March 2012 Archives

We've reported that shrinking budgets have forced some states to stop expanding and, in some cases, cut back on existing public prekindergarten programs.

Now comes news from New York City that parents are pushing to eliminate prekindergarten programs in public schools. They want to make room for their incoming kindergartners who have been waitlisted for their neighborhood schools.

Parents are angry because hundreds of kids have been waitlisted for schools in several neighborhoods, including lower Manhattan, Chelsea, the West Village, and the Upper East Side, according to news reports.

Though the Department of Education has said that all students will get into kindergarten somewhere, parents are worried that their children will end up in schools far from home and they'll have to consider private options.

So they are demanding that the Department of Education get rid of pre-K programs at the neighborhood schools to provide seats for their kindergartners. But moving the programs out of the schools could lead to worse overcrowding later, according to local education officials.

That's because the pre-K programs also serve kids from outside a school's zone, but those students aren't guaranteed kindergarten seats. Adding more kindergarten seats increases a school's enrollment through 5th grade, the officials said.

There's always the possibility that some waitlisted kids will get seats as pre-registered families choose other options.

There's no word, though, on what happens to the kids who would be shut out of prekindergarten if those programs cease to exist.

Posted by Julie Rasicot at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Score one for Harry Potter fans.

That's for the kids who love the movies featuring the famous wizard and parents who are fans but also worry about the impact of too much fantasy on their impressionable children.

A new study by researchers from Lancaster University in Lancashire in the United Kingdom found that watching fantasy movies could enhance creativity in young kids. Researchers discovered there was a link between magical thinking and creativity, according to a press release from the university.

"This is the first attempt to study whether there any educational benefits in exposing children to magical content like witches and wizards, Santa Claus, the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy," the release said.

The small study involved just 52 kids ages 4 to 6, who were split into two groups before watching two 15-minute clips from "Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone" (known in the United States as "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"), the first of the seven movies based on the books by J.K. Rowling.

Researchers found that the kids who watched scenes dealing with magic—witches and wizards using wands and flying on broomsticks—scored significantly better on tests for creativity than the other kids who watched clips without magic in them, according to the study. The children were given the creativity tests before watching the film clips and took them again afterward.

"Magical thinking enables children to create fantastic imaginary worlds, and in this way enhances children's capacity to view the world and act upon it from multiple perspectives," concluded Eugene Subbotsky, Claire Hysted and Nicola Jones from the university's department of psychology. "The results suggested that books and videos about magic might serve to expand children's imagination and help them to think more creatively."

The study says that magical thinking "embraces the idea that thoughts, words, and even wishes can produce direct physical effects on inanimate objects." Its key feature is an ability to construct an alternative world, much like the world of witches, wizards and Hogwarts.

Admittedly, it was a small study, but I can't think of a better reason to watch the boy wizard with the lightning scar just one more time.

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An innovative, hands-on curriculum that combines music and math may help younger students learn how to do fractions, according to a new study.

The music-based program, Academic Music, uses rhythm to tackle fractions--a math concept that is fundamental to higher math, but one that students can find difficult to grasp. Co-designed by San Francisco State University researchers, the program includes 12 lessons designed to be taught by regular classroom teachers, according to the university's website.

California 3rd-graders who participated in the program learned how to do fractions through clapping, drumming, chanting and using music notation. They then scored "significantly higher" on math tests than peers who received regular instruction, researchers found.

"If students don't understand fractions early on, they often struggle with algebra and mathematical reasoning later in their schooling," Susan Courey, an assistant professor of special education, said in a website report. "We have designed a method that uses gestures and symbols to help children understand parts of a whole and learn the academic language of math."

The study, co-authored by Courey and music teacher Endre Balogh, examined 67 students at an elementary school in the San Francisco Bay area. According to the report, half of the students participated in the music-based program for six weeks and the others received the school's regular math instruction.

The kids who had the music-based lessons scored 50 percent higher on a fraction test at the end of the six weeks when compared with those who had the regular instruction, the report said.

Courey and Balogh developed the program, using "the Kodaly method, a Hungarian approach to music education that includes movement, songs and nicknames for musical notes, such as 'ta-ah' for a half note," according to the report.

