pobod

It is nice to see that you finally acknowledge the poor children arrive a kindergarten with roughly half the vocabulary of middle class children. ou also acknowledge the reasons. The fact is school cannot compensate for this without giving compensatory education and ths only mitigates the situation to a degree. The same environments that lefd to 4 year olds being behind continues long after. Summers and after schools are one of the few times available to make up the gaps. they also need much smaller classes for the bottom 20%.

Part 1

There is a lot more to acquiring vocabulary than what the article and press release had stated. Furthermore, it is a lot more complicated in language than what the article and paper has stated. Thirdly, the particular study in question is a confirmation of all other previous studies and research work on language development. Absolutely no new conclusions - the abstract - “Mediation analyses showed that the effect of child-directed speech on expressive vocabulary was explained by infants’ language-processing efficiency, which suggests that richer language experience strengthens processing skills that facilitate language growth.”  http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/09/09/0956797613488145.abstract

Note the word, ‘suggests’, and not the word ‘conclusive’.
Sage and the traditional journals has the identical abstract. However, I found a few that were dated earlier than Sage, that infer that the study found something new. In one, “Such a large disparity cannot simply be dismissed as a transitory delay, given that differences in trajectories of language growth established by 3 years of age tend to persist and are predictive of later school success or failure.”  http://www.bionity.com/en/publications/495959/ses-differences-in-language-processing-skill-and-vocabulary-are-evident-at-18-months.html

Gee, I can find reams of research going back 40 years in the language and cognitive fields, stating language growth of children is just one part of the development track for children. As for the researcher, Anne Fernald - from what I can conclude, her main research is, “Early development of communication and language. Using online measures of spoken language understanding, we investigate the development of speed and efficiency in children’s early comprehension in relation to their emerging lexical and grammatical competence.”
https://psychology.stanford.edu/afernald

And here is an abstract - 2006 - http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0012-1649.42.1.98

Now the fourth issue regarding the study, is the bias and the treatment of the high income versus the low income.
“Research conducted in university laboratories commonly relies on a “convenience sample” of local participants who are usually affluent and highly educated. Since children in these higher SES families have many other advantages as well, the results of such research do not represent the majority of children living in less privileged circumstances in the United States.

To include a broader range of children in her research, Fernald took her lab on the road. She duplicated the experimental setup of her Stanford-based lab in a 30-feet-long RV and drove to a city a few hours north of campus, where the median household income and education levels are much lower on average than in the Bay Area.”  http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/september/toddler-language-gap-091213.html

Key term - convenience sampling - known as accidental sampling - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics)

Not at all random, and no doubt if we did get our hands on the study, no doubt the “convenience sample” of affluent and highly educated all came from the university crowd. The same crowd, who are vying to get their children in the exclusive nursery school, but first the child has to pass the tests and out comes the flash cards. Start early, the sooner, the better…...........when it comes to a select group of highly educated parents who think their children are geniuses.

Part 2

However, there is more objections I have but the main ones I pointed out in my first post, and this leads me back to the ongoing research in language development, neuroscience, the cognitive and psychology fields. The Children of the Code web site is the best place to go to for the non-experts. I also have personal experience where I had an assortment of health and language professionals that were involved with my child from 15 months in dealing with a language delay. Unknown to me, I initially only dealt with the speech pathologist but in behind the scenes, he was having regular consultations with other experts to figure out why my child was not talking, and yet was well advanced in other areas. In one area, her vocabulary was 3 times higher than the norm, and yet she called all vegetables carrots, but had no trouble to point out tomatoes or any of the other vegetables. I ended up acquiring new specialized knowledge regarding language that the average parent does not have. I had interesting conversations with my neighbours and friends on child development. 

I recognized the language in the New York Times article and the press release from the Standford Lab. As such, below is a link from the Children of the Code - the complexity of development of language and the connection to the 3 Rs in school.

In part, “So while early is important, we don’t want to confuse early with what’s necessary for development. There’s often a sense in American psychology and American policy these days that if we just do something really good early, then we’re finished. Of course early environments are good for children. They’re important because of brain maturation, but for children to become healthy adults who contribute to the wealth of society, from a community standpoint, a tax paying standpoint, a policy standpoint, it’s important that we have environments that are healthy for them throughout their development. So taking poor children in America and giving them fantastic early childhood programs but keeping them in neighborhoods where the schools are poorly provisioned, teachers are poorly trained, curriculums are not up to date is not going to solve the problem of development in adolescence. We know development doesn’t work that way. While early is important, we don’t want to mistake its importance for making it paramount.”  http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/greenberg.htm#HowEarly

The key words are - “the schools are poorly provisioned, teachers are poorly trained, curriculums are not up to date is not going to solve the problem of development in adolescence. ” - I personally seen my youngest child lose the gains she made in language, the two nursery schools she attended daily and other activities to facilitate language and to be ready for school due to the pedagogy, the instructional methods, and the curriculum but more importantly, the inadequate knowledge bases of the educators.

How else to explain the reasoning of the educators, there is no learning problem in reading, since my child has high levels of oral vocabulary. All in the name of denying reading remediation or indeed to avoid acknowledging that my child was experiencing learning difficulties. Note, the only area in language that was maintained was her oral vocabulary, but that probably had more to do with her home environment then any of the counter-productive practices that are so very unkind to the students with the less than prefect cognitive processes.

