The battle over transitional kindergarten continues in California as Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers head into the final weeks of state budget negotiations amid a continuing fiscal crisis.

This week, Brown, a Democrat, reaffirmed his January proposal to eliminate the state-mandated program that is scheduled to be implemented this fall. On Monday, Brown released a revised budget proposal that increases funding for K-12 education by 16 percent to $34 billion by the end of 2013, but eliminates the kindergarten readiness program.

The 2010 Kindergarten Readiness Act mandated that transitional kindergarten be implemented to provide an extra year of instruction to kids who no longer meet the cut-off date for enrolling in kindergarten. The program would serve those kids affected by the law's rollback of the date by which children must be 5 to enter kindergarten to Sept. 1, from Dec. 1.

Brown's revised budget plan redirects about $91.5 million in savings from the program's elimination to restore proposed reductions in state preschool programs and to expand access to part-day programs for 15,500 low-income kids.

But proponents point out that transitional kindergarten is mandated by law, so it can't be eliminated unless lawmakers change the law. And key lawmakers in both houses of the California state legislature have already rejected Brown's proposal to cut the program.

"It's important for parents and school districts to remember that the governor's proposal is just a proposal. Transitional kindergarten is the law. Any changes to that law must be approved by the Legislature," state Senator Joe Simitian, a Democrat representing Palo Alto and the author of the 2010 law, said in a press release this week.

Advocates for transitional kindergarten claim that eliminating the program would leave as many as 125,000 of the state's youngest kindergarten-aged kids with no place to go.

Meanwhile, more than 200 districts statewide are moving ahead with plans to implement transitional kindergarten, according to Preschool California, a nonprofit advocacy group. The Los Angeles Unified School District has announced it will expand its existing transitional kindergarten program to serve all 400 of its elementary schools.

Posted by Julie Rasicot at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When my kids were babies and toddlers, I took them to just about every storytelling and mom-and-baby class available.

I wasn't sure if they'd derive any benefit from the classes at such young ages, but I was hungry for the companionship of other moms and figured it couldn't hurt them to be around books and music.

Now a new study from researchers at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, suggests that even children as young as 1 year old can benefit from exposure to music classes. The study found that babies who participated in interactive music classes with their parents "smile more, communicate better and show earlier and more sophisticated brain responses to music," according to a university press release.

The study was published recently in the journals Developmental Science and the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Previous research has shown that music can positively impact development. These researchers wanted to find out how early in life that can happen, what the effects might be and whether kids would be affected differently by different types of music.

The study involved parents and babies who took weekly music classes for six months beginning when the kids were 6 months old. One group of the parents and babies took an interactive class in which they learned to play percussion instruments and sing songs together. The other group played at toy stations while listening to music.

Researchers found that the babies in the interactive class showed a sensitivity to pitch, preferring to listen to music that was in key. But more surprising to the researchers was that these kids also "showed better early communication skills, like pointing at objects that are out of reach, or waving goodbye. Socially, these babies also smiled more, were easier to soothe, and showed less distress when things were unfamiliar or didn't go their way," the researchers reported.

Study coordinator Andrea Unrau noted that babies' ability to connect with music doesn't have to be limited to a class setting. "The great thing about music is, everyone loves it and everyone can learn simple interactive musical games together," she said in the release.

Posted by Julie Rasicot at 7:12 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Every now and then, one of my adolescent daughters will come home and tell me that a teacher hates her.

"How do you know?" I'll ask.

The answers invariably have more to do with my child's mood on a given day than any specific action by the teacher in question.

Knowing that, I have to question the wisdom of asking students, especially those in the lower grades, to help evaluate teachers—an idea that's taking root across the country, according to a story in yesterday's Washington Post.

The story recounts a pilot program in Georgia in which students in kindergarten through grade 12 will be completing surveys as part of the teacher evaluation process. Depending on how it goes, the state may incorporate student feedback into the evaluation process as early as the next school year. A few school systems around the country also are piloting similar efforts.