Students were taught to connect the value of musical notes, such as half notes, to their equivalent fraction size, and then used the music skills to learn the time value of the notes. The kids learned "to add and subtract fractions by completing work sheets, in which they draw musical notes on sheet music, ensuring the notes add up to four beats in each bar or measure."

Courey is planning to publish the curriculum materials, which can be used by regular teachers without the help of music teachers.

"We're suggesting that teachers put music in their arsenal of tools for teaching math," Courey said. "It's fun, it doesn't cost a lot, and it keeps music in the classroom."

The study was published Thursday online in the journal Educational Studies in Mathematics.

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Politics K-12 blogger Michele McNeil has a must-read post raising some good questions about how the Education Department will run the upcoming rounds of Race to the Top that will have early-childhood programs and local school districts splitting $550 million.

Regardless of how the details of the competition shake out, the clamoring of advocates and influential policymakers has clearly paid off for the early-childhood field, with a second round of state-level grants for early learning now a sure thing.

Posted by Lesli A. Maxwell at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Those of us who aren't that confident when it comes to math know well that feeling of anxiety when faced with a problem requiring complex calculations.

That anxiety, it turns out, is more than just a case of jitters. A new study by a team of scientists at Stanford University's School of Medicine shows that the brain function of young elementary school kids who suffer from math anxiety differs from those who don't, according to a report on the university's website.

The study led by Vinod Menon, a Stanford professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, was published online this week in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Menon and his team conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans on 46 2nd- and 3rd-grade students with low and high math anxiety as they worked on addition and subtraction problems. The kids were subjected to other tests to assess their math anxiety and also standard intelligence and cognitive tests.

The scientists found that those students "who feel panicky about doing math had increased activity in brain regions associated with fear, which caused decreased activity in parts of the brain involved in problem-solving," according to the website.

Menon's team says it accomplished its goal of finding biological evidence of math anxiety, which is usually viewed through the lenses of behavior. The results could lead to new strategies and treatments for math anxiety, similar to those for other phobias.

"You cannot just wish it away as something that's unreal. Our findings validate math anxiety as a genuine type of stimulus- and situation-specific anxiety," Menon said on the website.

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I couldn't begin to count the number of hours that I spent at the local library when my children were toddlers, sitting cross-legged on the floor for story hour or squeezed into those miniature chairs as we pored over picture book after picture book.

These days, libraries nationwide are expanding services beyond the traditional story time as they increasingly recognize the role they can play in developing early-literacy skills in children.

Some libraries are purchasing special early-literacy computer stations, beefing up book collections for babies and heading out into the community to reach children who may not be exposed to books and reading at home. Others are offering school-readiness programs and interactive early-literacy learning centers.

"Early literacy has gotten increasing attention, which is really important because it points out the role public libraries play in helping children get ready for success in school," Mary Fellows, president of the Association of Library Service to Children, recently told The Washington Post. "Public libraries in many communities are the only game in town for these children."

In Fairfax County, Va., that means librarians are heading out to community centers, Head Start programs and day care centers to present story time, according to the Post.

In Michigan's Rochester Hills, the public library has added an early-literacy vehicle to its fleet of book mobiles. The Big Blue Bus, full of books, DVDs, CDs, puppets and story kits focusing on kids from birth to age 5, visits Head Start programs and community centers.

And some public libraries, like those in Livonia, N.Y., and Baker County, Ore., are purchasing special computers known as AWE Early Learning Stations with dozens of programs designed for kids ages 2 to 10.

Long gone are the days when librarians would shush young children who couldn't sit quietly and read.

Ginnie Cooper, chief librarian of the Washington, D.C., public library system, told the Post that librarians are happy to see kids as young as 6 months old in libraries. "We really think of ourselves as the first classroom for children and are pleased to play that role," she said.

Posted by Julie Rasicot at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Prekindergartners and kindergartners who are chronically absent are more likely than regularly attending students to continue to miss school in later grades and to be held back by grade 3, according to a new study.

