Category: Uncategorized

Two hundred NAEYC members from 39 states gathered in Washington, DC for the annual Public Policy Forum on March 8-10, 2015 to prepare to meet with elected officials about the importance of early childhood. On March 8, 2015 ACS president Lori McClung and policy associate Cassie Gaffney, along with Amy O’Leary, director of the Early Education for All Campaign, presented a four-hour interactive pre-conference session. More than 100 early childhood stakeholders from across the country, most without previous advocacy experience, came to the session to learn about the federal legislative and budget process, rules for nonprofit lobbying, and strategies and tactics for effectively engaging policymakers. The pre-conference day concluded with a policymaker-meeting workshop where participants had the opportunity to practice and hone their new skills alongside their colleagues. Participants reported that information at the pre-conference was new and helpful, encouraged their colleagues back home to participate next year, and invited ACS to do similar trainings in their states. All resources from the pre-conference can be found here: http://www.naeyc.org/policy/advocacy.

This week’s Columbus Dispatch editorial highlights The Ohio 8 Coalition’s testimony on Ohio House Bill 2 that calls for greater transparency and accountability for public charter schools. The Ohio 8 Coalition’s common sense reform provisions reflect a national trend with Ohio at its center to help ensure that all schools meet the same expectations on behalf of kids. The Ohio 8 Coalition will continue this dialogue and ACS will be there to ensure media outlets continue coverage on this critical issue.

New America Foundation’s Ed Central blog recently shone a spotlight on communities that are working to reduce pre-K suspension rates. As in K-12, pre-K suspension affects young children of color at a much higher rate than their white counterparts. This is most unfortunate, as it puts suspended children further behind their peers and helps them form early negative opinions of school overall. Fortunately, some cities are taking steps to address the issue. For example, the District of Columbia has introduced legislation to prohibit pre-K suspension within public and charter schools in almost all cases. Minneapolis and Chicago have banned pre-suspensions, and in Baltimore, principals must first gain approval from central office before suspending a pre-K or kindergarten student.

“These are good steps, but they are not widespread enough,” the blog author Shayna Cook writes. “It is promising that some cities and districts are making strides in this area and creating policies to eliminate the use of suspension in pre-K and the early grades. More should follow their lead, and then take the next step of investing in greater access to early childhood mental health professionals.”

PRE4CLE is highlighted among these recent Cleveland Plain Dealer articles that help parents understand what to look for in quality child care settings

State ratings point to preschools that are really schools, not just child care

What makes a good preschool? State inspectors and other experts tell parents what to look for

Metro Finding a preschool: A guide for parents on how to start (slideshow)

You can find our more about PRE4CLE here: http://www.clevelandmetroschools.org/pre4cle.

 

 

As a co-author of Show Me The Evidence and key driver of 1996 welfare reform policy, Ron Haskins knows a thing or two about finding programs that work. Now, as co-director of the Brookings Center on Children and Families and Budgeting for National Priorities Project, Haskins’ recent blog post, “Social Programs that Work,” highlights five evidence-based programs that “have produced big and lasting impacts on social problems.” These programs are:

• Career Academies – small learning communities of 150-200 students that result in an 11% increase in average annual earnings for graduates and significant increases in family stability.
• Nurse-Family Partnership – a home visitation program for at-risk new parents that shows impressive reductions in child abuse and neglect, reductions in subsequent births, less time spent on welfare, and better cognitive, academic and social outcomes for children.
• Carrera Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program – a youth development program for economically disadvantaged teens that not only reduces pregnancy rates by 40%, but shows participants are 30% more likely to complete high school (or GED) and 37% more likely to enroll in college.
• Success for All ­­– a comprehensive reform program for high-poverty elementary schools that shows significant improvements in grade-level reading outcomes for second graders.
• Small Schools of Choice ­– A model that replaced 31 large, failing NYC high schools with more than 100 smaller schools with specialized curricula and philosophies. Students in SSCs were more likely to graduate and more likely to enroll in college.

One more fact worth mentioning: the cost of all of these programs is far less than that of the government programs successful participants would likely require later in life.

