Dive Brief:
- The Center for College & Career Readiness partnered with Office Depot’s Committed to Learning initiative to survey 5,200 principals, assistant principals, department chairs, teachers and others about early childhood preparation.
- Nearly all respondents said communication between districts and parents with young children were important or very important before they ever enrolled as part of school readiness prep, according to a news release about the study.
- Nearly one-quarter of respondents said parents do not know how to prepare their children for kindergarten, and while only 23% said they had the tools to reach out to parents, 69% of educators who had support communicating with parents said they needed help using them to be more effective.
Dive Insight:
A significant body of brain development research has shown just how important the early childhood years are. Birth to age three is a critical time, but it is a time in which public school districts generally do not have access to families. Many state and local governments are working to expand access to high-quality preschool with public funding, and the Learning Policy Institute published a report in June identifying some of the key traits of successful programs in Michigan, West Virginia, Washington and North Carolina.
New York City may be a model for universal pre-K that can be replicated nationwide, given the scale of its efforts and its focus on professionalizing the preschool labor force. One key problem with substantially improving the quality of early childhood education is the major change in compensation that would have to come to reward teacher expertise.