The study conducted by the Baltimore Education Research Consortium followed three separate groups totaling nearly 14,000 students in pre-K and kindergarten in Baltimore City Schools through 3rd grade to determine patterns of chronic absence and later attendance and academic performance. Chronically absent is defined as missing more than 20 days in a school year.

According to the report, a snapshot of the school district shows that 21.7 percent of the all prekindergartners enrolled in the 2006-2007 school year were chronically absent. That figure rose to a high of 27.4 percent of enrolled prekindergartners in 2009-2010. Last school year, 26.5 percent were absent.

Researchers followed nearly 3,400 students enrolled in pre-K in 2006-2007; nearly 6,400 kindergartners enrolled in 2007-2008; and almost 4,100 kindergartners enrolled in 2008-2009. The students were followed through 3rd grade, when they take state standardized assessments, according to consortium executive director Faith Connolly, who co-wrote the report with Linda S. Olson.

The study found that one-half of early learners who were chronically absent in pre-K and kindergarten continued to miss as much school the following year. More than a quarter of those chronically absent children were retained by grade 3.

"Having so many children missing so many days early in their academic careers has negative consequences for students, classroom instruction, and schools. The long-term impact is far reaching, potentially impacting the city's workforce development and broader society, in general," the report said.

But the study noted that Head Start students maintained better attendance records when compared with similar kids. And though their academic performance fell short in 1st and 2nd grade, they had caught up and performed as well as peers on the 3rd grade assessments, the study said.

The report notes that family plays an important role in determining whether students get to school. Researchers are planning to use their findings to figure out the barriers and challenges that families face in getting kids to schools regularly and what can be done to help them.

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Years of research have shown that kids who attend a quality preschool program do better in school than kids who don't. But news reports this week illustrate that studies and reports can mean little once politics comes into play.

In North Carolina on Thursday, Democratic Gov. Bev Purdue criticized the Republican-led legislature for a budget that slashed early-education funding and reduced seats in state preschool programs for at-risk 4-year-olds.

"We've proved it and proved it and proved it," Perdue said, according to a local TV news report. "Why are we having to prove it one more time in front of the General Assembly. There continues to be this ongoing battle for funds, support, understanding, and I would even question the need to develop some compassion."

The governor's speech at an annual conference for the North Carolina Head Start Association comes a couple of weeks after she announced that her administration would spend $9.3 million to create this school year another 2,000 slots in NC Pre-K, the state-funded preschool program. A legislative committee has backed off on a proposal to fully privatize the program, but is considering changing eligibility requirements that are based on income.

Meanwhile, another news report explores the growing pressure on Head Start programs to improve in the face of criticism from Republicans and other conservatives who view the preschool programs as "glorified day care."

The story points to Frederick County, Md., which stopped funding its local Head Start program last year, and notes that "some parents, supporters and others saw politics at play, especially as two county commissioners who supported relinquishing the program emphasized the need for strong marriages and the fact that their own wives stayed home to care for their children."

Some of these same ideas are behind why Indiana doesn't fund preschool programs, according to the Learning Curve education blog in The Journal Gazette. Indiana is one of 11 states without a statewide preschool program.

Let's hope that lawmakers and politicians nationwide who are debating whether early-childhood education is worth the funding don't forget the potential impact on our youngest learners.

Perhaps Purdue said it best.

"Even in difficult times, you don't eat your seed corn and these little kids are our seed corn, the next generation of workers," she told a Raleigh TV reporter.

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More than 100 cities, towns, and counties have pledged to improve literacy among their youngest citizens as part of a national campaign called the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading.

To be part of the network, communities had to submit detailed plans for how they will get children on track to be grade-level readers by the end of the 3rd grade, the crucial point at which students shift from learning to read to reading to learn. The national campaign is a project of several funders and is being headed up by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which invests heavily in efforts to improve early childhood and strengthen families. Cities as large as Los Angeles and Chicago are part of the network, along with smaller communities such as Gulfport, Miss., and Eau Claire, Wis.

My colleague Catherine Gewertz gave meaty treatment to this issue in an Ed Week story last year. Her piece focused on various state initiatives, as well as the national campaign on early literacy.

As part of their plans to improve early literacy, each community has proposed strategies for addressing three key issues that affect the development of children's reading skills: school readiness, school attendance, and summer learning time.