Under the Georgia program, "5-year-olds will be guided through a survey that includes such statements as 'My teacher knows a lot about what he or she teaches' and 'My teacher gives me help when I need it,' " according to the story. The kids, who may not even be able to read, will respond by circling a smiley face, a neutral face or a frowning face.

Some educators are questioning the value of such input into teacher evaluations, and worry about students' bias and maturity when completing surveys. But proponents counter that the surveys focus more on what's happening in a classroom, such as whether a teacher completes lessons each day, than on collecting students' personal opinions of teachers.

Student input definitely has its place in helping schools run better. If it weren't for my then-1st-grader's daily reports, I probably wouldn't have known that her long-term substitute teacher had stopped holding daily reading and math groups because she was too overwhelmed trying to manage a classroom.

And a steady drum beat of concerns that older students express about a given teacher's classroom management could signal a problem that merits attention.

But does that mean that kids' opinions should actually influence whether teachers get raises or keep their jobs?

Let's see if these pilot programs provide the answer.

Posted by Julie Rasicot at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Award-winning author Gail Gibbons of Vermont has taught children about the world and how things work through the more than 170 nonfiction, informational books that she has written and illustrated.

Now her work has been recognized with a new, national book award created through the University of Maine's College of Education and Human Development. Gibbons was recently awarded the first annual Correll Book Award for Excellence in Early Childhood Informational Text for her 2011 book, Gorillas, which is about Africa's wild gorillas.

The award was made possible by a donation to the College of Education and Human Development by the Pete and Ada Lee Correll family, who share a deep commitment to the importance of early childhood literacy, according to Susan Bennett-Armistead, a professor of early literacy education. The donation established a professorship, which Bennett-Armistead holds, and programs to help broaden the scope of early childhood literacy in Maine and the nation.

Bennett-Armistead said Thursday that the college decided to establish the award to let "the publishing world know that young children do indeed like informational text and not just stories."

Informational text differs from nonfiction in that its primary purpose is to inform about the natural and scientific world, Bennett-Armistead said. These types of books include charts and graphs, glossaries and indexes. They're written in a timeless manner and by using general nouns, such as "dogs" instead of a dog character with a name, she said.

Gibbons has written and illustrated books about dozens of topics, including tornados, hurricanes, ladybugs, snow, coral reefs, deserts and dinosaurs over a long career. According to her website, she has always had an insatiable curiosity and she created her first picture book at age 4.

"I was always asking my parents questions. In fact, I probably drove them crazy, because I was always saying, "Why?" "What?" "What?" You know, that was just the way I was," Gibbons said during an online video interview with Reading Rockets.

Bennett-Armistead said that Gibbons' book was chosen from 40 submissions. The panel of judges, which included educators and librarians from around the country, noted that the book's format provided early learning educators with lots of ways to use it in the classroom.

"It was a nice example of informational text that can be nonlinear," she said.

Posted by Julie Rasicot at 7:46 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

This was just too irresistible to ignore. The new Time magazine cover features a (quite glamorous-looking) 26-year-old stay-at-home mother and blogger breastfeeding her nearly four-year-old son.

It's a deliberately provocative photo (with an equally provocative headline that asks "Are You Mom Enough?") that accompanies a cover story on Dr. William Sears, the pediatrician whose theory of "attachment parenting" is based on the idea that strong bonds created between children and their parents during childhood have lifelong benefits. That parenting approach was popularized by Dr. Sears in his 1992 book The Baby Book.

The breastfeeding mother on the cover, Jamie Lynne Grumet, talks in a Q and A with Time about how her own mother breastfed her until the age of six, when she weaned herself. That experience, she explains, gave her "so much self-confidence as a child, and I know it's from that. I never felt like she would ever leave me. I felt that security."

Extended breast-feeding is one of the three pillars of "attachment parenting," which also includes co-sleeping and "baby wearing," in which infants are carried in slings by their parents.

I'm going to stop here and leave it to readers to hash out the pros and cons of this parenting style (the first to come to my mind is how it doesn't account at all for the relative privilege of families who can afford to have mom at home full time with young children) and discuss their thoughts on the long-term benefits and/or drawbacks.

