Job Discussion Forums

[spiral78]

Here's a news story to start it off, but the issue's obviously more real than it is related to actual dogs. On the thread in the General Discussion forum about writing accurately, one or two posters have cited declining education systems as a reason for inaccuracy in writing. What's your opinion/experience? Is the US education system failing to turn out reasonably literate grads (not dissing the dog!!)??

[geaaronson]

Whatever happened to standardized HSQED tests?

[Sashadroogie]

Every nation has its myths and we are all guilty of self-delusion. One of America's is that the US system of education is the greatest in the world. It isn't, and it never was. Certainly, elite universities are world leaders. No surprises there given the resources available. However, this does not reflect the generally poor standards elsewhere.

US citizens generally do not have a good reputation abroad in terms of being educated. Knowledge of world geography is rarity, for example. Even basic English vocabulary seems to be much more limited than, say, a German who has learnt English. Knowledge of history is quite skewed too, leading to European smirks upon hearing that the US is the 'first democracy in the world'.

There was a post-war boom, as it were, in US funding for general education. This was spurred on by the USSR's apparent overtaking of America in scientific and technology fields, as evinced by Sputnik etc. By the time of the moon landings, however, the 'university gap' was seen to have been closed, and so funding was dramatically reduced to former meagre levels. So perhaps it is not so much a matter of the system having gone to the dogs as its having been abandoned by the piggies...

[Matt_22]

[DebMer]

[johnslat]

Dear DebMer,

"Head Start and other preschool programs don't help. This has been studied and proven."

Not to everyone, apparently:

HEAD START WORKS
Research Clearly Demonstrates That America�s Comprehensive Early Education/Health Program Is Effective, Generates Long-Term Benefits

WASHINGTON, D.C.///October 16, 2008///A wide range of recent research shows that Head Start -- the nation�s premier early childhood and health program now serving about
1 million children and their low-income families each year -- yields major, long-term benefits for the children and families in the program and the communities in which they live, according to the National Head Start Association (NHSA).
Last night, Presidential candidate John McCain asserted that the gains children made from attending Head Start disappear by the time these children reach third grade. NHSA
officials pointed out that this statement was based on a nearly 40-year-old study conducted by the Westinghouse Learning Corporation and Ohio University in 1969.

Subsequent analysis by Dr. Steven Barnett at the National Institute for Early Education Research and other researchers have found that this cross-sectional study was
methodologically flawed and that Head Start has long-term favorable impacts (Barnett, 2003; Campbell and Erlbacher, 1970).

Additionally, more reliable and much more current research demonstrates that Head Start delivers long-term educational, health, economic, and law enforcement benefits:

� An analysis of reliable studies have revealed that Head Start children have higher achievement test scores and high school graduation rates and lower rates of grade
repetition and special education than comparable children who did not participate in Head Start (Barnett, 2003; Ludwig and Miller, 2007).

� Head Start reduced mortality rates for children aged 5- to 9-years-old from causes that could have been affected by their participation in Head Start when they were
3- and 4-years-old (Ludwig and Miller, 2007).

� The preliminary results of a longitudinal study of more than 600 Head Start graduates in San Bernardino County, California, showed that society receives nearly $9 in benefits for every $1 dollar invested in these Head Start children.
These benefits were projected and include increased earnings, employment, and family stability, and decreased welfare dependency, crime costs, grade repetition,
and special education (Meier, 2004).

� Head Start benefits its children and society-at-large by reducing crime and its costs to crime victims (Fight Crime Invest in Kids, 2004; Garces, Thomas, and
Currie, 2002).


More at

http://www.chtop.com/Docs//HeadStartWorks.pdf

And

"'Head Start works'
By Dylan Matthews

Danielle Ewen is the director of child care and early education policy at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), a think tank focusing on policies to support low-income people and families. A lightly edited transcript of our discussion of the current federal policy regime around child care and preschool follows.

Let�s suppose I�m a parent. Two-income household, the parents work. I have a 3-year-old. And I�m looking at state and federal programs to help me get either day care or preschool other child care for my kid. What�s out there, depending on how much I�m making?

If you�re a parent, with a 3-year-old, and you�re a family that�s making just around the poverty level, you�re eligible for the Head Start program, and so you can go to the Head Start program in your community and apply. Generally families get in. Right know we�re only serving about 50 percent of eligible families in Head Start with 3- and 4-year-old children. There are communities that have wait lists even for Head Start.

If you�re not eligible for Head Start, or you can�t get in, you may go look at local child care providers in your community. That can be anything from what�s called a family child care provider, who is generally a woman in her own home taking care of children, to a child care center, and some of those are on the corner, and some of them are big -- Bright Horizons, large, privately owned providers that are serving children. Those are generally licensed by the state so they meet very basic health and safety standards and in most states parents don�t have any way of knowing what�s quality.