The school-readiness piece is obviously huge for early-childhood educators. In many cases, children from poor families are less likely to attend preschool than their more affluent peers and are less likely to be engaged in literacy activities with their parents at home. For those reasons, cities must include strategies in their plans to address those opportunity gaps in the early years.

In Springfield, Mass., for example, family child-care providers are attending six-week classes with early-learning experts to give them the information they need to develop children's literacy skills and to share tips with parents.

In Kansas City, Mo., where the region's largest school district recently lost its state accreditation, city officials spell out the the sobering statistics they face in boosting literacy in the metropolitan area. Just one in three students in the Kansas City region leave 3rd grade reading at grade-level proficiency and even in the region's highest-performing district, that rate reaches just 56 percent.

The region has nearly one quarter of a million adults who are functionally illiterate, many of whom are parents and caregivers to children. And only 15 percent of children who are eligible for Head Start preschool services are enrolled.

Kansas City and its partners in the "Turning the Page" plan have a few strategies to address the school readiness issue: developing indicators that will help determine a child's readiness for school, creating assessments to measure that readiness, and communicating to families the importance of early literacy and their role in supporting that.

You can read also read Cincinnati's plan and watch a video about Sacramento's strategy.

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Some California lawmakers are sending a strong message to the state's school districts to move ahead with transitional kindergarten in the next school year, even though Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed eliminating the program's funding.

On Tuesday, the state Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance voted to reject the governor's budget proposal to eliminate transitional kindergarten.

"This is a program that benefits young children and it's going to help them succeed all the way through. I believe the cost savings will be significant in the future because of the readiness and because of what it is going to be offering to these young children,"
Assembly member Susan Bonilla, chairwoman of the budget subcommittee, said in a release provided by Preschool California, a nonprofit advocacy organization supporting transitional kindergarten.

More than 120 school districts have been moving ahead with implementing transitional kindergarten, which is required by state law, even as they remain in limbo about whether they'd get state money to help pay for it. Others have put plans on hold as they wait to see what will happen with the state funding.

In January, Brown proposed to save about $223 million by eliminating funding for the program, causing an uproar of protest from school officials, educators and parents. Last month, California Watch reported that Brown introduced additional budget language that "would allow school districts to decide for themselves whether to offer the program, with full state funding. Parents and schools would use a special waiver to enroll students into kindergarten before their 5th birthday."

"That means, depending on the legislature's actions, schools would either be required to offer transitional kindergarten this fall, or have a choice. Either way, they would receive funding for the program," the web site reported.

That news has only added to the confusion faced by districts, which are mandated by the state's 2010 Kindergarten Readiness Act to provide transitional kindergarten in fall 2012. The law also rolls back the cutoff date by which children must be 5 to enter kindergarten to Sept. 1, from Dec. 1. Transitional kindergarten, the first year of a two-year kindergarten program, would provide an additional year of instruction to help those children who would turn 5 during that three-month period get ready for regular kindergarten.

Last week, the San Francisco Unified School District announced it would offer transitional kindergarten at two sites instead of districtwide because of the continuing uncertainty over whether the California legislature would mandate and fund the program.

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, as parents scramble to find preschool or day care for next year.

The legislature is required to approve a budget by July.

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Colorado lawmakers have moved a step closer to strengthening the state's early literacy program in lower elementary grades, including making sure that 3rd graders are proficient readers before advancing to 4th grade.

The House Education Committee voted 10 to 3 Monday to pass the bill known as the Colorado Early Literacy Act, which would overhaul early literacy requirements for kindergarten through 3rd grade, according to an Education News Colorado report.

The bill establishes state standards for a "minimum reading competency skill level" for each of the early grades and requires schools to begin assessing students in those grades and diagnosing students' specific reading-skill deficiencies.

Students with skills deficiencies could be held back beginning in 2013-2014. Teachers, parents, and other personnel would jointly determine if those students should advance to the next grade level the following school year.

For 3rd-graders whose reading skills don't measure up, the decision whether to advance would require permission from the school district's superintendent.

Schools would be required to provide literacy support and intervention for those students deemed deficient.

