This article addresses a problem of limited spots’ availability in Pre-K programs. The income of many middle-class families is too high to qualify for state-funded programs but is not high enough to pay for private schools. Since Pre-K programs are income based, many middle family kids miss the opportunity to attend them and are not ready for kindergarten. Some parents, like Bridget Green-single mother of three, decide to quit their jobs in order to qualify.
The article is posted on Texas public radio website. It includes a short interview with CEO of Pre-K, Sarah Baray, who states that Pre-K education positively affects children’s future learning. It also includes couple interviews with single parents who did not qualify for the program. As it was noted earlier, one of them had to quit her job in order to qualify. The second parent had to keep her job and send her child to daycare. She said that he was not completely prepared for school.
This source will be useful for illustrating the problem of placing children into Pre-K programs and for adapting recommendations from the article: include preschool in public education that is available to everyone or offer to pay for it on a sliding scale depending on the family’s income.
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This source illustrates the effects on low-income and middle-income children from attending preschools.
According to the article, not only low-income children advance in academic performance after being in Pre-K, but also middle-school children. Middle class preschoolers’ graduates were about three months more advanced in math and language than their peers who could not attend the program. Low-income black kids have been advanced even more than their classmates: about four months. The researchers also state that time spent in Pre-K makes a big difference and children progress more when they attend full-time
program. The study was done by University of California's Berkeley campus based on the observation of 6150 kids who were born in 2001 and have been monitored for the first five years. The results were published by sociologists and psychologists with a purpose to recognize factors that improve children’s learning at early age. This source will help me to notice how important a preschool education is for the children from low-income and middle-income families and how more advanced these children become when compared to their peers who have missed the opportunity to attend preschool. This information could help policy makers to work on the problem of limited spots and maybe change the income requirements. This website is a great tool for learning about the costs of child care in every state. In addition, it gives other information, such as average annual costs of daycare, college tuition, median family income, minimum wage salary, child care worker salary, annual rent and other facts. It compares child care spending to those of college, rent and others. It shows what percentage of income goes to child care and how reducing it to 10% of income would benefit the economy and help parents to pay for other things. The website provides a statistical information that was updated two years ago. This information supports one of my statements that a child care is unaffordable for many families across the country and it is necessary for the government to provide some help. I will choose the state I live in and see if it is possible for the average family to afford a daycare.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said:“We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.” Mr. Roosevelt was indicating that education is key to ensuring a positive future for our country. Years have passed since his presidency, and many can argue that America’s educational system has improved, but that still remains to be seen. While it is true that education has gotten more focus in recent years, as highlighted by the “No Child Left Behind Act,” it does not mean that the system is fully developed enough to aid all of America’s children. Now, the average American is just that: average. Children generally receive B’s and C’s, average grades, in school if they are lucky enough to be in a good school system. Literacy rates are lower than they seem, and not enough people are properly motivated to do well in school. Forms of entertainment and parental influence, which also play a large role in the development of children into successful, productive adults, are not where they should be with respects to education. Much more needs to be done to improve the educational system of the entire country. Preschool should be made mandatory to help individuals reach their full potential and achieve what only a minority of today’s society is currently capable of.
I am a firm believer that the quality of the child care directly affects the child’s development in the classroom. By eliminating the need for competing preschools to continue to improve their curriculum and to remain relevant in the field of early childhood education, we risk falling into the same trap K-12 education has fallen into. In other words, individual classroom freedom will be lost when teachers are forced to follow the governments blanket and mandatory regulations. I choose this concept because I feel it is important to allow a wide variety of options to families in order for them the find the right fit for their
Allhusen, V., Belsky, J., Booth-LaForce, C., Bradley, R., Brownell, C. A., Burchinal, M., & ... Weinraub, M. (2005). Duration and Developmental Timing of Poverty and Children's Cognitive and Social Development from Birth Through Third Grade. Child Development, 76(4), 795-810. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2005.00878.x
A child’s first day of school is often viewed as a rite of passage; the first step on the road to a happy and successful life. This is true for most children from affluent families who live in the best school districts or can afford expensive private schools. But what if a child’s first day of school is nothing more than the first step on the road to poverty and possibly even illiteracy? The documentary Waiting for “Superman” addresses many issues in a failing school system and the innocent children that system leaves behind. Although the documentary spends little time suggesting parents’ roles in their children’s education, it clearly shows that we must make changes to help children from low-income families and improve the teacher’s unions.
In the 1980s, child care was back on the national agenda due to the education reform movement (Tejada, 2010). Tejada further disclosed that several states even launched pre-kindergarten programs for disadvantaged children. Why the Need for Universal Preschool Two-thirds of 4-year-old children in the United States attend preschool, as well as 40% of 3-year-olds (Tejada, 2010). Half of those are enrolled in a public program, such as state prekindergarten (preK), Head Start, or special education, and the other half are in a private program (Adams, 2009). Despite such a large enrollment of children in these programs, there is still a handful of children who are missing out on obtaining a head start in obtaining a good quality education.... ...
