The Role of State Leaders in Promoting Quality Preschool

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The Role of State Leaders in Promoting Quality
Preschool
STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION KATHLEEN N.
STRAUS-PRESIDENT, HERBERT S. MOYER-VICE-PRESIDENT
CAROLYN L. CURTIN-SECRETARY JOHN C.
AUSTIN-TREASURER MARIANNE YARED MCGUIRE-NASBE
DELEGATE ELIZABETH W.. BAUER REGINALD M. TURNER
EILEEN LAPPIN WEISER

• Tom Watkins
• Superintendent of Public Instruction
• Michigan

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Leadership Governor Granholm
Giving our children a great start is both a moral
imperative and an economic necessity.
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Why Care?

• Rather than going downstream to pull drowning
• victims out, lets go upstream and find out whos
• throwing them in.

Early Investment Pays Off reduces grade
retention increases reading ability reduces
drop out reduces welfare costs reduces prison
costs reduces illiteracy
The earliest years count.
http//www.highscope.org/productDetail.asp?
intproductID320
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Why care?

• You cant build a strong house from the roof
  down you build it from the foundation up.

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Why care?

• The vast majority of
• childrens learning
• occurs before age 5,
• but the vast majority
• of public funding is
• spent on their
• education beginning
• at age 5.

DUH!
Learning for school readiness encompasses
physical, social, emotional, and cognitive
development.
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Why care?

• Bust the cycle
• Parents cant read (need adult education)
• 47 of adults in Detroit are functionally
  illiterate
• Kids arent ready to succeed at K entry
• 3rd/4th graderetention or special education
• Kids drop out (SSS)
• Kids have kids
• Parents cant read

School unreadiness costs.
http//www.nifl.gov/reders/reder.htm
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Why care?

• Those who start behind, stay behind.
• Lifting for a living is no longer an option. Our
  children will need to think for a living.
• Retention is a huge expense without long term
  benefits.
• The school readiness problem is not limited to
  low-income, minority, or at-risk children.
• High-quality early childhood programs make a
  difference.

The Trust for Early Education, Presentation at
the Council of Chief State School Officers
meeting, 11/7/03 Seven Things Legislators Should
Know About School Readiness http//www.finebynine.
org/pdf/ResPacket.pdf
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In kindergarten, MSRP children score higher in
all areas of child development.
Child Observation Record - Scale1-5
http//www.highscope.org/Research/MsrpEvaluation/m
srpmain.htm
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MSRP students are significantly more likely to
remain on-grade and have satisfactory MEAP scores
at 4th grade.
http//www.highscope.org/Research/MsrpEvaluation/m
srpmain.htm
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Its not my problem

• High-quality programs are scarce. States can
  promote and regulate quality.
• 50 of the children who are unprepared for
  kindergarten are middle class or higher.
• State-funded and federally-funded programs are
  primarily for poor children.

Quality matters.
The Trust for Early Education, Presentation at
the Council of Chief State School Officers
meeting, 11/7/03
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Who cares?

• Education is too important to leave to those of
  us who make our living from it.
• Florida Palm Beach County 2000 ½ mill tax
  increase promoted by a conservative business
  group
• Unexpected champions are key to success

Investments pay off.
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Who Cares in Michigan, 2003?The Stars are
Aligned

• Governor Granholm Childrens Action Network
  Project Great Start
• Leadership, advocacy, and the bully pulpit
• Legislative Childrens Caucus
• House Democrats Early Childhood Task Force
• State Board of Education
• Early Childhood Task Force
• Michigan Ready to Succeed Partnership
• Be their Hero from age Zero

• Michigan Department of Community Health Early
  Childhood Comprehensive Systems grant
• Michigan Department of Education
• Office of Early Childhood Education and Family
  Services
• Michigan Family Independence Agency CAN
  Priority Schools

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but were broke!

• Pay now or pay later
• What do we do while were waiting for more money?
• Answer We must be creative, innovative, and we
  dream. We PLAN, and we implement as we CAN. We
  look at ways to redirect existing funding to
  early childhood efforts.

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Find all the Pieces of the Puzzle

• All the partners
• Michigan Ready To Succeed Partnership business,
  labor, education, faith, health, philanthropy,
  government profit and non-profit organizations
  and associations
• All the programs
• Local, regional, statewide
• Schools, centers, agencies
• All the communities
• Early childhood comprehensive systems strategic
  planningstatewide and local

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Put the Pieces Together

• Upgrade child care licensing ½ hour per day of
  reading/literacy activities redo the rules
• Book collections for the holidays.
• Governors PSAs.
• Great Parents, Great Startuniversal parent
  education targeted programs for at-risk
  families community collaboration

• Develop high-quality infrastructure training,
  standards, accountability systems ready to lead
• Foundations fund R.E.A.D.Y. kits and translations
• Parent info on the web (Family FUNdamentals)
• First Day of School (transition efforts)
• Medical/other offices put parenting info on
  waiting room videos
• Grocery bags with parenting messages
• Messages on fast food tray liners and cups

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Collaboration

• Start at the top
• Governor Granholms 1 issue is education, and
  early childhood education is at the top of that
  agenda
• Align programs and priorities
• Make the table very big virtual too

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We will

• We make the choices now.
• Leadership is about planting trees under which we
  will never sit.
• Its our children and the children of the world.
• Michigan will lead so our children will LEAD.

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For more information

• Michigan Department of Education
• www.michigan.gov/mde
• Dr. Lindy Buch, Supervisor, Early Childhood and
  Parenting Programs, BuchL_at_michigan.gov