Posted by Lesli A. Maxwell at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Research has shown that being obese while pregnant can impact the physical development of an unborn child. Now, a new study suggests that pre-pregnancy obesity can also impact cognitive development.

The study by Ohio State University researchers makes the case that women who are obese before becoming pregnant are at higher risk of having kids with lower cognitive function than those who get pregnant at a healthy weight.

Researchers found that pre-pregnancy obesity was "associated, on average, with a three-point drop in reading scores and a two-point reduction in math scores on a commonly used test of children's cognitive function," according to a university press release.

The study, published online in the Maternal and Child Health Journal, was written by lead author Rika Tanda, a doctoral candidate in nursing, and senior author and nursing professor Pamela Salsberry.

It involved data collected from 3,412 kids between 5 and 7 years old who were born to mothers who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Mother and Child Survey. That survey, conducted by the national Bureau of Labor Statistics, included men and women born in 1957-64. Participants were between the ages of 14 and 22 when they were first interviewed in 1979.

More than half of the mothers had normal body mass indexes before pregnancy, while 9.6 percent were obese, with a BMI of 30 or higher.

Researchers examining children's results on the Peabody Individual Achievement Test reading recognition and math assessments taken between the ages of 5 and 7 found that those born to obese mothers had lower test scores.

The score differences may seem minor, but Tanda noted that the effects of pre-pregnancy obesity were "equivalent to a seven-year decrease in the mothers' education and significantly lower family income, two other known risk factors that negatively affect childhood cognitive function."

She suggested that the study results could be used to encourage women who plan to become pregnant to maintain a healthy weight.

The study also reinforced previous research that has suggested that other factors also affect how a child's brain develops after birth, including a stimulating and safe home environment with active family engagement, higher family income, and higher education levels for moms.

"If we have a good way to understand the risks each child is born with, we could tailor the post-birth environment in such a way that they could reach their maximum capabilities," Salsberry said.

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Recently we wrote about a call to align the child-care and early-education professions with unified standards and professional development to improve workforce quality. Here's news about another report that explores the need to revise training for teachers who work with our youngest learners.

Laura Bornfreund, a senior policy analyst for New America Foundation's Early Education Initiative, examines the issue in this month's Educational Leadership magazine published by ASCD.

Bornfreund shares research from her policy paper, "Getting in Sync: Revamping Licensing and Preparation for Teachers in Pre-K, Kindergarten, and the Early Grades," and discusses the idea that "disparate preparation" of early-grade teachers has resulted in many lacking the complete training they need to successfully teach younger kids.

That disparity results in teachers who may be trained in cognitive development of young kids, but not in content areas, or vice versa, Bornfreund says.

Preparing early-grade teachers properly is key because of the important role they play in building the foundations of learning. And doing so requires a different skill set than that of teachers in later grades, she says in her report.

Early-grade teachers "need to be equipped with knowledge and skills that show a deep understanding of early childhood, including a focus on social-emotional growth and family engagement and instruction in the most effective ways to teach early science, early literacy, and the building blocks of mathematics," the report says.

Bornfreund takes a critical look at the licensure and preparation of teachers working with children in prekindergarten through 3rd grade, highlighting problems including a lack of focus on the learning needs of young kids.

The solution?

Revising preparatory programs so that they adequately train early-grade teachers and then making sure that those teachers are the ones hired to teach the youngest students. That will ensure that kids in prekindergarten through 3rd grade will get the foundation they need to be successful in school, Bornfreund says.

Posted by Julie Rasicot at 7:21 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I was saddened to hear this morning that Maurice Sendak, the writer who gave many of us the most indelible, if not slightly terrifying, stories of our childhoods, has passed away. He was 83.