Reading, writing, math, science, and other skills learned in school are instrumental for a child to have in order to be successful both in higher education and in life. Many factors contribute to a student’s acquisition of these skills such as their learning environment, preschool education, mental and emotional development, parental involvement, and dedication to learning. The issue that many young children are facing, however, is that all of these factors can be greatly influenced by the Socioeconomic Status (SES) of their family. Unfortunately, up until recently it was virtually unknown how teachers could help these “at risk” children, which caused an increase in the likelihood of children dropping out of school or repeating a grade. However, it is now becoming clear that there are ways that educators can help ensure children have successful academic careers and lead better lives.
While it may grant access to millions of children, this will only hurt them and our economy more due to insufficient funding of these schools. The children will get low quality education that will end up widening the Education Gap at the Top that Friedman addresses instead of closing it. UP will extinguish Friedman’s idea of CQ+PQ>IQ, by taking advantage of the children and shaping their minds the way they seem fit instead of allowing children to shape it themselves. Along with this, the new preschools will be created more as a drilling form of education, rather than a nourishing one. Sending children to school to be put under constant pressure of tests and cognitive learning that they are not yet mature enough for will have longer lasting effects on them than the actual schooling will. Alan Blinder was quoted in the World is Flat by saying, “How we educate our children may prove to be more important than how much we educate them” (Friedman 309). Universal preschool is focusing more on the numbers rather than the quality of education, going against Thomas L. Friedman’s ideas of how to save our economy. UP is only going to hurt America, dragging us down instead of helping us get back
Low- income children 's school districts often lack the money to provide these children with resources, and therefore the children will not get these resources any other way. Devarics (2011) stated, "Only 22 percent of local districts reported offering pre-kindergarten or other early learning programs for low-income children" (para.8). Denying this resource affects the many children who reside where that 78 percent of local districts do not offer pre-kindergarten, because many go to kindergarten not knowing minimal skills required. As a consequence, this postpones their education even further. Moreover, Davarics (2011) also stated, "Many schools aren 't educationally where they need to be, which ultimately means many students won 't graduate ready to succeed in a career or in higher education," (para.11). Many low-income schools do not offer activities such as, art, music or sports, because of the lack of money, facilities, or staff. They are not supplied with the right tools and have poor access to computers and Internet. They also do not offer rigorous courses at many of these schools, and have less qualified, trained, and less experienced staff that cannot proficiently teach such courses. Going to school with these disadvantages, can make these children unmotivated to continue an education where there will be little educational progress.
For years, people have been trying to figure out ways to equalize the divergent academic achievement rates between rich and poor children. A study published by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2010 found that, since the late 90’s when they first started monitoring over 2,000 children, media
For decades, the United States educational system has provided opportunity for millions of Americans to attend school. However, the gap between the lower income and middle-class students continue to narrow in terms of who will drop out and who would succeed. The articles I chose speak both of issues regarding education and inequality and the growing gap of educational success between the haves and the have nots. In addition, how race and lower class play a large factor on those who succeed and those who do not.The articles also bring to life possible factors such as funding towards a child’s education, in particular the early years, parent involvement and race.
Preschool isn't just a place for parents to drop off their children while they are at work for the day. It is in preschool where children learn the necessary skills needed to succeed in school and in life. With high-quality preschools and qualified teachers the possibilities are endless. It's not only the children who reap the benefits of Early Childhood Education; their parents, fellow peers, and even society feel the positive effects of quality preschool programs. Children enrolled in quality preschool programs are more likely to succeed academically and socially when they are older.
One of those experiences children in poverty lack is preschool and even in some cases kindergarten. Some of the reasons children miss these opportunities is that the parents do not have means to get their children there, do not have the money, do not want to bother with it, do not understand the importance of it, and also because like stated previously parents of poverty just make sure their children 's basic needs are meet to the best of their ability. So in this case it is not the school 's opportunity to draw in children in poverty in the early years offer Pre-K or a high developmental kindergarten class. It 's important for schools to have strong kindergarten classes because it is more than likely children from poverty did not attend a high-quality preschool (Pianta, La Paro, Payne, Cox, & Bradley,
Early childhood education plays a key role in a child’s academic development because he or she learns soft skills, job skills, and develop positive traits. Preschool is not like kindergarten, but instead a stepping-stone that prepares young students for the years of schooling they will have later in life. As more schools began to open families wanted to be able to verify that programs would benefit and protect their children. In response, the National Association for the Education of Young Children was made to help families find the best care for their children, by providing the early childhood educators with training and ensuring the quality of children’s daily experiences. (“NAEYC”5).
Early childhood education directly affects the overall development of infants and young children, in addition to it affects the adults they become. Providing excellent early education is an effective way to not only benefit the economy as a whole but also families and communities more importantly. Investing in early education universally has potential to improve economic and equitable growth while decreasing social issues. Early education allows for disadvantaged, most at-risk children to have a better chance at achieving success (Lynch,
Sending your child to a daycare before they enroll in a K-12 school can help them become more acclimated to the type of environment, as well as giving them a heads up in academics and learning skills before other students. This can help them become more successful students in the long run. However, private daycare centers tend to be expensive for families that are at or under the poverty level, as well as middle-class families with low incomes. By having a state-funded Pre-K daycare system, more families are able to get the chance of raising their children to become better individuals. State funded daycare already exists (Department Of Human Services) through subsidies from the state, but they only provide those subsidies for families who work