers, prepare for subsequent grades and ultimately graduate. – “The Cost of Delay: State Dental Policies Fail One in Five Children.”

Washington is also behind on putting fluoride in its water, with only 63 percent of its community water supplies containing fluoride, compared to the goal of 75 percent set by the federal Healthy People 2010 Campaign.

“Dental disease can be painful, and affect a child’s success in school, their future and their overall health. Good oral health is a necessity – not a luxury,” Laura Smith, president of the Washington Dental Service Foundation, a non-profit group that works on improving dental health in children and senior citizens, said in a statement.

Early learning teachers earn far less than they are worth – often $18,000 a year – and one of the reasons, and flaws in the economics of their industry, is that there are actually two child care markets, one expert says.

“We also have an unregulated market in early child care existing side by side with the licensed regulated market,” Marcy Whitebook, director of the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, said on NAEYC Radio. “…That puts some of the damper on what they will charge for the service because they know that parents who can’t afford it will opt out of the regulated market and go into the unregulated system where they can (get) cheaper care.” (Listen to the podcast here.)

The burgeoning field of brain research is beginning to change this dynamic because more people realize how important the first few years are, Whitebook added.

But, professionals teaching children during those critical years still make wages that often place them among the ranks of the working poor.  A child care worker earns, on average, $9.32 cents an hour and a preschool teacher $15.48 an hour, while an elementary school teacher commands $34.63, Whitebook said. (And these numbers are two or three years old.)

One of the many questions posed by this gap is how the Prek-3rd Reform movement, which strives to more closely integrate early education and the first years of elementary school – will bring the pay scales together.

There is another interesting obstacle. The early education community has often spent what capital it has on serving more children, not addressing pay issues, Whitebook points out.

“We are not really doing kids a great service if we are putting them in programs with teachers who are burned out, stressed out because they can’t afford to do the work and are leaving,” Whitebook said. “I really do think this is something that we’ve as a field and actually as a profession have pretty much shied away from really biting the bullet and saying this problem can’t get fixed until we think about early childhood in a new way.”

Children who live in poverty during the years before they enter kindergarten can struggle as adults because there is a link between living in poverty in those first years and earning less as an adult, according to a research report released over the weekend.

The study shows very tangible ways that poverty matters, and why it may matter more for children ages 0 to 5.

“The study suggests that a $3,000 annual increase in income between a child’s birth and fifth birthday is associated with 19 (percent) higher earnings and a 135-hour increase in annual work hours in adulthood.” – Research summary, Society for Research in Child Development.

The report went further, suggesting ways policymakers could use this new research, such as focusing on problems of “deep and persistent poverty early in childhood,” said lead author Greg Duncan, a professor of education at the University of California, Irvine.

“For example, income transfer policies might be designed to provide higher benefits to families with young, rather than older, children. This could be accomplished by increasing the existing child tax credit or raising benefit levels for such families or, given more severe budget constraints, reducing the allowances or benefits offered to families with older children in order to finance more generous support for families with young children,” Duncan said in the research summary.

This research was paired with another article that called for innovative new leadership in early learning that relies on emerging science and knowledge of healthy development.

There continues to be incredible breakthroughs in our knowledge of brain development. Harvard Professor Jack Shonkoff suggests a new “biodevelopmental model” and “science-based strategy” to help people succeed, in a commentary that ran in the January/February issue of Child Development.

“Positive early experiences play a role in strengthening brain architecture, while significant adversity damages brain circuits and undermines lifelong learning, behavior, and health. The later we wait to invest in children who are at the greatest risk, the more difficult the task,” Shonkoff wrote in an excerpt.

While many in the early learning world would agree with that assessment, Shonkoff takes another step, arguing that with so many leading policymakers now focused on early education issues it may be time for a new strategy.

“Together, these challenges underscore the need for a new era in early childhood policy and practice that’s guided by science and driven by bold leadership,” says Shonkoff.

I'll share the links to these stories with you when they become available in the coming week.

Doctors and other experts may be able to screen babies’ motor skills development, such things as crawling and holding things – for signs they could need extra support in preschool, according to research released today.

Researchers found that failure to hit gross and fine motor skill milestones was associated with behavior and cognitive issues at age five, according to research from the Millennium Cohort Study, which the BBC News reported today.  

“We found that delay in gross and fine motor development in a child’s first year – which affects about one in ten children – was significantly associated with delayed cognitive development at age 5,” say researchers at the Institute of Education, University of London. “Delay in gross motor development also has a significant impact on the child’s behavioural adjustment at 5. This additional finding confirms the importance of screening for developmental delay before the first birthday.” – Research summary, “Simple tests in babyhood ‘could point to children who need help with learning” Centre for Longitudinal Studies, 2/17/10.

These U.K.-based researchers also found a measurable part of the achievement gap, discovering a difference by age five between children growing up in “persistent poverty” and those whose families did not rely on public assistance.

It amounted to 11 points on the cognitive ability scale – roughly the difference between the middle of the ability range and the top of the bottom quarter. – Research summary.

Not surprisingly, good parenting helps. A healthy mother-child relationship in a family struggling with poverty can benefit a child’s cognitive and behavioral development, according to the summary.

“Our findings also suggest that policy interventions aiming to promote positive development of children should provide support for parents too,” the researchers add. “If parents’ mental health and self-esteem are undermined by hardship this could affect their parenting and interactions with the child.”

Thanks to Pre-K Now for highlighting this research.