According to the bill, "if the student still has a significant reading deficiency at the end of the school year, state law recommends that the student not advance to the next grade level, and the teacher and parent and potentially other personnel of the local education provider will decide whether the student will advance."

Lawmakers had backed off an earlier provision requiring retention of 3rd graders who didn't meet grade-level proficiency, but Monday's seven-hour committee hearing seemed to indicate that it continues to be a hot-button issue.

The bill, which is supported by some education reform and business groups, now moves on to the Colorado House's appropriations committee.

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There's no shortage of research touting the benefits of early-childhood education programs. But when it comes to justifying state spending for these programs, should hard proof be required to keep the money flowing?

That's the question that some Connecticut officials are posing as Gov. Dannel P. Malloy proposes spending another $4 million to expand the number of preschool seats in the state's poorest districts. That's on top of the $220 million that the state spends annually on preschool programs.

Apparently, the state has never compared the achievements of students who have attended preschool to those who have not, which Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor says is "astounding," according to a news report this week in The Connecticut Mirror.

Pryor says that while "it appears there is a strong correlation" between preschool and students' school performance, he has no way of assessing whether the state's program is working.

The state's education department did begin tracking student progress four years ago, including that of 9,000 4-year-olds in the state-funded preschools, the Mirror reports. Those children are now in 3rd grade.

But there has been no decision on conducting an analysis of whether attending preschool has made a difference in the academic performance of these kids. That doesn't make sense to some officials.

State Board of Education member Charles A. Jaskiewicz told his fellow members this week, "If we are going to push forward, then my opinion is we really need to look at whether it's working."

Sounds like a wise idea.

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Recently we heard about a study reporting that toddlers who played with puzzles may later develop better spatial skills. Now comes new research showing that the ways in which parents play with their 2-year-olds can predict their children's future academic outcomes.

Utah State University researchers found that a number of highly stimulating activities that parents engage in with their toddlers can have a positive impact on their kids' later academic performance.

Those activities include: encouraging and engaging in pretend play; presenting activities in an organized sequence of steps, elaborating on the pictures, words, and actions in a book or on unique attributes of objects, and relating play activity or book text to the child's experience, the university announced Tuesday.

"It's really about the importance about how we play with our kids," Gina Cook, one of the study's authors, said Wednesday. "If we do stimulating activities, our kids will do better later on."

The study also found that biological fathers who live with their children and teach during play with them can have an added positive influence—in addition to the mothers' contribution—on their children's later academic performance, according to Cook, a research assistant professor in the university's department of Family, Consumer and Human Development. The study is expected to be published in an upcoming special issue on fathers in the Family Science journal.

The 15-year study followed 229 low-income children enrolled in the national Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project. The university is one of a number of schools participating in the project funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Cook said the study looked at the combined long-term impacts of independent interactions with both mothers and fathers in "those critical stages of early development, and discovered that children not only benefit from the interactions they have with their mothers, but also their fathers."

Researchers videotaped interactions between mothers and toddlers and fathers and toddlers for about 15 minutes of play time and later examined them in relation to how the children performed academically at age 3 and then in 5th grade.

Observing families with resident biological fathers and those without, researchers found that "in both these family situations, children perform better academically when mothers teach more during play with their toddlers," according to the study. "When resident biological fathers teach during play with their toddlers, they make an additional positive contribution to their child's 5th grade math and reading performance on top of the mother's play, the child's gender, and participation in the Early Head Start Program."

That's not to say that the biological fathers were providing more brain stimulation, but rather the research "indicates that in homes with both biological parents, the mother provided higher levels of cognitive stimulation with the toddlers, and those fathers contributed to later academic outcomes above and beyond mothers."

"There's something about having a biological resident father, whatever that means," Cook said. "That's for future research."

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Parents and educators are grappling all the time with how much young children should be exposed to using technology and interactive media. How appropriate is it for 4-year-olds, for example, to be using applications—even educational ones—on iPads?

Well, the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media at Saint Vincent College have jointly issued a new guidance to help early educators ensure that they use digital media and technology in ways that are developmentally appropriate for children from birth through the age of 8.

