SLJ Spoke to Researcher W. Steven Barnett about the Importance of Preschools
This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. Sign up now!
Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 3/28/2007
With everyone so obsessed with student achievement, parents are eager to get their kids enrolled in preschool. But a new study by the National Institute for Early Education Research says 12 states still don’t offer free preschool programs—and that state funding per child has actually declined over the last four years.
SLJ talks to W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, about its latest study, “The State of Preschool 2006.”
Oklahoma stands out for offering a high-quality program to the vast majority of its population. New Jersey’s Abbott Pre-K program has the highest standards in the nation, is full day, begins at age three, and is entirely state-funded. North Carolina is one of only two states to receive a perfect 10 for its quality standards and is aggressively expanding enrollment. On the other hand, Ohio has been called the nation’s “biggest loser” because of the decline in enrollment, quality, and funding, essentially due to a shift in goals from education and development programs to child care. Kansas, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania have standards that do not ensure that all programs have the prerequisites for quality in place, and without quality, pre-K is of limited value. Florida exemplifies both the best and the worst: it has rocketed to near the top for enrollment, but lies near the bottom for funding per child and quality standards. What’s key to a successful preschool program?
Some of the most important standards include teachers who are well-educated and specifically prepared to teach young children; reasonable class size and ratios; strong guidance on goals for children’s learning and development across all domains; and a process for continuous improvement that collects valid data on program performance and takes steps to improve performance based on those data.
Can you actually measure the effects of attending preschool on student achievement?
The effects of quality preschool on later educational success have been measured in numerous studies. Highly effective preschool education leads to increased language and cognitive abilities (e.g., a larger vocabulary, print awareness and other skills predictive of reading success, ability to count and order objects by shape or size) and to better social and emotional development. As a result, children later on have higher test scores and better classroom behavior, are less likely to repeat a grade or require special education, are more likely to graduate from high school, and have less involvement in crime and delinquency. Given what you’ve said, isn’t it surprising that a dozen states still don't have preschool programs?
The 12 states that still don’t offer pre-K (except as required by law for children with disabilities) tend to be lower income and more sparsely populated (so transportation is expensive). They are mostly in the West. What do you hope legislators will learn from your study?
We hope that legislators will learn how their state stacks up against the others and that high-quality pre-K can be offered to all children at reasonable costs. I would also hope that they recognize that this is a bipartisan issue with no red state v. blue state divide. States that lead in one way or another include Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama, as well as Illinois, New York, and Vermont.