Recently the Ohio Department of Education released this link* to promote the initial results of the state’s 3rd grade reading policy. Several school districts from ACS client The Ohio 8 coalition are featured as examples of success! Ohio’s new Third Grade Reading Guarantee ensures that every struggling reader gets the support he or she needs to be able to learn and achieve. This year, 95.8% of eligible 3^rd graders met Third Grade Reading Guarantee promotion minimum.

*http://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Early-Learning/Third-Grade-Reading-Guarantee/TGRG-Infographic.pdf.aspx

Are you facing community leaders or legislators who say there’s still not enough research to prove that high quality pre-K is effective — even imperative? A new article from The Washington Post provides new firepower to help you push back. In fact, this article debunks a poorly contrived “October surprise” policy brief from the Cato Institute, authored by David J. Armor. The Cato piece proposes that the success of some key programs can’t be generalized to pre-K overall, findings from other pre-K research projects are flawed, and the effects of pre-K fade out over time.  In the Washington Post article, author W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, takes on – and knocks down – each of Armor’s claims. “If all the evidence is taken into account, I believe that policy makers from across the political spectrum will come to the conclusion that high-quality pre-K is indeed a sound public investment,” Barnett asserts.

On Thursday January 8^th, Scarlett Bouder, Vice President, and Heather Lenz, Policy Associate, facilitated discussions with Arizona’s early intervention stakeholders to refine strategies and start determining benchmarks to measure the success of the state’s early intervention system. Led by First Things First (FTF), these discussions are part of the federal Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Grant (ECCS), received by First Things First for 2013-2016.  Arizona’s ECCS grant focuses on increasing developmental screening of young children to identify and treat problems early among children birth through age two.

ACS is entering their second year providing support to FTF leadership on strategy planning and facilitation to fulfill the grant requirements and goals of the ECCS grant. Last year, ACS worked with FTF to develop and adopt a three-year workplan with specific goals and strategies led by other statewide early intervention stakeholders in Arizona.

A recent study from Stanford University’s Center for Research of Educational Outcomes (CREDO) examines Ohio’s charter school performance has gained attention around the state. The Akron Beacon Journal and Plain Dealer reports the CREDO’s findings that Ohio’s charter schools rank 23rd out of 26 states where charter schools had been in operation long enough to produce measurable results. In a state like Ohio, where for-profit companies dominate the charter school landscape, that means families, students and taxpayers may not be getting their money’s worth.

“After a year in a charter school, Ohio students typically lag behind district school students by weeks in reading and months in math,” the paper reports. Only Michigan and Texas surpass Ohio in the number of charter schools run by for-profit companies.

On December 10, 2014, Macke Raymond, Director of CREDO, outlined key findings from their newly released report before a group of education advocates and state leaders at the Cleveland City Club.

While the report highlights increased positive performance of Ohio’s charter schools, it also reinforces the need for increased oversight of charter school sponsors and boards in order to ensure that charter schools are providing quality educational opportunities for all students.

The Beacon Journal also shares data from its own study of charter school performance management, which found that:

• Charter schools that hired no company, as a group, performed the best academically; those managed by nonprofits showed the best student academic growth; and those managed by for-profits scored lowest in both categories.
• Of the 16 lowest performing networks, 14 were managed by for-profit companies.
• The online charter schools Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow and Ohio Virtual Academy, which account for a quarter of all charter enrollment, averaged the lowest student growth in the state.
• Of the 12 highest-performing charter school networks, eight hired nonprofit management organizations.
• $503 million of $920 million in public funding went to charter schools managed by for-profit companies. A little over half of the $920 million went to out-of-state companies.
• Out-of-state and for-profit companies enrolled 74,458 of the 119,271 Ohio charter school students.
• The 10 highest performing companies managed schools with above-average revenue, many propped up by private philanthropists who invest in successful academic models. Others got a boost from Cleveland voters, who approved additional local aid (about $1,000 more per pupil) for high-performing charter schools. A similar local levy failed in Columbus. The state offers no financial incentive for top-performers.