At the outset, the statement acknowledges that digital technology is ubiquitous and is only likely to become even more pervasive in children's lives. It also lays out the need to measure how much "screen time" children get on a daily basis and to ensure that time spent with screens such as those on smartphones, tablets and even digital cameras are included in that measurement. It's important, the statement says, for early childhood educators not to use technology just for the sake of technology and that using screen media as a replacement for active play, engagement with other children, and interactions with adults is inappropriate.

At the same time, the guidance explains that young children need to develop "technology-handling" skills in their early-childhood settings that are associated with early "digital literacy," especially for poor children who are less likely to have access to such technologies in their homes. Those technology-handling skills are akin to the "book-handling" skills associated with early literacy development.

The guidance also includes very specific principles for early educators to apply when making decisions about how to use technology.

And though the guide is designed for early educators, it is packed with useful information for parents who have to make similar decisions about what happens with their children at home.

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Should 3rd graders who aren't reading on grade level be held back?

That's the idea behind a hard-line mandatory retention approach that's being promoted by a growing number of states as a way to keep younger kids from falling further behind. Oklahoma, Arizona and Indiana have passed legislation regarding mandatory retention and New Mexico, Iowa and Tennessee are considering proposals, according to an NPR news report this week

The issue of mandatory retention is generating controversy as lawmakers, educators and parents debate the impact of retaining younger students who are not meeting early-literacy proficiency standards.

Some say the hard-line approach is necessary to stop the promotion of kids who are destined to fail because they haven't mastered the reading skills they need to succeed in 4th grade. Others say the humiliation and sense of failure generated by retaining students is too damaging and call for schools to provide intervention instead, such as tutoring services, to get kids up to speed.

"It's just mean-spirited," David Berliner, a professor emeritus of education at Arizona State University, tells NPR. "If you're willing to spend an extra $10,000 to give the kid another year of schooling, why aren't you willing to put some money into a tutor over the next two years? That's what we ought to do—not leave them back, but get them the resources."

Here's a sample of what's happening:

In New Mexico, lawmakers recently considered two different bills focusing on mandatory retention for students not meeting proficiency standards. Under one bill, students would be retained if they failed to demonstrate proficiency in math or reading for two consecutive years. The other bill focused only on reading, calling for stricter standards on retentions for kids in grades kindergarten through 3.

Last year, Oklahoma adopted legislation requiring 3rd graders who are not reading at grade level to participate in a summer program to bring them up to grade level. If they fail to progress or don't attend the program, they will be held back.

Both Florida and Arizona have laws requiring the retention of 3rd graders who don't pass the reading portion of state standardized tests. Since Florida's law was enacted in 2002, school officials say they have seen test scores improve for kids who were held back a year.

In Arizona, school officials and a student's parents are expected to choose an appropriate intervention, which can include summer school or more reading instruction.

Passage of Arizona's law in 2010 led the Arizona Association of School Psychologists to issue a guide to best practices to help school psychologists assist their schools in implementing the law and in trying to reduce the numbers of students who are held back.

"School psychologists will be required to balance their knowledge of the potential harmful effects of retention with the implementation of state law," the guide says.

In Colorado, lawmakers have backed off proposed legislation that would have required retention of 3rd graders who didn't meet grade-level proficiency on standardized tests.

The bill now requires literacy support and intervention with retention as a recommended option if a student still has a significant reading deficiency at the end of the school year.

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Can kids be identified as gifted and talented as young as age 3?

That's what the Maryland State Board of Education seemed to be saying when it adopted regulations this week that define minimum standards for gifted and talented education in local school systems.

The new rules specify how school districts are to identify gifted students, provide programs and monitor their progress. School districts shall provide "different services beyond those normally provided by the regular school program" and "shall consider implementing" programs to serve gifted kids in prekindergarten through 12th grade, according to the regulations.

That means prekindergarten programs could be trying to determine whether 3- and 4-year-olds are gifted and talented.

The regulations require that districts use multiple indicators of potential, aptitude and achievement and implement an identification process that documents "early evidence of advanced learning behaviors."

The goal is to help local school systems trying to achieve equity among "gifted and talented students, English language learners, and students with special needs, by recommending early talent development for all students," says a release from the Maryland Department of Education.

