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[What Challenges Do Public Schools Face?] School Involvement in Early Childhood, July 2000
Many public schools are now involved with children before they come to kindergarten. Some are providing prekindergarten, while others improve school readiness by working with families and with community preschool care and education programs. Whatever approach is used, meeting participants identified policies and practices that facilitate relationships between schools, Head Start, and child care programs: financial incentives, family involvement, shared professional development, and federal leadership.
Public school, child care, and Head Start leaders are busy with their individual jobs and programs, responding to daily problems and pressures and separate bureaucracies. Some states are overcoming this barrier by offering grants that require neighborhood partnerships to plan and implement emerging prekindergarten programs.
| The Massachusetts Department of Education initiated Community Partnerships for Children in 1993, requiring schools, Head Start, and child care programs to apply for and use the grants as partners. The initiative has grown from $13 million to $80 million, subsidizing preschool care and education for 18,579 preschoolers, whose parents work and have incomes below the state median income, in 313 communities. The initiative impacts more than 54,000 children by providing training, materials, supplies, and other supports to preschool care and education programs. Seventy percent of communities use funds to pay for teacher planning time, and the percentage of children with disabilities in inclusive programs has increased from 20 percent to more than 80 percent.59 |
Coordination is time-intensive and requires stepping outside familiar terrain and understanding policies, practices, problems, and philosophies that define other programs. Some states motivate leaders to do the extra work required for coordinated services by offering financial incentives to local councils that develop preschool care and education systems. The councils, which include families, businesses, and community organizations and programs, determine how to supplement and improve existing community resources to better meet the needs of all young children and their families.
| Ohio has provided grants since 1992 to Family and Children First Councils in every county to coordinate education, child care, health, and other family support services for families with children from birth to eight years old. Councils receive $20,000 grants and consist of families (20 percent of the membership), county commissioners, and other key business and community members. In 1997, Oregon's Commission on Children and Families directed $58.4 million to commissions in each of its 36 counties. Collaboration among community programs was a prerequisite for the grant. |
Welcoming families and encouraging them to participate in neighborhood schools can help school leaders justify early investments that pay off with better school readiness and success, fewer behavior problems, and lower rates of grade retention and special education placements.60
| The Children's Aid Society helps school districts establish community schools that actively involve whole families. New York City School District 6 serves almost 30,000 students in a 2.5 mile radius and has to bus children to other schools. Child care programs in the district are equally crowded. Despite facility obstacles, school leaders agreed to expand their existing Head Start program by devoting three classrooms to Early Head Start for families with infants and toddlers. |
Many families participate in separate programs and can act as informal consultants to bridge the gap between programs attempting to work across boundaries.
Shared professional development activities can help school, Head Start, and child care personnel develop common understandings about children's learning and development, making it easier to coordinate programs. All young children have the same basic needs for responsive adults who help them develop and learn, making it highly valuable and feasible for programs to coordinate and share professional development opportunities for their educators. Participating in joint professional development activities can also help school and early childhood educators develop respect for each other's roles and perspectives.
| The Mississippi Department of Education provides research-based training for public school prekindergarten and other preschool care and education teachers. Training includes reading assessment and intervention, early childhood teaching strategies, and helping children transition to school. The Maryland Model for School Readiness includes 8 days of training for public school prekindergarten and primary school teachers, who receive continuing professional development credits required for recertification. The Maryland Committee for Children, in collaboration with the Maryland Department of Education, the Maryland Head Start Association, and Villa Julie College, is sponsoring 50 Head Start and child care teachers who also participate in the training for college credits. Missouri initiated a preschool program in the 1999-00 school year, awarding 126 competitive grants to public schools and licensed preschool care and education programs for 3,080 three- and four-year-olds. Ten percent of each grant must be used for professional development activities in the community. |
Separate programs often need outside facilitators to help them initiate and continue discussions. Some institutes of higher education are working with schools and preschool care and education programs to apply research findings and theory related to children's school readiness and success. The U.S. Department of Education supports research and development partnerships to improve children's transition to public school and anticipates having data available in late 2000.
| Fordham University is working with families, preschools, and public schools in New York City's Community School District 4 to learn how they can help children successfully enter public school. The project is surveying parents and teachers, following the progress of 62 children as they move from preschool to elementary school, and analyzing if and how transition experiences are related to school performance and adjustment. The National Center for Early Development and Learning is facilitating connections among families, preschools, schools, and children, as 110 children transition to school. Activities include visits to kindergarten classrooms, informal playground nights at elementary schools, and school contacts with families. Researchers are collecting and analyzing data about family involvement, teacher-child and family-school relationships, children's language, literacy, math and logic skills, and teachers' experiences with transition to kindergarten activities. |
Federal offices administer separate programs and funds with different guidance, technical assistance, and information to state agencies and schools, Head Start, and child care programs. Meeting participants pointed out that these federal offices do not systematically coordinate their efforts to increase the availability and quality of preschool care and education. They recommended that federal offices overcome bureaucratic, political, and philosophical barriers to coordination and encourage states and communities to follow their example.
| The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services offered expansion funds in 1997 to Head Start programs that partnered with child care to provide full-day, full-year services. The Head Start and Child Care Bureaus encouraged programs to combine staff and funds for child development and support for working families, highlighting examples of collaborations that include Head Start, child care, and schools.61 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also funded the Head Start-Public School Early Childhood Transition demonstration. The initiative supported comprehensive services for children and families from Head Start into kindergarten and through the third grade in 32 communities. Evaluation results will be released in 2000. |
The federal government plays a leadership role by funding preschool care and education for some low-income families, including those led by very low-income mothers. However, preschool care and education remains primarily a private service paid for by parents. Families pay more for preschool care and education than they do for tuition at public colleges and universities--$3,848 per year compared with $2,700--largely due to greater state and private subsidies for higher education.62 The first Children's Roundtable Report from the Brookings Institute points to inequities inherent in the private preschool care and education market. The report calls on a new early education commitment from the federal government, as the only entity that can ensure equal access to a good education, regardless of where young children live.63
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