The last sentence in Malkin’s post - “, Ontario’s ruinously-expensive universal prekindergarten program is not carefully-targeted and is therefore unlikely to make a significant difference in its students’ lives.”, can applied right across Canada. What really happens, the children with less than prefect cognitive processes that includes all incomes becomes the victims of the universal programs. Let us pretend we are all equal, having the identical learning needs. “David Boulton: Jack Shonkoff, talking about the “sensitive periods of development” from a neuroscience perspective, and others whom we’ve talked to essentially say: look, there’s no question that there’s sufficient neuroplasticity to affect children’s trajectories throughout the long span of development. But in terms of neurological ecology and efficiency, if children haven’t developed a sufficiently robust level of language processing in the three- to five-year-old range, then their trajectory relative to what’s necessary to break through the wall of literacy, for example, a year or so down the road, is off kilter to that task.”  Having the wee ones with robust vocabularies will not cut it, to improve reading nor when the public education system refuses to acknowledged the complexity that lies behind language and the stages of child development based on the science and especially when it is universal - one-sized-fits-all without the application of the 21st century language, cognitive and learning sciences.

Nancy, just want to say ‘Thank You’ for your tireless efforts and excellent references.

The most famous study was Hart & Risley’s book “Meaningful Differences”, which they nicely summarized in “The Early Catastrophe: The 3-Million Word Gap By Age Three”. 

http://www.unitedwayracine.org/sites/default/files/imce/files/SOH The Early Catastrophe - The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3 - Risley and Hart - summary.pdf

I read their book, and was astounded at the challenges they overcame to gather their data.  A researcher followed each child for one day per month with a tape recorder, and then they transcribed these huge volumes of recordings.

There is a page with Dr Risley on your favorite website:  http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/risley.htm

This isn’t my area of interest, but Hart & Risley seems to suggest that the ‘catastrophe’ happens earlier than pre-school, and trying to correct it at age 4 is closing the barn door after the cows have left.

There’s a very timely article in the KW Record today talking about the Ontario government’s full-day pre-kindergarten program. http://www.therecord.com/opinion-story/4170417-how-full-day-kindergarten-makes-things-worse-for-kids/

It really is worth reading this column. It seems that the premier was fibbing when she said that the government’s academic studies had showed better results for the Ontario students who were in the program. In fact, most of the students did worse.

You may recall that that announcement was made BEFORE the release of the studies and - coincidentally - just when the EQAO had released the results of the provincial tests showing that math scores were in continuing decline.

That the premier was trying to change the channel I can understand. I don’t like it but I can understand it. But I can’t understand why she would baldly lie - especially when she knew that the government would have to release the studies sometime.

Does she really think the public has memories that short? Even scarier, is she right?

Joanne your ending remarks sizes it nicely - “This isn’t my area of interest, but Hart & Risley seems to suggest that the ‘catastrophe’ happens earlier than pre-school, and trying to correct it at age 4 is closing the barn door after the cows have left.”  However, lots can be done to correct it BUT the education establishment is refusing to change their ways from the 19th century to the 21st century.

In the Children of the Code link - half way down, starting at the subtitle - Language Overlays Social Dancing -

“People with very low education that were talkative were still doing all sorts of good things in terms of quantities and probabilities and what ifs, and relationships and time relationships, and all that stuff with their kids. So when you start this human game of symbolism, this human thing, people will start out, in terms of the micro culture of the family and their families, dancing a lot with their kids, or not—with their babies, or not. By the time you’re three, the experience differences are so large, as well as the neurobiological differences and so on, you can’t make up for them.”

The public education system and its 19th century ideologies has embedded the very idea that as one goes down the social-income ladder, the poorer the parent abilities and skills to raise their children. This premise has given rise to the universal programs of one-sized-fits-all approaches from early childhood education straight through to grade 12, where they leave the grade 12 students to sink or swim or leaving them hanging high and dry.

The key is carefully-targeted prekindergarten programs can go a long way towards overcoming poor students’ learning deficits based on the science of the 21st century and not 19th century science. Unfortunately, it is the refusal of the education establishment to implement programs that adapts and targets the cognitive deficits of children from early childhood to the teens that enables learning that allows the full potential of the individual child.

Let us posed a question, are the Ontario education establishment studying the outcomes of children with language deficits in the universal early childhood model with wrapped around services?  No they are not. Many children with speech delays whether minor or major, have larger vocabularies than the average norm but their verbal speech has not caught up with their known vocabularies. Ergo, the education establishment labels these children as having low levels of vocabularies due to the poor assessments, and are put in programs that will hinder and delay their learning that are of a poorer quality then what can be had elsewhere in the private sector or in other areas such as health in the public sector.

If my youngest child was enrolled in the universal childhood education, day care and the wrapped around services in 2013, my child would be doing very poorly, compared to the advances she made back in the late 1990s using a potpourri of private and public resources, free and fee paying, under the collaboration of the professionals lying outside of the education system for the most part, to facilitate growth in language and verbal language. The reality is, the vast majority of children are not born with near-perfect cognitive processes at all income levels. and yet the education establishment are still insisting to used the 19th century techniques on 21st century children.

On a personal note - In 1960, it was noted by the grade one teacher that I processed a high level of vocabulary without verbal speech. It was viewed at the time as being a smart cookie. In 1979, my oldest child who said her first word by three months, talking in sentences by the age of 12 months was well advanced in her vocabulary. It was viewed by the school, as the expected level, but not gifted in language. In 1996, testing for my 15 month old child began to rule out the disorders including autism to get to the bottom of the speech delay. By 1997, it was declared a major speech delay that really began a new journey to resolved the questions of the professionals such as high vocabulary levels to high spatial levels to the lack of verbal speech. And yet, in 2001 my youngest child was declared a slow learner but was not in need of extra help in the three Rs in grade 1 nor did she meet the criteria to received the educational services that are beyond the classroom. My children did school, like a lot of other children do because the public education system doesn’t do learning based on the 21st century sciences in learning, the cognitive/psychology fields and neuroscience.