If you find a child provider and you�re a working family, you can go to the state and you can get a subsidy to take care of some part of the cost of care. And again we�re only serving about 17-18 percent of families who are eligible for those subsidies. Your chances of getting one are quite slim. California has upwards of 200,000 people who are waiting for a subsidy.

If you�re a family that needs help paying for child care you may well be out of luck, so you�ll have to find something you can afford within your family budget. We know families borrow money to pay for child care, they go into their savings if they�re fortunate enough to have some, or in the worst case families actually can�t afford care and they have to go onto the TANF program because they can�t work and pay for child care. We want them to be able to go to work and we want children to have access to care.

The administration in its latest budget has upped funding for a lot of these programs -- Head Start and the block grant program, etc. I�m specifically interested in the Early Learning Challenge Fund. What�s the idea behind that and how might it change the policy outlook?

The Early Learning Challenge Fund is an idea that says, we have core programs that pay for access and obviously that are underfunded, and we need to deal with that, but we need to help states think about how to build the quality of the system for all children. What the challenge fund does is it establishes a metric race and says, how are we going to make sure that more low-income children, more at-risk children, have access to high-quality care, which is what we�ve been trying to do for years.

What the challenge fund does is it says: We�re going to say to states we�ll put money on the table, you put money on the table; we�re going to say what quality is, we�re going to have these things called quality rating systems that help providers know what quality and help them move towards it, we�re going to give states money to build their systems, and we�re going to challenge them to move toward higher quality.

The challenge fund is a competitive grant. The way it was written in the House, which is the only proposal we know about because there was never a formal Senate proposal, there would be two tiers of states: states that are essentially developing their system and states that have a system but need to really invest in it and move more children and more providers toward these higher-quality levels.

So it�s a great idea, it�s a way to say we have infrastructure supports through Head Start, we have infrastructure supports through Child Care Development Block Grant, we have resources but how can we really help states invest in quality so that we get those children in the best programs. It�s a different way of thinking about the system.

It acknowledges that we have a class disparity in our system where families can�t afford to buy quality, it says the responsibility here is for the states to help build quality, to invest in quality, to get teachers better education and training and then salaries commensurate with that experience, to make sure the facilities children are in really meet their needs from a broad developmental perspective, which means that they have dress up areas, and lots of art materials, and multiple books for every child and lots of play space both indoors and outdoors so the children can run and grow and play and laugh.

That we have lots of opportunities for providers to interact and learn best practices even beyond their education and training, that directors in child-care centers both have access to the resources they need to improve the quality of where kids are to invest in training for their providers, to make sure that they�re looking at their program, that they�re investing in curriculum, that they�re investing in the kinds of things that make everybody in the center better.

That we have a plan to screen young children while they�re in child care, because we now know that the earlier we intervene with children who have special needs, both physical and developmental, the better off they are down the line and potentially the fewer interventions they need when they actually reach school. So one piece of the challenge fund actually says to states, we need this system for screening all kids, and let�s use the child-care community to do part of that, to make sure that kids are getting what they need and that we�re putting those with the most risk factors in the best-quality setting.

Another thing you�ve mentioned in your writing on this as a means for federal policymakers to support quality improvements is Title I and increasing funding through Title I. First of all, what is Title I, for those of us who are not involved in education policy on a consistent basis, and secondly, how would that work and interact with other programs?

Title I is a part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, formerly known as No Child Left Behind, and it has gone through many iterations over the 40-50 years it�s existed. It used to be called Chapter I, for those of us who are very, very old. And it is money that goes to local school districts to do whatever they need to do to improve outcomes for children at risk. It is for low-income children, it goes to nearly every school district in the country, and then school districts get to decide how to spend the money.

The money is available to be spent for children from birth through age of school entry, and then, obviously, in K-12 as needed by the school district. What we�ve found when we started looking at the dollars is that they�re incredibly flexible, for a variety of programs and purposes for children, they�re generally concentrated in the early elementary grades. So we started thinking about how those dollars could be used for children before they reach kindergarten.

What we found is that lots and lots of schools are using money providing high-quality services that include comprehensive services -- access to dental care, access to referrals for medical care, vision and eye screening, as well as paying for highly qualified teachers to have a degree in early childhood education. What we think the benefit of Title I is is not solely as a funding stream that can pay for these services, rather that it�s part of the planning of quality care.

As I said before, Head Start is a high-quality program that is available for families at or below poverty. But we know the difference between a child living at 100 percent of poverty and one living at 110 percent of poverty is negligible, if it exists at all. What Title I can do is expand access to those children who are just above the income cutoff, to give them access to Head Start�s services.

