Head Start

For scores of agencies serving children around the country, the letter they feared has finally arrived:  A notice went out this week alerting 132 organizations, city agencies and school districts that they are not measuring up to the Office of Head Start’s standards for quality.  Large agencies in Los Angeles and New York were among them.

The Senate voted on Saturday morning to pass the omnibus year-end spending bill, passed Friday by the House, and the result is good for early education.

Pennsylvania, long regarded as a leader in coordinating its early learning services, didn’t win. Neither did Oklahoma, famous for its state-funded pre-K program.  Instead, the winners included North Carolina, a state suffering big cuts in early childhood funding this year, as well as California, which doesn’t yet have a fully functional quality rating system for child care and pre-kindergarten programs.

Among early learning advocates, the fate of play continues to be hotly debated. In the past few months, several articles have stoked the conversation, including an article in Scientific American MInd questioning whether preschool includes enough playtime and a piece in The Washington Post about the District of Columbia Public Schools adopting a play-based curriculum called "Tools of the Mind" for its 3, 4 and 5 year olds.  The first piece seems to reinforce the misconception that preschool will replace play.  The latter article describes a program that envisions classrooms in which playful learning and intentional teaching co-exist.

To learn more about the relationship between play and learning, we invited Annie Murphy Paul -- journalist, author and mother of young children -- to talk with us about what she has uncovered in the reporting of her forthcoming book, Brilliant: The New Science of Smart.

Among early learning advocates, the fate of play continues to be hotly debated.

On November 3, 2011, Lisa Guernsey gave a talk about e-books at Libraries 2.011, a virtual international conference that attracted thousands of educators, librarians and instructional technology specialists from around the world.

Whether it's predicting winners of the Race to the Top or reflecting on the impact of digital media on childhood, the Early Education Initiative has been doing a lot of presentations this fall. Here's a roundup of what we talked about, with links to slides and archived video or audio where possible:

Note: Post was updated to clarify the procedure for triggering a sequester.

Now that the congressional supercommittee has given up on finding at least $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and revenue increases to reduce the deficit, it’s looking more likely that federal early education programs – including Head Start – could face significant cuts a year from now. 

When technology is part of pre-K or early elementary classrooms, what does it look like? Are most teachers holding "computer time" in the corner, with kids putting on headphones to play games or click through books by themselves? Are children having chances to take photos or capture video of their marine field trips or block towers? Is someone helping them to scan books and conduct online searches for more information on whales or skyscapers?

Last month Joan Lombardi, a nationally-recognized early childhood researcher, retired from the Administration of Children and Families (ACF), the section of the federal Department of Health and Human Services that deals with Head Start and child care programs. Lombardi had served as deputy assistant secretary and inter-departmental liaison for early childhood development since 2009.