Diane Albanese’s Musings

School Journal Column  - June 1, 2007

How do you spell success? In Georgia after years of planning and funding, the pre-kindergarten programs are yielding a high return on the investment.   Children who have been enrolled in pre-kindergarten classes perform better even through second and third grades than do those who did not attend those classes, according to Steve Suitts of the Southern Education Foundation. Pre-K consists of three and four year olds in programs that are designed to stress math and language skills and reading readiness.   

What are the lasting effects? The children that have been taught at an early age retain higher academic achievement and lower failure rate in the first year of school.  Could this be the magic that we need to insure early school success?   
Georgia seems to think so because they have committed state funds from their lottery revenue to fund this project. Other states in the South have similar programs with promising results according to a report by Diane Stepp in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.  In
North Carolina, researchers have concluded that over the long term, pre-K students do better than those never exposed to early learning programs.  The paper reports “Karen Schulman and Steven Barnett of the National Institute for Early Education Research, who studied publicly funded pre-k programs in Georgia and Oklahoma, said middle-income children benefit as much as children in poverty. Across the economic spectrum, pre-k children experience better cognitive and social outcome.” 

Catching students early is critical.  In the South, they found that they enroll 19.4 percent of its 3- and 4-year-olds in state-funded pre-k programs, more than double the 8.4 percent of non-Southern states. It was mentioned that
Georgia and Oklahoma are pre-k leaders with enrollments among the highest in the nation.
Oklahoma headed the list with 33.4 percent enrollment while Georgia followed Kentucky,
Florida and Vermont with 27.4 percent.  
Delaware has and early childhood assistance program known as ECAP. It serves pre-kindergarten 4-year olds who live at or below the federal poverty level and follows the Head Start performance standards.  The program enrolled 840 students in 2002. Originally it was established in 1994 to address the need for improved school readiness by giving income eligible 4-year-old children at least one year of preschool and reducing the log waiting lists at Head Start Centers. Teachers have about 10 students each for four hours a day and are qualified to teach based on an associate degree in Early Childhood education.   

A longitudinal study released in 2002 found that children who had participated in the
Delaware’s ECAP program were significantly more likely to meet or exceed standards on 3rd-grade reading and mathematics assessments, had significantly higher grades and were less than half as likely to repeat a grade as their peers who had not attended ECAP. This program cost the state 4.5 million per year and probably prevents much failure in elementary schools and loss of self esteem that goes with the territory because it is preventative and not punitive.   

~ by Diane Albanese on May 23, 2007.