Herein lies the crux of the problem - all children have cognitive strengths and weaknesses. A minority have near-perfect cognitive processes that are very adaptable to schooling and learning in the way that matches the education establishment to their education theories, philosophies and pedagogy theories. The early childhood programs that are at play in the education system, is a mix bag of programs and methods rooted in the 19th century knowledge matrix modeled by the children with the near perfect cognitive processes. Today, the early childhood childhood programs being operated by the public education system, the myopic focus is on the small minority of children that forces the majority of children to adapt to the program at the expenses of their cognitive strengths and furthering weakening of their weaker cognitive processes. Leaving my youngest child and children like her no matter the income level, between a hard place and a rock. In 2001, my youngest child was labeled as a slow learner with low vocabulary, spatial thinking and problem solving skills by the pubic school. It be no different in 2013, my child would still be labeled the same and deemed a slow learner. My eldest child would be deemed the same as not being gifted in areas of language. My eldest was very adaptable to do school and my youngest was not. Yet both never reached their full potential in learning and academically because the focus of the education establishment is to model education services based on their version of an ideal child that only exists on an alternative plane of reality.

That said, Malkin’s link is timely - ““Children with special educational needs showed superior outcomes on the measures of social competence and emotional maturity in non-(full-day kindergarten) programs,” the report states. In other words, full-day kindergarten fails special needs kids. The authors called for more research into this troubling result.” http://www.therecord.com/opinion-story/4170417-how-full-day-kindergarten-makes-things-worse-for-kids/

Now just think about it for a minute….because it is the identified children who have been formally identified with special education needs or special needs. If the children identified with special needs are not being well-served by the all day kindergarten, what is happening to all of the children who have yet to be identified or may never be identified as having learning difficulties in a public education system that refuses to mind the 21st century sciences and operates as if it was still the 19th century?  They too are not being well served by the all day kindergarten programs nor into the primary grades when learning difficulties arise in learning the 3 Rs.

My child in 2013, would have been identified as being dyslexic as early as the age of 2 1/2, and yet it be the public education system fighting tooth and nail to denied the appropriate education service once full verbal speech is at play, to teach the sounds of the English language and to begin the reading processes where she would be ready to learn to read in the primary grades. Since 1997,  it has been declared speech delays signifies there is a 97.7 % chance of the child experiencing early learning difficulties in school. One major difficulty is learning to read. What are some parents doing who are fortunate for their child to be receiving a full slate of speech therapy services in 2013?  Sending their children to a private provider for correction, instead of fighting with the public education establishment, who think their children have no problems what-so-ever or the children are in need of the watered down programs offered by the public education system based and modeled of a child that only exists on an alternative plane of reality rooted in the 19th century.

pobod

Where do they get all this effects wear off stuff from Headstart? Perry study ahows effects life long and life altering.

Crazy eh?  But worse yet then what the reports of full day kindergarten that were quietly release had to say,  are the reports that may never be release on the provision of services for children crossing the span in such areas as speech and language services. The parents who have the means are now going private, instead of having their children to be put on waiting lists or receiving watered down services that will not meet the needs of their children for two reasons. 1) the shortage of professionals specializing in children who have special needs including the children with speech delays. 2) the redirecting of funding from a full slate of services for children and the funding is being pumped into the early childhood education via through the public education system to become the new providers for children services. It is been seen across Canada, the shortchanging of crucial child services in favour of the expansion of the public education system on their terms that are based and rooted in the 19th century methods and ideologies to keep the locks on the access doors on children services that are in their very nature not medical services, but aids in the social, the cognitive and learning development of children. The key to accessing the doors, are the parents’ abilities based on their social-income ranking, and the parents’ means.

Today, if my child had attended the early childhood education, day care and the wrapped around services in the Ontario’s version, my child would be entering grade 1 as a severe dyslexic because she would not have had the access to twice weekly, 50 minutes of intensive speech therapy for two years, because she would not have met the criteria the Liberal government imposed. Very few children in Ontario are receiving this kind of intensive speech therapy that leaves parents to accepting the watered down versions being offered and funded by the government or parents with the means to seek out private services for speech therapy for their children.

Full day kindergarten is very foolish, when it is funded in part by defunding the public children services in areas of language and speech in favour of watered down programs that matches the education theories and pedagogy of the education establishment whose thinking processes are rooted in the 19th century and NOT in the 21st century.

Today, a child born with development dyslexia will be hard pressed to locate a public school with educators trained in the sounds of the English and French languages, let alone find a public school where educators are trained in the reading programs based on the Orton-Gillingham methods. Now just think about the children within the norm, who do not have near prefect cognitive processes, the locked access doors to education services that would improved and strengthened the cognitive processes, and the reports that were released by the Ontario government?  http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/kindergarten/theresearchisin.html

It is a casebook example of the expansion of the public education system at the expense of the children and their futures in the 21st century. Where in the year 2030, the LD and dyslexic children will remained firmly entrenched at the bottom of the achievement charts, and in good company with other children who all learned to read by memorizing words. All could be corrected in the early years if the public education establishment, and the special economic/political interests had their focus on the cognitive and learning sciences of the 21st century, that emphasizes the individual child and their learning needs based on their cognitive strengths and weaknesses. 

Below are some of the top researchers having their work being cherry-picked by the education establishment to support their versions of early childhood education that are not based on the science, and as some economists would say, expensive programs for so very little gain. On the contrary, no one is against early childhood education but it is obvious that the education establishment are resisting certain elements of early childhood education that promotes the basic cognitive elements needed to learned to read, write and do numeracy well.

