Washington Learning Systems

Pay now or pay a lot more later

2012-04-30T13:48:06+00:00

Instead of advocating for more officers, attorneys, and better crime fighting equipment Illinois police are requesting preschool programs. They warned that if we don’t spend the money “up front” we will face higher costs later for crime, incarceration, and prisons.

The group of Illinois policemen cited a study from Fight Crime showing that cutting $55 million from the budget for state funded preschool programs will create $200 million in increased costs to Illinois taxpayers down the road.

These officers have raised the approach to reducing criminal justice problems as have their fellow officers around the nation. To find out more visit Fight Crime:Invest in Kids

Babies + slides + grown-ups: A bad mix.

2012-04-30T13:40:21+00:00

Who would have thought that giving your child the safety of your lap on a playground slide could result in a broken leg? When you look at the physics, it makes sense. The child’s foot “sticks” to the slide. Then the adult’s weight and gravity carry the child forward. The result: nearly 14% of pediatric leg fractures can be attributed to toddlers riding down a slide on the lap of an adult.

Children younger than 18 months are at the highest risk for these fractures. Dr. Ed Holt, orthopedic surgeon at Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis, Maryland, posted a very helpful video on YouTube explaining how to avoid these highly preventable fractures in young children.

Read the full New York Times article.

The State of Preschool report just released

2012-04-14T15:10:03+00:00

The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University has just released the 2011 State Preschool Yearbook. The report is the newest edition of an annual report profiling state-funded prekindergarten programs in the United States. This latest Yearbook covers data on state-funded prekindergarten during the 2010-2011 school year.

Some highlights from the report:

Twenty-eight percent of America’s 4-year-olds were enrolled in a state-funded preschool program in the 2010-2011 school year
At least $127 million in federal funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) were spent on state funded pre-K programs in 2010-2011. This spending has not been replaced in some states.
State pre-K spending per child decreased by $145 from the previous year to $4,151 when adjusted for inflation. Without ARRA, per child spending would have dropped to $4,054, which would have been the lowest amount since NIEER began collecting data a decade ago.
Arizona eliminated its Early Childhood Block Grant entirely in 2010, joining 10 other states that provide no state pre-K.
Enrollment growth nationally continued to slow compared to the overall trend for the past decade.

The National Institute for Early Education Research has developed the State Preschool Yearbook series to provide information on the availability and quality of services offered to children at ages three and four. View the full report and executive summary.

Social, emotional, and academic competence: Free staff development opportunity

2012-04-14T14:56:42+00:00

Join the National Center for Quality Teaching and Learning for their next Broadcast Call on April 23 from 1:00-1:45 (EDT). The topic for the call is Foundations for Social, Emotional and Academic Competence: Poverty and the Development of Effortful Control. Dr. Liliana Lengua from the University of Washington will present information on effortful control, a core aspect of self-regulation that has been shown to predict academic and social success.

Effortful control is the ability to regulate one’s responses to external stimuli. More specifically, it is the ability to inhibit an automatic response—such as the desire to call out an answer in class the instant you know it—and to instead perform a non-automatic response, like raising one’s hand and waiting to be called on. Effortful control has been shown to be a key factor in children’s school readiness, academic performance, and social and emotional competence. Through Project 1, 2, 3, Go!, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Lengua’s research team is studying children at varying income levels to identify factors that promote or inhibit effortful control.

This high quality staff development opportunity is available at no charge to all early childhood practitioners. The call is accessible by computer and not by telephone. Registration is required.

NCQTL hosts the Front Porch Series Broadcast Calls the fourth Monday of every month. These calls provide an opportunity to hear from national experts on current research and findings in early childhood education. All Broadcast Calls are recorded and available on the NCQTL web site. Previous topics include: Promoting creativity in early childhood classrooms; Science in early childhood classrooms. Learn more or register.

Evidence-based practice: Separating the wheat from the chaff

2012-04-01T16:53:20+00:00

There is a great deal written about professional practices and materials. Our task, as professionals, is to identify the most accurate information, leading us to the most effective methods. Fortunately, beginning in the early 1990s, criteria have been articulated to help us sort through and evaluate information more effectively. The guidelines lead us to “Evidence Based Practices” as opposed to rumors, testimonials, or methods that lack systematic evaluation. The basic idea is 1) to make decisions based on research, and 2) to only use research that meets certain standards of quality. But this isn’t easy to do. Even people with lots of degrees have difficulty sorting out research evidence.

