If you’re a 4-year-old in America, it’s a safe bet you’re in school, writes USA Today’s Greg Toppo, who describes “a quiet but steady rise in the number of children in preschool” over the past two decades.
The most recent federal statistics show that more than 1 million children were enrolled in public programs in 2005, up 63% from 1995. Forty percent of four-year-olds are enrolled in public programs; 35% privately, USA Today reports. Only one in four do not attend preschool at all. “It’s what we do with children now,” says Joan Lord of the Southern Regional Education Board.
“What’s behind the increase? A bigger share of working mothers and a shift in thinking: States increasingly finance preschool programs, citing research that says kids are ready for school at an earlier age,” writes Toppo, who himself cites a RAND Corp. study out today describing “a growing body of research that shows funding pre-K pays off in the long run, saving money by reducing social services later in life and by increasing tax revenue from higher earnings when students grow up.”
That study, “The Economics of Early Childhood Policy: What the Dismal Science Has to Say About Investing in Children” is available here. RAND’s press release is here.
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Children under five in Great Britain could lose the freedom to play thanks to a “toddlers’ curriculum” that imposes 69 learning goals on pre-school youngsters, teachers warn. According to the London Daily Mail, the Early Years Foundation Stage, which applies to all 25,000 private and state nurseries in England sets out 69 early-learning goals that every child should reach after a year at primary school, including writing simple sentences using punctuation, using the phonics system to attempt to read complex words and beginning to grasp addition and subtraction. “Children will be checked against more than 500 development milestones before they are five, including whether they babble and gurgle as babies,”the paper reports.
Britain’s National Union of Teachers, an organization in dire need of a new acronym, is arguing that the imposition of an overly formal academic curriculum can distort young children’s learning experience. “These occur most naturally and effectively through a subtle combination of free play, movement, rhythm, repetition and imitation.”
Sound and fury, signifying nothing, reply Education Ministers, who say it will help all children reach their potential and close the achievement gap between rich and poor. The Department for Children, Schools and Families added: “The early years foundation stage is about learning through play. It does not prescribe teaching methods for young children nor prescribe any testing whatsoever. It sets a series of goals so parents and nursery staff know whether a child is developing properly.”
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