We know that the more hours children are in school, the better the outcomes for those children are, the likelier they are to thrive in school, so Title I can make it possible to have a full school day, or even a longer program. Title I can become part of the resources that are dedicated to providing full day, full use services for low income students. We don�t see it as a funding source to be tapped on its own, we really see it as a way to build up overall resources in a community and to fill gaps.

Title I dollars can also be used to pay for professional development. As I said before, a key piece of building quality is to make sure teachers have the education and training they need to support children�s development and learning. Title I dollars can be used to pay for some of that professional development even for teachers who are not in the schools, who are out in the community, who are in a community-based child-care program, who are in Head Start, who are in Ms. Mary�s day care, to build the experience and knowledge.

That�s a great way to connect what�s going on in schools and what�s going on in the community and make sure children start having really seamless crossings between developmental domains and really prepare them for learning and thriving down the line.

There�s a large literature ascribing benefits to early childhood education and particularly to high-quality early childhood education with small class sizes and good teachers. There was a study in January of Head Start students that seemed to raise doubts about whether they were seeing improvements relative to their peers. Is that a fair interpretation of it? What�s your case for the effectiveness of Head Start as far as the empirical evidence?

Head Start works. We have four decades of evidence that Head Start works and the report that came out earlier this year shows that Head Start children moved forward, that they have gains from their Head Start year. It raises concerns about what happens to them when they leave Head Start. I think it�s a legitimate question about whether you blame the people who had them a year ago or if you look at what�s happening to them now. Is it the fault of Head Start what happened to you in first grade, or is the fault of what happened in between?

A lot of places we don�t have full-day kindergarten, we don�t even in many communities have kindergarten, so if you go from a great Head Start program and there�s nothing to go into, you have to take those things into consideration. Head Start is a critically important support for poor families. It provides not just really strong educational services for those children but it also provides comprehensive services and supports that they need to thrive. It makes sure that children who can�t see the board can get the glasses they need.

We had a child in the Maryland area about three years ago who died from lack of dental care. Head Start can make sure that children get access to those kind of evaluations so that they are well taken care of, because if you have a tooth ache you can�t learn. That child literally died from a cavity because he didn�t have access to dental ache. Head Start makes sure things like that can�t happen to poor kids

Having said that, that doesn�t mean the program can�t be improved. Head Start providers around the country and the federal office of Head Start are working very, very hard to ensure that only the best quality programs get Head Start can get grants, they�ve stepped up their monitoring, they�re holding providers in Head Start to very high standards, and that�s only going to have increased benefits for young children.

Head Start has been supported on a bipartisan basis for most of the last five decades, and I hope that it will continue to be, because we wouldn�t have this enormous network of Head Start graduates around the country who are paying taxes and raising families. We have alumni around the country who are doing amazing things. They�re running companies, there�s a state senator in New Mexico who�s a Head Start alumnus. Head Start has made the dreams come true of children and families across the country for a very long time, and I hope it will continue to exist and do that for a long time to come."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/08/head_start_works.html

Do you have any personal experience of Head Start, DebMer?

I ask because I do - I taught Head Start for a year. In my experience, it works. The benefits were measurable and very evident.

Regards,
John

[EFLeducator]

[EFLeducator]

[EFLeducator]

[EFLeducator]

[johnslat]

Well, you may have heard the "urban legend that only 10% of Americans have passports - not true:

"A Brit I met recently expressed her shock that an American she knew did not have a passport. �Is this normal,� she asked, �do most Americans not have passports?�
�Good question, and an even better topic to discuss on the site,� I thought to myself as my mind wandered from the conversation at hand and to the site (as what usually happens when I talk to people).
The quick answer is: Yes, most Americans do not have a passport. The number of Americans who have a passport, according to the most recent statistics issued by the State Department in January of 2011, is 114,464,041.
Given the country�s population of 307,006,550, about 37% of the population has one."

OK - it's still kind of low. But comparing, say, the number of Americans who have passports to the number of British (71%) would be apples and oranges.

1. The British need a passport to travel to France.

2. Given the average income and costs associated with raising kids for the average American, and given the costs of traveling abroad, even the cheapest trip abroad would be beyond the budget of a typical family.

Balanced and fair.

Regards,
John

[Sashadroogie]

Dear oh dear. Trodden on some cultural corns, I see. Yes, every country has its flaws, as I said from the outset. Yet, when, say, the US teachers with whom you are working with constantly proclaim the vast superiority of their education, it is hard to stomach when it becomes clear that they have not actually read even one book. Or heard of prominent writers. Even in their own field. I know of no other group in EFL that features this characteristic, though perhaps I have been just unlucky. And cranky. This often happens when certain unknown words that were in The Economist throw above-mentioned readers, and I get told that they are not really English words anyway, despite being in the dictionary. Webster's, for that matter.

[EFLeducator]

[Sashadroogie]

Mexicans don't claim to have the best education in the world, as far as I know.

[EFLeducator]