Fortunately, the What Works Clearinghouse provides specific criteria for evaluating research that are fairly straight-forward. Their criteria also target specific groups of children, including early childhood. For example, WWC suggests:

The age range of the children should match the group you are working with. If your population is 3-4 year olds, look for research that matches that group.
The geographic location of the study should be representative of your students. Even within the U.S. there are regional differences. For example, the first edition of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test was normed on 5,012 white children from in and around Nashville, Tennessee. This resulted in a biased test: it reflected the status of a population that was representative of white Nashville, but not the US in general.
Ideally, studies should use the “gold standard” of empirical research: random assignment to treatment groups.
Research studies should be published no earlier than 1985. This is somewhat arbitrary, but the field has grown so much in the past 25 years that it makes sense to view more recent work as more accurate and relevant. However, do not reject foundational literature written before 1985, e.g., Piaget and Vygotsky.
The study should measure child change. Knowing that you have changed parent or teacher behavior is useful, but is not as convincing as demonstrating child change directly.

Finally, look for information in good quality, peer reviewed journals. The WWC doesn’t list specific journals, but they do tell which data bases they use to find articles (for example PsycINFO and ERIC). These are often available through libraries or institutions.

Washington Learning Systems is pleased to note that research on the Mediated Learning Curriculum used random assignment to treatment group, included children in the 3-5 year age range, and included children across a range of ethnic groups. The research also includes additional rigorous research practices beyond those noted in WWC. For example, observations were made of teachers to verify that they were actually implementing each of the programs correctly. And students were followed-up for several years after the treatment study to determine long-term effects. Learn more about the Mediated Learning Curriculum and the supporting research .

Research Update: HIPPY home visiting program effective for Latino families

2012-04-01T16:45:47+00:00

A study of the HIPPY (Home Instruction of Parents of Preschool Youngsters) program (Nievar, Jacobson, Chen, Johnson, & Dier, 2011) indicates the model results in both immediate and long term gains for young Latino children, ages 3-4 years.

The researchers compared 54 children and families who received 30 weekly visits from peers who had been trained in the HIPPY model with 54 similar families who were on a waiting list to participate in the program. The researchers found that the families who participated in the HIPPY program had more enriched home environments at the end of the intervention. In addition, parents who participated reported they were more involved and effective in raising their children after the training.

Statistical analyses indicated that receiving the HIPPY program was a stronger predictor of gains than other powerful factors including mothers’ education, or mothers’ levels of depression or stress.

The researchers followed the children when they were in third grade, and found that the children were more advanced in math than a comparable peer group.

The authors suggest that the success of the HIPPY program may be due to the use of paraprofessional home visitors from the same community as the families. There may also be other factors that make HIPPY effective. A paper describing home visitation program research and policy by Azzi-Lessing (2011) identifies several program components that might also contribute to child and family success. These include a higher “service dosage” level, cultural competence of home visitors, and quality of training of the home visitors. These are features of the HIPPY program, and may also contribute to program effectiveness.

Washington Learning Systems has free materials in Spanish, English, (and other languages) that can augment home visiting success. We also have parent-child early literacy video training materials available for purchase that can help home visitors learn and share important skills with parents

References:

Azzi-Lessing, L. (2011). Home visitation programs: Critical issues and future directions. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 26, 387-398.

Nievar, M., Jacobson, A., Chen, Q. Johnson, U., and Dier, S. (2011) Impact of HIPPY on home learning environments of Latino families. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 26, 268-277.

Classroom composition can shortchange children with the greatest need

2011-11-15T16:43:21+00:00

Grouping low-achieving preschool children with their higher achieving peers results in language gains for both groups. However, when low-achieving students are grouped together, they may actually lose ground in language development over the course of a year.

Laura Justice, professor at Ohio State University, found that high-ability preschoolers didn’t seem to be affected by the language ability of their peers: their language skills increased in blended classrooms or when placed in low- or average-ability classrooms.

The study suggests that classroom composition is important. Blending children of different abilities can provide the boost that poor students need to catch up. However, most publicly funded preschool programs target poor children, who may be lagging in language development, resulting in classrooms composed predominantly of children with poor language skills.

The reasons for these findings have not been identified. Possible explanations include direct interactions among peers, and teacher expectations.

Justice, L. M., Petscher, Y., Schatschneider, C. and Mashburn, A. (2011), Peer Effects in Preschool Classrooms: Is Children’s Language Growth Associated With Their Classmates’ Skills? Child Development.

