Literacy and Reading

A new study by Sarah Miller, Paul Connolly and Lisa Maguire of Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland suggests that while volunteer tutors can be effective at helping students improve their reading speed and ability to read aloud, volunteers with little to no training are unlikely to help a child improve his or her reading comprehension or reading confidence -- skills that may be more effectively taught by professional educators.

A red-hot ed-tech marketplace is creating a feeling of urgency among decision makers in state agencies and local school districts – and early education is no exception. In a world of increasing fiscal constraints, state leaders are under pressure to capitalize on new technologies to improve productivity and help children excel. But without thoughtful adoption, leaders are at risk of spending public dollars on products that sit unused, lock districts into specific brands or platforms, or get in the way of promoting the positive, face-to-face interactions with adults that young children need.

To help state leaders see past the hype, I was commissioned to write a policy brief for the Education Commission of the States. It is being released this week at the commission’s annual forum in Atlanta. The brief, Technology in Early Education: Building Platforms for Connections and Content that Strengthen Families and Promote Success in School,  is part of a series underwritten by GE called The Progress of Education Reform. (Other issues in the series have examined digital citizenship, the implications of defining college readiness, and the intricacies of state school funding.)

Read the headlines about the federal government’s early education competitions among states, and you might think there is only one game in town: the Early Learning Challenge that is part of Obama’s signature education reform initiative, Race to the Top.

But three other statewide grants could also have an impact on children’s learning in early childhood from birth through third grade: Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy grants; Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) grants; and the original Race to the Top, which is labeled a K-12 program and therefore explicitly includes the K-3 grades and could implicitly impact public schools’ pre-K programs as well.

On May 11, 2012, Lisa Guernsey gave a talk at Harvard University's PreK-3rd Institute on the federal government's role so far in reforming early education to enable better alignment across the pre-K, kindergarten, first, second and third grades (PreK-3rd). The presentation examines the Obama Administration's top-level education agenda and its early learning policies and describes how new and existing federal programs and funding streams are influencing the work of states and school districts in creating better early education systems for young children.

Early educators and child advocates continue to stress the importance of children learning to read by the end of third grade.  Legislators in several states are signaling their interest in this too by proposing third-grade retention policies that keep children from graduating to fourth grade until they can pass a reading test. Is this a smart approach?

Early educators and child advocates continue to stress the importance of children learning to read by the end of third grade.  Legislators in several states are signaling their interest in this too by proposing third-grade retention policies that keep children from graduating to fourth grade until they can pass a reading test. Is this a smart approach?

More than 80 percent of elementary school teachers, grades 3 through 5, report that they are spending more learning time on math or language arts at the expense of other subjects. This is one of the most disconcerting findings from a recent survey of 1,000 3^rd through 12^th grade public school teachers commissioned by Common Core, a DC-based non-profit that promotes content-rich curricula and instruction.

On April 10, Lisa Guernsey gave a presentation to the Falls Church PTA on what the latest science is telling parents and educators about the benefits and drawbacks of screen media for children, ages 0 to 8. The presentation was based in part on new research in Screen Time: How Electronic Media -- From Baby Videos to Educational Software -- Affects Your Young Child (Basic Books, 2012).

English Language Learners are a large and growing population in America’s public school system, but schools often fall short in preparing these students for success in college and the workforce. For a while now, we've had our eyes on one state, Illinois, that has tried to reverse that trend by starting services for young English Language Learners before they arrive in kindergarten.

Illinois is in the process of expanding its services for English Language Learners into state-funded pre-K, so that students begin receiving ELL support when they first arrive in school, whether that is at age 3, 4, or 5.  Our new policy paper, Starting Early with English Language Learners: First Lessons From Illinois, takes a deep look at how Illinois came to see a need for new policies for its burgeoning population of English Language Learners, and why focusing on its youngest English Language Learners was the state’s next step.

English Language Learners are a large and growing population in America’s public school system, but schools often fall short in preparing these students for success in college and the workforce. A new policy paper from the Early Education Initiative of the New America Foundation focuses on one state, Illinois, that is taking a different approach: building English Language Learner services that begin as early as pre-K to ensure that all students, regardless of their age, are supported in school.