"If there aren't minimal standards, we see that as an equity issue," Jeanne Paynter, department specialist for gifted and talented education, told The Washington Post.

Critics worry that the rules will promote tracking or labeling, which has historically hurt minority and low-income children, at even younger ages.

"When we saw pre-K, that's when we went ballistic," Maryland state Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez, president of the Montgomery County Education Forum, which opposes the labeling of kids as gifted and talented, told The Post. "We already think second grade is too early. We're trying to do away with that in Montgomery County. . . . When you label kids, you have winners and you have losers, and the losers are black, Hispanic and low-income."

Whether children should be labeled as gifted and talented and at what age is an ongoing debate. But it seems that the idea of identifying kids as early as prekindergarten is not a new idea, although kindergarten is the more common time for evaluation.

In 2010, the National Association for Gifted Children released revised programming standards for prekindergarten through high school that are designed to be used in schools and districts across the country. The education departments of several states, including New Jersey, Minnesota and Wisconsin, recommend that their districts consider the standards when developing gifted and talented programs for K-12 students.

The association also points out something that we all should remember as we consider how and when to evaluate whether a child is gifted.

"The development of ability or talent is a lifelong process," the association says on its website. "It can be evident in young children as exceptional performance on tests and/or other measures of ability or as a rapid rate of learning, compared to other students of the same age, or in actual achievement in a domain. As individuals mature through childhood to adolescence, however, achievement and high levels of motivation in the domain become the primary characteristics of their giftedness."

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A new study has found that "quality rating and improvement systems" designed to strengthen child care and early learning offer a road map to improvement, but need a few tweaks to be truly effective.

The study, conducted by the Center for Law and Social Policy and the National Women's Law Center, interviewed nearly 50 child-care center directors from around the country to find out what they thought about QRIS and how they worked "on the ground."

Under QRIS, which are designed to improve families' access to high-quality child care, child-care centers and programs receive progressively higher ratings as they meet progressively higher quality standards.

"Overall, the child-care center directors thought that QRIS offered a roadmap for strengthening the quality of care and an opportunity for lifting up the child care profession and child care system," according to the study report, "A Count for Quality: Child Care Center Directors on Rating and Improvement Systems."

The use of QRIS is growing across the country. Twenty-two states employed statewide systems and another four used QRIS in one or more communities in 201O, according to the report. The authors say those numbers are expected increase because developing and implementing such systems is a central component of the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge, the federally funded competitive grant program.

Researchers found that states use different approaches to implementing the ratings and improvement systems, including determining their own standards for achieving higher quality ratings.

The study involved interviews with 48 child-care center directors in eight states with statewide systems: Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Florida's Palm Beach County was also included.

The directors represented a diverse group of centers serving a broad range of kids from varied economic backgrounds; some served infants through school-age kids, others offered pre-kindergarten and early intervention services. The centers' current QRIS ratings varied as well.

For QRIS to be effective, the child-care center directors agreed that these principles and practices were critical:
• good communication between everyone involved;
• incorporation of criteria that encourage positive child and caregiver interactions and the development of strong relationships with families;
• availability of outside funding and resources to help child-care centers achieve and maintain improvements; and
• review and reassessment of standards to make sure they are effective at improving care and meeting the needs of all kids.

"QRIS work best when they help child-care providers improve quality on an ongoing basis by providing financial, mentoring, and other support and when they effectively align with other high-quality early childhood and after-school systems," the report said.

The report's authors recommended that state and local policymakers take the following steps:
• Set quality rating standards that appropriately reflect elements essential to the quality of care.
• Establish a quality assessment process that is reliable and responsive.
• Provide sufficient, sustained incentives and support for improving quality.
• Design QRIS to meet the needs of all children.
• Educate parents about QRIS and high-quality care.
• Align QRIS with other high-quality programs and components within the early childhood system.

Overall, the directors saw "the promise offered by QRIS" and were hopeful that the systems would eventually improve care and early learning, the report said. As a director from Oklahoma put it, QRIS offer a way that "...you can see where you've been, what you're at now, and where you're going."

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