Two interviews - both economists - 1. ” Exactly. I think it’s amazing how much we disregard early childhood, and the family structure. What I’ve been getting at, and you saw on the Committee of Economic Development paper, The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children paper. What I want to put together, more systematically, is the structure of how the disadvantaged family - just what a disadvantaged family does, what its harm is, what the environment is. Right now, so much of the discussion on economics and in many other areas, World Bank, it doesn’t matter where, is just on income. As though if we give the family another $1,000 - that’s it. And that’s nuts.” 
http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/heckman.htm

2. ” What we’re learning about ECD, as I noted earlier, comes from two separate lines of research. One is ECD interventions, with the families and with children, birth to five, providing them with high-quality teachers and mentors. The other line of research is on brain development, how the physical brain develops depending on the child’s environment. And it’s all about school readiness.  We can show that if we do a much better job in getting a child ready for school, that child is going to perform much better throughout their life.”
http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/rolnick.htm

On preschool studies - ” Part of the problem is that the evaluations of these have not been well done, as far as I can tell…...Dr. Eric Hanushek: Right, and their reluctance to even use programs in the dimensions were discussing.”
http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/hanushek.htm#Preschool_Programs

A host of interviews on Universal Pre-K
http://www.childrenofthecode.org/library/refs/prekcase.htm

And a short video - along with other short videos connecting pre-school to teacher training to reading
http://www.childrenofthecode.org/Tour/c3/preschool.htm

As a parent, I know what the value of a good nursery school or pre-K program really is. All my children attended one of the 1/2 version, where my youngest attended a traditional nursery school that prepares children to be ready for formal school for the morning, and the other activities was a combination of programs specifically targeted areas of concern. My youngest was a busy little girl from the age of 2 on a schedule that allowed to fit in the naps and meals at home, all in the name of promoting communication among the kids who were the talkers. And indeed she learned and was fully prepared to enter JK, and confirmation came my way when the JK teacher called me to asked me if my child attended a private pre-school? My first response to her, that I handed the assessments and reports since the age of 2 near the end of the June into her new school file for the JK teacher to look over. She then apologized not for her question, but apologized for the poor procedures that are in place at the school. She did not go further, but its the old saying, the teacher is the last person to know when it comes to the principal of a school and his managing style. After the teacher read the documentation, she understood why my child was bored, knew the routine and talk some sense into other children who did not attend any pre-school. Otherwise she was well advance in her skills in JK and SK but it is too bad by grade 1, due to instruction methods and curriculum her learning struggles began in the basic 3 Rs.

The well used refrain of the education establishment my child did not have learning problems based on no independent evidence except their expertise opinion based on their observations is put in place to have parents to complied with their expertise. The wealth of documentation from the years of 2 to 5 were dismissed because she no longer have a communication problem and indeed a language problem according to their expertise.

Considering the billion of dollars being invested in early childhood, what a good quality early childhood education can do for children is worth the investment, time and effort. However, the investment dollars are flushed away at the beginning of grade 1 in the public education system due to the instruction methods, pedagogy, curriculum and teacher training. Or another way of looking at it, the children become the victims of the education establishment and their agendas of best interests.

I have had a chance to follow up on Peter Shawn Taylor’s column about the Ontario minister of education’s misrepresentatin of what the evaluations of the government’s full-day kindergarten program actually said. The studies are, needless to say, not front and centre on the ministry’s website, but after a little searching I found a link to them at http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/kindergarten/theresearchisin.html

The first thing you see is a link (http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/kindergarten/fdk-infographic.html) to a page that makes it look as if full-day kindergarten leads to better outcomes - a clear case of the use of selective statistics.

In reading the studies themselves, it’s clear that the researchers are bending over backwards in an effort to show full-day kindergarten in a positive light. After all, their pay cheques were being signed by the kindly folks at the Ministry of Education. However, here are the salient parts of both reports, as they sum up their findings.

QUEEN’S
“Students from SK FDELK classrooms showed
higher scores on only one EDI domain, Physical
Health and Well-Being. This positive effect was
limited to students from high need schools.
Students from JK FDELK classrooms showed
high scores on EDI scores of Communication
and General Knowledge. Also, five analyses
indicated that students from FDELK classrooms
showed higher EDI scores in high need schools
rather than the low need schools, although in
one case this was limited to boys, and in
another to the younger JK students. In general,
there is some support in these findings that at
least in high need schools, FDELK is having a
positive impact on levelling the academic
playing field. This finding was much more
apparent for JK than SK students from FDELK
classrooms.
“The results for the French-speaking schools are
somewhat different than those from the
English-speaking schools discussed earlier.
There were no significant effects of FDELK in the
SK sample. On two EDI domain measures,
Emotional Maturity and Commitment and
General Knowledge, JK children from non-FDELK
classrooms showed higher scores overall when
compared to those from FDELK classrooms.”

MACMASTER
“While some results reported here are promising in indicating a small advantage for children who participate in the FDK learning, most of the outcomes are inconclusive, or even opposite to expectations.”

These are the best things the evaluators can say about full-day kindergarten, and bear in mind that virtually every other evaluation of head-start-type programs has found that any positive effects fade out by grade 3. So Ontario has distinguished itself in this area at least - in that it has no positive effects to fade out later on.

We have said it before and we’ll say it again. Targeted, properly-done intervention programs can mitigate the effects of poverty, but Ontario’s full-day kindergarten program is neither targeted nor properly-done.

To add to Malkin’s post - the American study which is often cited at the moment being a new report. Have similar findings as the Ontario’s report, pushing for universal early childhood education.  http://fcd-us.org/resources/evidence-base-preschool

The summary - http://fcd-us.org/sites/default/files/Executive Summary - Evidence Base on Preschool.pdf

Pre-K is Win-Win, Concludes a New Report
http://earlyed.newamerica.net/blogposts/2013/pre_k_is_win_win_concludes_a_new_report-95181

What is missing?  Frank discussion across the span on the reports/studies on early childhood education to the primary grades.  From the Atlantic, posted February, 2013 -  Why Preschool Isn’t Enough
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/why-preschool-isnt-enough/273462/

Is one such example, of many pointing out not only what Malkin has stated and here - ” Smart investment in early childhood requires a two-pronged approach: deep learning experiences in the birth-to-five years and improvements in the early grades of elementary school…
But reading scores in fourth grade are proof that teachers and principals need help.”

