One of the biggest steps toward creating a high-quality early learning system will be to connect preschool and K-12. Today, a new report laid out a compelling vision of how to construct a prek-12 continuum that uses lessons drawn from early education in elementary, middle and high school.
The report is a 32-page blueprint for an educational system that places early education within the broader and often struggling movement to reform public schools.
Our nation is at a crossroads. Public education that begins with 5-year-olds is a relic. Decades of costly reform efforts targeted at older children have not delivered the results we need. -- “Transforming Public Education: Pathway to a Pre-K-12 Future,” September, 2011. The Pew Center on the States.
Truly reforming our public education system will require that we provide high-quality early learning for every child, and where it is lacking, full-day kindergarten – just as we do for first, second and third grades– and that we ensure later grades are designed to build upon skills gained in the pre-k years.
One of the report’s most important lessons is that prek-12 is a simple word that captures a complex idea, which will rely, in part, on what educators and researchers have learned about early learning. It then explains what needs to happen to transform that idea into a reality.
Teachers at every grade level will have to embrace principles of early education such as attending to children’s social and emotional development as well as their cognitive progress. We will need to bridge long-established divides between and among funding streams, educational settings, administrative structures, teacher preparation and licensure systems and learning standards. -- “Transforming Public Education: Pathway to a Pre-K-12 Future.”
This report is one of the final efforts of Pew’s Pre-K Now campaign, though I’m sure the organization has some more important lessons and resources to share before it shuts down at the end of the year.
And if you are too busy to read the report right now, check out the graphic on 10 years of work on Pre-K initiatives.