Free for Head Start programs: Language is the Key DVDs

2011-11-14T22:17:09+00:00

An inventory of best practices is being compiled to strengthen Head Start programs. Best practices in curriculum, instruction, and assessment are identified based on effectiveness and usefulness in real-world settings. The National Center on Quality Teaching and Learning (NCQTL*) is working with Head Start educators to identify practices to create an inventory that aligns with Head Start’s Child Development and Early Learning Framework.

One of the programs identified for the best practices inventory for Head Start programs is Language is the Key. Many Head Start educators and parents are already familiar with the power of the CAR strategies from this program.

Washington Learning Systems would like to remind Head Start educators that Language is the Key in Mandarin, Vietnamese, Korean, Tagalog, and English with sub-titles can be purchased from Washington Learning Systems. You will also find several collections of parent-child literacy materials in pdf format that can be downloaded at no cost.

*The National Center on Quality Teaching and Learning is one of five National Centers of Early Childhood Excellence funded by the federal Office of Head Start. The lead project team includes researchers from the University of Washington, the University of Virginia, and Vanderbilt University who have extensive experience with Head Start and developing effective interventions that make a difference in the lives of young children and their families.

Stunning results from community-wide preschool partnership

2011-07-28T19:08:11+00:00

The entire Bremerton, Washington community is supporting a new program to help students meet grade level standards at the end of third grade. And they are getting the results they aimed for:

More than 63% of entering kindergarteners know the alphabet, up from 4% when the program began,
Only 2% of 1^st graders need special educational services down from 12% a few years ago,
73% of first graders are reading at grade level, up from 52%,
Kindergarten students reading at grade level has risen from 1% to 92%,
75% of the district’s 3rd graders read on grade level, up from 64% in 20
Providing $2000 of curriculum materials to community preschools saves $2500 for EVERY kindergartener who does not need remedial learning services.

After seeing these striking results, the Bremerton School Board expanded the program to serve about 800 children. Bremerton employs a mix of strategies including investing in community preschools, adding universal full-day kindergarten, and aligning the pre-K and K-3 curriculum.

Family involvement is a fundamental ingredient in Bremerton’s five-year plan. The building blocks for their successful partnership with families include:

Developing strong relationships with all preschools in the elementary catchment area, including monthly staff development meetings on weekends and evenings,
Using community preschools as a pathway to connect with parents of preschool children,
Co-locating a preschool at every elementary school,
Providing tools and materials for preschool teachers to share with families.

As a result of strong partnerships with families and programs, activities like “Family Night” at each elementary school are extremely well-attended. Language is the Key is used to show parents how to promote oral language development. According to the project leader, Linda Sullivan-Dudzic, “Language is the Key is wonderful for families and teachers.”

This year Bremerton will focus on building relationships with the community’s most vulnerable families. Sullivan-Dudzic believes the best way to reach families is by working with organizations that already have a relationship with the families. A Washington Reading Corp volunteer will reach out to transitional housing, the Salvation Army Homeless Camp, and faith-based programs. One of Sullivan-Dudzic’s strategies is to use Language is the Key to show families how to use the CAR strategies to promote early language and literacy. During the coming years Bremerton will also focus on math proficiency and social-emotional development using similar, community-wide strategies.

Sullivan-Dudzic and colleagues provide guidance to communities in their book Making a Difference: 10 Essential Steps to Building a PreK-3 System (Linda T. Sullivan-Dudzic, Donna K. Gearns, Kelli J. Leavell, 2010, Corwin Press). The book is a tested and practical guide to increasing achievement by establishing a strong Pre K–3 foundation.

More words with wordless books

2011-07-28T18:08:11+00:00

We know that engaging children in conversation about a picture book is a very effective way to promote oral language. Naturally, most adults are tempted to read the text, or stick to the story at the expense of giving the child an opening to talk. Utah State University researchers Sandra Gillam and Lisa Boyce found a simple way to help adults make time for conversation and complex language when looking at picture books: give them wordless picture books.

Drs. Gillam and Boyce found that using wordless picture books increases literacy and vocabulary skills in toddlers with developmental disabilities. They looked carefully at the language of mothers using a wordless picture book and compared it to their language when using a book with text. They found more complex language interactions between parent and child with the wordless book.

Gillam and Boyce conclude that wordless picture books encourage parents to use the more natural and engaging language they might use in open-ended play. They suggest that speech-language pathologists can help parents recognize the language-building skills they already have and transfer them to literacy-based activities.

Learn more about Gillam’s and Boyce’s research.

Here is a list of wordless picture books.