The fadeout is the big problem that is not being acknowledge by the education stakeholders. For my child and children like her who have unidentified learning problems, who attended good quality nursery schools - are the children who appeared to be on track during their pre-school years, steadily progressing, are the children who are viewed by the primary teachers as having no difficulties. No difficulties, that would kicked in the processes of education services beyond the classroom. However, this set of children are not alone. They are joined by other children,  where at the end of grade 3 - the fade-out of the social/cognitive skills that shows up in the data streams on reading and math achievement scores. For my child, all the gains made in her pre-school years were lost by the end of grade 3, but how did she managed to pass without being socially promoted in the primary grades?  Her strong social/cognitive skills masked her learning difficulties in areas of reading, writing and numeracy, that mimic the problems of a low-income student student or a student lacking in skills for another external SES variable, such as not being read or poor parenting skills. Both excuses provided for reasons to denied an assessment to check for learning disabilities.

Now, not all children are born with developmental dyslexia, but yet my child, appeared to have all the problems that are associated with low-income children, who have not had the advantages that my child had, including attending a good quality nursery school. At this stage, the third reason enters into the picture, that as a mother, I was lying because I refused to accept that my child is a slow learner, The kicker is, the school refused to acknowledge the learning difficulties that my child was experiencing in the classroom, because she was passing but would acknowledged the learning difficulties of the low-income children who had a higher quality of work than my child, but had reading difficulties like my child because they were experiencing failure.

My child’s strong cognitive skills in other areas other than language carried her through the primary grades - the same cognitive skills that are weaker in children who are low-income as the research has confirmed. The fade-out is very real because as Joanne has stated including the top researchers. Such as low income children and dyslexia children will present with identical reading deficits in low phonemic awareness, with dyslexia children scoring below the low-income children. Ergo, in the various camps the push is for teachers and early childhood educators for new training programs, so all children will have their foundation set in the pre-K to 3 for the social-emotional intelligence and strong academic skills at a level, for all children to progress to achieved at their full potential.

As the byline in the Atlantic article - “As President Obama knows, early childhood education is a must. But without proper K-12 follow-up, its benefits could simply fade away.”  Then read the comments….......very informative how they are running around the biggest elephant in the room - no follow-up in the K to 12 system. In 2013, with the advancements being made in the cognitive and learning fields, the vast majority of children born with developmental dyslexia could be identified by the age of 3, along with the other learning disabilities, instead of waiting well pass grade 3 to be identified in the education system.

The expense and benefits of early childhood education can only go so far because the public K to 12 education system is not changing and altering their policies and practices to the 21st century,  that will reap the rewards and outcomes everyone is looking for. 

pobod

I know Kathleen Wynne quite well and she is well aware that my sympathies are more orange than red, I do support red if required to support blue people.

We discussed it and I told her I believed in compensatory education which to me means giving people what they need as opposed to giving it to everyone. The date has shown for a long time that although all kids may benefit from ECE the poor make the greatest gains. They also need it the most.

I advised her instead of a universal program, why not offer twice as much to say 20% of the population on the bottom. Offer ADK and ADJK to the poorest schools. One could say the bottom 20% of EQAO scores but it is exactly the same schools. You could offer just ADK to the next quintile from 20-40% moving up from the bottom and nothing beyond this.

If your goal is closing the gap, and your assumption is that the top 60% are doing well, why offer the same to them? The gap becomes harder to close and the “bang for the buck” is diminished at higher levels?

I suggested, why not give the program to the poor first and slowly move it up the income levels while field testing to see if the cost/benefit analysis is favourable. (you can always spend the money on lower class sizes instead)

There are many other agendas at work here. Major employer groups are becoming increasingly worried about “perceived” labour shortages at all levels. The Quebec example quickly freed up hundreds of thousand of mainly women workers at all levels who took jobs and the taxes they paid were greater than the cost of the $7/day child care.

Many EMPLOYERS are now in the camp of ECE in order to have access to more workers.

Referring to Malkin`s recent statement.
Yes Malkin,I would think they`d have to manufacture improvement data because the curriculum is play based.
Learning your letters,how to shape them and their sounds should begin in all day K if it`s to have any benefit at all.I`m sure the equivalent in math should be taught as well.

I agree with Doug’s comments about targeting the bottom 20% for both moral and economic reasons.  All kids deserve a chance at the starting line.

But Doug adds a perceptive point - there can be an immediate economic benefit to public day-care and pre-K for the parents.  There is also a strong equity argument; day-care offers poor single-mothers a tangible path out of poverty.

But pre-K and day-care only make economic sense if they are frugal and focused on the needs of the ‘customers’.  An expensive and wasteful middle-class entitlement program disproportionally hurts the poor in at least two ways - by dragging the economy, and by focusing on inappropriate delivery metrics. 

For example, if pre-K were intended to help address poverty, the hours would be both longer and flexible (including weekends), so to help poor moms find work.  Instead, we set them for the convenience of middle-class unionized teachers.

It would be much smarter to fund parents directly through vouchers or refundable tax credits, and let the market deliver innovative and focused solutions.

Excellent observation Tom.It`s so true.

To add, compensatory education and its meaning has change over the years. “Compensatory education offers supplementary programs or services designed to help children at risk of cognitive impairment and low educational achievement succeed”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensatory_education

To one that is defined legally in the USA - “Compensatory education is generally defined as a remedy owed to children with a disability who have been denied, a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). Compensatory education may include summer services, additional therapy hours, or other measures that make the student whole for past violations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) by the School District. Compensatory education is intended to be a onetime offer to compensate for past denial of FAPE and doesn’t relieve the School District of providing FAPE on a go forward basis. Thus, compensatory education should be in addition to the necessary services to provide the child FAPE in the current or future Individualized Education Programs (IEP).”  http://www.specialeducationadvisor.com/what-is-compensatory-education/

And here - http://www.bridges4kids.org/pdf/Luker/CompensatoryEd.pdf

Likewise in Canada, and cited in the Supreme Court ruling dealing with the Moore case. Likewise, the term compensatory is used concerning LD students. Compensation Strategies or compensatory strategies.
http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/general/faculty/reis/Compensation_Strategies.html

Doug’s version, has legal implications and thus the school board and the education ministries would open themselves up to lawsuits. This on top of it being an administration nightmare on who will or will not qualified based on the criteria. One of the reasons, why the American Head Start program is not a roaring success even within the low-income neighbourhoods, because it is based on income and not as Tom has stated, as it should be funding according to the needs of the parents and children - a combination of public/private and vouchers. I could provide reams of news articles citing how very easy it is for a low-income parent to have their children kicked out of the Early Head-Start programs for not getting with the program of the middle-class educator agenda. Or the parents withdrawing their children, because they are not happy with the early head start programs…...and the other side - http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/policysocial-context/20233-drive-to-make-head-start-funding-more-competitive-spurs-lawsuit.html

The universal model is selected in Ontario or Quebec is selected because it best matches the current funding models based on delivering education services to the masses, rather then funding based on the needs of the individuals. Bonus - it cuts legal litigation to a minimum.

Competency-Based Education is the new baby on the block being discussed from the bottom to the global education circles - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-robert-mendenhall/competency-based-learning-_b_1855374.html

To here - http://asiasociety.org/education/partnership-global-learning/making-case/why-we-need-competency-based-education

However, it will required massive reorganization and funding formulas in how early education to the K to 12 system is delivered to the masses. The two keys are teacher training and the funding formulas that delivers education to the masses.

More on K to 12 - http://www.whiteboardadvisors.com/news/competency-based-education-importance-k-12-and-higher-ed

And here - http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/02/27/policy-changes-needed-for-shift-to-competency-based-education-model.aspx

And here - http://www.nga.org/files/live/sites/NGA/files/pdf/2013/1309GEPAInstituteCBE.pdf

There should be a massive shift in how early childhood is delivered, if not, look forward to the wee ones subjected to standardized testing, as their counterparts in the primary grades in respond to having certified teachers of higher salaries in the early childhood education classroom. Far too many private agendas within the public education model, that are hard on the public’s tax purse and the futures of the individual children.

pobod

Tax credits do not work. People spend the money on good and shelter and then say I still don’t have daycare. They want it in the opinion school and they want it free.

Considering the federal tax credit of $1200 which is taxable - Doug would be correct. However, what Doug is trying to say is to repeat the old narrative that government services are free. They are not free nor do the public have much choice and say in how public services are to be delivered to the masses.

Just this morning I read in the news, of the push to make people pay for all the wasted space in roads and parking in the suburbs. I can only imagine what that would do to the cost of living in small communities where the parents must buy a parking pass for the right to entered the school’s parking lot. A new revenue source for the public schools and this is on top of the other hidden fees parents pay out. In some schools it can top $2000 just for fees, like transportation fees…....

As for education services, the public education model is set up where the government and the education stakeholders decides what is a free appropriate education to access the education offerings and resources. The early childhood education model in Ontario is another set-up based on the K to 12 model, where the parents of higher income pay the fees for an operation that is closed on holidays, weekends and set day-time operations and transportation (if any) - yet for a few hundred dollars more - get more value and better quality in a private or non-profit down the road from the school.

We see how successful the entire early childhood education/daycare model is, when it is introduced in the high income areas of the professional and business class. I bet all the wee ones will have the Cadillac versions when it comes to toys and resources and the parents will be hiring the services of others to get the edge and the advantage over other children. It is happening on the ground in the American public magnet schools where the higher income people hang out sending their children off to private tutors so their kids will meet the criteria for admittance that has now come down to the level of kindergarten. Meanwhile, the rest of the masses must make do with the offerings of the regular public schools of one-sized-fits-all. Soon it be like that for the early education/daycare in the regular neighbourhoods and lower income where we won’t be able to tell them apart, but will be able to see the big differences in the high income areas and their Cadillac version.

Further to the argument that pre-K is already too late, Nicholas Kristof of in the New York Times calls for interventions during pregnancy and through the early years - medical, nutritional, parental coaching, educational, whatever it takes. 

The alternative is investing in prisons.

“The earliest interventions, and maybe the most important, are home visitation programs like Nurse-Family Partnership. It begins working with at-risk moms during pregnancy, with a nurse making regular visits to offer basic support and guidance: don’t drink or smoke while pregnant; don’t take heroin or cocaine. After birth, the coach offers help with managing stress, breast-feeding and diapers, while encouraging chatting to the child and reading aloud. “

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-invest-in-preschools-or-prisons.html

pobod

Tom (and Nick Kristoff) are correct that prenatal, and nutrition is critically important but I do not involved myself in arguments that this is better than that is better than this.

It is like the high quality teacher v class size debate. You don’t choose you do both.

For pre K children: prenatal (premature babies have high special ed future) nutrition, parenting, vicion and dental care, high quality stimulation that is usually inadequate even middle class homes.

Note the people who decry early education and think that Montessori is fine. “Well it is a choice”

No problem, leave the age of compulsory education but provide high quality public sector, ECE from 2-5 years. If you don’t want it, don’t use it.

Part 1

Oh Tom - the old public health nurse routine in the 1950s to the 1970s. The old routine of talking down to folks who are perceived to be lower social-status or picking on the deficits of the would be mothers and mothers. The last tactic is the favourite ploy of the mid-20th century when there was an army of public health nurses, at least in Ontario. They went the way of the do-do bird in the 1980s, due to cuts in funding and services.

Now the new version, after finding out how valuable the older public health agencies funded by government dollars are, the powers to be decided that the non-profits and charities can picked up the ball and chain using government guidelines to set up the communities. Top-down approaches rarely works but are effective when the access gates to pre-natal care, after care and family services are locked according to criteria and the size of one’s pocketbook. Any help, is better than no help at all, and of course as they claim they do get results. and the government can spend their money elsewhere such as war toys or paying politicians more money to find more ways to cut services. (Note: read an article calling for big increases in politicians’ salaries)

“Yet, in recent years, long-term follow-ups have shown that while the educational advantages of Head Start might fade, there are “life skill” gains that don’t. A rigorous study by David Deming of Harvard, for example, found that Head Start graduates were less likely to repeat grades or be diagnosed with a learning disability, and more likely to graduate from high school and attend college.” I think the life skills that are gain do not fade, because adults are receiving important knowledge that A) that they never received from the families and B) not taught in the schools. As for the LD part, not true but it may appeared that way because the non-identified LD children are now part of the norm. So their lousy reading, spelling, writing and in some cases numeracy is considered part of the norm of the classroom. It is reflective in the U.S. stats of the declining identification of LD students and declining number of children being formally assessed by the schools. Easy to do when the access gates to the education services that lies beyond the classroom are locked to begin with.

One be surprised how knowledge that should be common knowledge among the populace is kept under locked and key to the people that need it the most. “Look, we’ll have to confront the pathologies of poverty at some point. We can deal with them cheaply at the front end, in infancy. Or we can wait and jail a troubled adolescent at the tail end. To some extent, we face a choice between investing in preschools or in prisons.”

Preschools should be a given, and access to good quality preschools that suits the communities needs well. Here comes the but, because it won’t do much good when the parents are dodging bullets and gangs on their way to the preschools or dealing with the shady businesses and store fronts that children really should not be exposed. In Calgary, a massage parlor next door to a daycare centre???  http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/calgary/Dover+massage+parlour+near+daycare+school+shut+down/9092579/story.html

Part 2

However, good quality preschools won’t do a bit of good if there is no follow-up in the K to 12 education system that seems more intent to delivered top-down education services of the one-sized-fits-all. Another data stream to chew on - “On any given day in 2010/2011, there were about 14,800 youth (aged 12 to 17 at the time of the offence) in Canada’s correctional system (excluding Quebec and youth under community supervision in Nova Scotia) (Table 1). This represented a rate of about 79 youth per 10,000 youth population, nearly 6% lower than the previous year,Note 1 and 12% lower than five years ago.Note 2”  http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2012001/article/11716-eng.htm

Meanwhile another data stream to chew on - “Children with autism in Ontario can wait four years for an intensive therapy which, when provided early enough, could change the course of their lives.”  http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2012/11/23/the_autism_project_children_face_up_to_fouryear_wait_for_therapy.html

One can only imagined the waiting lists of the wrapped around services regarding the early childhood education and daycare - waiting lists. In the same way a child in the public early education program who have speech delays. Watered down services when kids with speech delays need intensive therapies just like the autism children. And for good measure another piece of data concerning speech delays - on the right side. Just 4 % below the American stats. http://www.hanen.org/Helpful-Info/When-You-Are-Concerned.aspx

My point is good quality early education programs should include all the elements of access to the services that a young child might need, that will informed parents to their options. At the moment in Canada, the ones with the larger pocketbooks are opting for private services and the rest are the kids are the ones on the waiting lists to access the children services. The more knowledge and information that parents have, the more apt that parents can make good decisions and choices for their children.

The Ontario model does like most top-down approaches offered wrapped around services that are not intensive therapies, and is left up to the parents who are savvy enough to worked the system as I did, to obtained the intensive speech therapy. If my child was in one of the early childhood education and daycare programs in Ontario in 2013, it would be unlikely that she would have reached full verbal expressive speech and be ready for entered in kindergarten without full intensive speech therapy.

Isn’t early childhood education for the expressed purpose to prepared children to learn in the K to 3 system?  If so, why are the wrapped around services are of a poorer quality that will in the end hinder learning and progress for students entering the K to 12 education system.

Also,I agree by the way Nancy,your work is so good-did anyone notice that special ed in Ontario public schools has gone from 21 percent in 2001 to 36% in 2013?

Tell us something isn`t fishy-those numbers are crazy!

Latest report from People for Education.

Note: the number of 36 % is reflective of the changes made in administration to keep the access doors locked to the education and support services that is beyond the classroom. The vast majority of the 36 % have not been formally identified and the minority have already been identified in their pre-school years. In other words, the students had the medical documentation prior to enrollment to formal schooling.

Another observation - is the inclusive classroom, where classroom educators have identified children with learning issues based on the medical documentation such as diabetes and students with English as second language that has aided in increasing the number of students that have been informally identified and labeled under the SE classification. Entitled to special treatment in the inclusive classroom, having the same rights as children who have been formally identified under the charter rights. However for both sets, none of the students have the right to access the locked doors for education services and support outside of the classroom.  Many of a parent, learned the hard way by not seeking a formal diagnoses, their children entering college or university were barred from seeking special support services because they did not have the documentation that formally identifies the learning problems. Being diabetic has its own set of problems when it comes to learning but does not constitute proof that they have learning problems accessing the education opportunities in the classroom.

Unfortunately, the public education establishment are telling parents different tales to lulled parents into thinking their children are doing okay and learning is progressing. What lies underneath it, for the vast majority of the 36 %, are low levels of literacy and numeracy. The basic foundation one must have, to access the education opportunities in the classroom. All done in the name of keeping the locks on the access doors to SE services and supports beyond the classroom. I can only imagined what is being done in the Ontario early education programs to the children who are in need of intensive interventions and therapies to bring up children that are prepared to enter the K to 12 system. The number 36 will go up slowly, and rise dramatically in the junior years of grade 4 to 6, due to the policies and practices from early childhood to the primary grades.

And now the public education system and the stakeholders want to lord over the wee ones from infants and up - I somehow doubt that an education degree carries the knowledge and expertise that is required to have the wisdom to know what is best for children. Especially when the education establishment are not forthcoming and transparent to parents when it comes to knowledge and information that parents do not have. I often wonder what my mother would say today if she was alive.  What I thought was normal, but apparently it was not according to the 21st century education establishment that under the farmers and working class in the 1950s and 1960s did not have the right stuff to raised their children and prepared them for grade K or grade 1. A common feature in my Ontario community was structured play activities for all the neighbourhood children - informally done. We learned to count numbers playing Fish and Crazy Eights was just one of the activities. In fact I taught the games to my children when they were small and it turned out it was my youngest who was the card shark and no one could beat her in playing checkers. As for learning about the things about the world, it was my father with his extensive book collection on nature, subscriptions to the National Geographic, Reader’s Digest and the Life magazine plus we were for a time the only family with television. Television brought Romper Room and Captain Kangaroo and Saturday morning cartoons. plus Tiny Talent Time.

Yet, the education establishment dares to generalized according to the social-income status, shapes and forms policies and practices based on the same generalizations while dancing on the backs of the low-income children to moved their private agendas at the expense of the children’s futures and by extension society. Is it any wonder why the public education system as it currently stands, have all the difficulties they do have when it comes to the education of children, including the wee ones and the mediocre achievement outcomes today compared to the better outcomes in the 1950s and the 1960s and that is if students did not dropped out of school early to enter the work force.

pobod

Jo Anne your numbers are wrong according to this report but the special ed secondary is still way too high. There is nothing in the literature that says SE should be over 15%.

Schools use SE as a safety valve when they really need smaller classes, more non IPRC support.

http://www.peopleforeducation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/special-education-2013.pdf

School board need to be told you will be funded for 15% SE after that you are on your own. Those numbers would soon be exactly 15%.

If you pull the lever and get a food pellet, you keep banging on that lever.

Doug, typical BS. It is 36 % at the secondary level, because the vast majority are the unidentified without a formal identification. In the past 3 years or so, it gets really busy in the last two senior years of high school, to give formal assessments for students who should have been assessed way back in the primary grades but were not. The only reason after all these years is to covered their a$$es legally, so the graduating students can walked into college and access services. And here comes the but, it is not all, but only a certain percentage that has the struggles in reading and writing. Without documentation, no student can access special services at post-secondary.

As I explained in my last post - it spikes in the junior grades from grade 4 to 6, and by grade 10, there is another spike. Another but, because of the expansion of what qualifies for SE services - the real kids with autism, LD, Dyslexia and other disorders that impacts learning not only at school but in their life are being pushed out by the kids without the disorders .

One will hear that argument being used in the Moore case by the school board - it costs too much and then the lawyers went into the reasons that only 50 %  of students will ever reach average levels of reading. What lies underneath it, including Doug’s post - the premise that 50 % of the students in any school are not worth the time, effort and expense to remediate for the 3 Rs.

It is a cultural bias attitude embedded within the public education system. I often wonder if the educators sit around in the staff room, taking bets how many children identified as having special needs can be removed from SE services and back to the so-called inclusive classroom, so the funding can be transferred back to the school’s general fund for other expenditures. 

It may sound ludicrous, but given Doug’s last statement - which is a common statement among the education establishment - “If you pull the lever and get a food pellet, you keep banging on that lever.”  It is this line and similar lines when parents are requesting much more than the watered down programs in special education services. What always gets cut short, are the education services within SE services. The LD students and other students with disorders that impacts learning in the classroom go without, or have watered down programs that does little for their learning and achievement. 

By the way Doug, the Supreme Court Moore ruling, did not think much of the funding model used, that allowed to cut and shut down a service for children with dyslexia. They shut it down, without considering the ramifications nor did the school board explore all possibilities to replace the service. Instead, they told the Moore parent, if you don’t like it, there is always the LD private school. The Moore parent took the private school, instead of having his son struggling and never really learning how to read for the next 10 years in a public school. The son is now a plumber, and probably is making far more money than the average teacher, and the Moores received $110,000 from the school board ordered by the court. It came in handy, to pay off the mortgage because that is how the plumber father pay the tuition for the LD private school. A happy ending, but that would never be the case for the public school…...they have a proud record to keep, and that is to ensue that all SE children remained firmly at the bottom of the achievement charts with the low-income children at the next notch.

The education cultural biases run deep in the public education model in Canada. . One can discern it in the data streams. One stat is of importance, that only 2.8 of the LD student population in Ontario, went straight to post-secondary after grade 12 graduation. It is a 2010 stat, but like most of the stats that would probably start a parent revolution if all the stats were published on a yearly basis. I bet parents would be in an uproar if 50 % of the student population at the local school had below average levels in reading.  A pretty sad note to read in black and white that SE services is used as a safety value. Are SE students viewed by the education establishment as being a security risk in the 21st century?  Pretty silly but its the new form of discrimination and segregation - just wrapped up in new window dressing. 

Imagine that, the public education establishment wants to take over early childhood education right down to infant care. They think they can do a better job than the other professionals without education degrees….....

POSTED ON BEHALF OF DOUG

Nancy, if they are not OPENed, then they are not special Ed. Where does that 36% figure come from? You have a link?