My household has been steeped in Sendak for the past several months, with "Where the Wild Things Are," and the four small stories that make up "The Nutshell Library," in regular rotation before my 3-year-old's bedtime. (Another favorite is the Sendak-illustrated "Little Bear" series, written by Else Holmelund Minarik.) Described in The New York Times obituary as "widely considered the most important children's book artist of the 20th century," Sendak's characters simultaneously provoke delight in children and cringing in some parents and I admit to being one of them. In his story "Pierre," an obnoxious boy, in page after page, responds only with the words "I don't care!" to anything and everything. Predictably, after a single reading, "I don't care" became a constant refrain in my house.

Mr. Sendak's stories are genius and grounded in respect for a child's intellect and curiosity. I'm looking forward to the new book of poetry he has written and illustrated that will be published early next year, according to The Times obit, and so grateful for the enduring ones that he already gave us. To hear Sendak himself talk about his work and life, check out these interviews he gave to NPR.

Photo: Illustrator Maurice Sendak spends a moment with one of the 'Wild Things' he designed for the operatic adaptation of his book, "Where the Wild Things Are," in 1985 in St. Paul, Minn.
--AP-File

Posted by Lesli A. Maxwell at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Back in January, we wrote about top law enforcement officials in New York and Maine who were on a mission to convince state lawmakers that investing in early childhood education can be an important crime-prevention weapon.

Now, several former military leaders are calling for Mississippi to create state-funded preschool programs (the state is one of 11 that have no program) to help better prepare future recruits, saying that doing so is important to national security.

More than 75 percent of young Mississippi residents are ineligible to join the military because they either have failed to graduate from high school on time, are physically unfit, couldn't pass a basic skills test, or have a criminal record, four retired generals said at a news conference this week.

Providing quality preschool programs could help improve the graduation rates and physical fitness of students, the generals said.

The former officers are part of Mission:Readiness, a nonprofit organization of more than 300 retired generals, admirals, and other senior military leaders who advocate for investments in education to help ensure the nation's security and prosperity.

A report on the organization's website details the issues faced by Mississippi: 38 percent of students do not graduate on time from high school; and another 38 percent of those who do graduate are unable to pass the military's basic skills exam. In addition, the state has more overweight 18-to 24-year-olds than any other state.

The news is worse in the Mississippi Delta, where 44 percent of students fail to graduate on time, according to the report. But Mississippi isn't the only state with problems. Nationally, 75 percent of young Americans are unable to join the military mostly because they are unfit, poorly educated or involved in crime, the organization said.

The report notes that research has proven that exposure to quality early learning can help kids overcome the challenges to be successful in school. And it points out that Mississippi has experimented with efforts to improve early learning, but has yet to establish a "statewide early childhood development and learning system."

"Our nation's future security depends on having enough educated and fit young men and women available to serve in uniform," the report said. "Investing in high-quality early childhood development and learning is investing in our national security."

Posted by Julie Rasicot at 3:29 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Four-year-old children with parents who speak little to no English reap important benefits by participating in one year of center-based care—such as Head Start or state preschool—before starting kindergarten, a new study from the Public Policy Institute of California concludes.

Specifically, these so-called "linguistically isolated" children, who have virtually no exposure to the English language in their home and neighborhood environments, demonstrate much stronger early-reading skills than their peers who do not attend a center-based preschool program prior to starting kindergarten, the study concludes. The vast majority of these children, both in California and nationally, are Latino. The researchers did not find the same improvements for children's math skills, which "suggests that center-based programs serving linguistically isolated children are missing the opportunity to promote readiness in mathematics," according to the study's summary.

We know that Latino 3- and 4-year-olds, as a subgroup, are the least likely to participate in a high-quality early-education program, often because of a lack of access to such programs.

And though California has a higher participation rate of linguistically isolated children in its public preschool programs than the nation as a whole, the PPIC study found that one-third of the state's population of linguistically isolated 4-year-olds are not enrolled in any kind of center-based programs. In a state where roughly half of preschool-age children have immigrant parents, and about 20 percent of those are linguistically isolated, that's a lot of untapped potential.

And unfortunately, because of California's relentless budget woes, funding for state preschool—which has already taken deep spending cuts—is not likely to be on an upward trajectory.

Posted by Lesli A. Maxwell at 4:05 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend