A Case Study of Washington’s PreK-3rd Progress

Clear vision, top-level leadership, community backing, time, ongoing evaluation and the willingness and flexibility to make changes as needed can make or break the success of new initiatives. Foundation support helps too. Those were our big take-aways from a new case study on how the state of Washington came to be seen as a pioneer in using PreK-3^rd strategies to reform its schools.

PreK-3^rd strategies are something we’ve written about a lot. In basic terms, the PreK-3^rd approach says that pre-K experiences should be aligned with kindergarten and that kindergarten should be aligned with early elementary education in every way possible, from professional development and planning for teachers to practices used to engage parents and families Many education experts have written about this approach, and we’ve laid out a vision for PreK-3^rd reforms in our 2010 paper, A Next Social Contract for the Primary Years of Education, as well as within a video interview with Jerry Weast, former superintendent of the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland.

The new case study,The Power of PreK-3^rd: How a Small Foundation Helped Push Washington State to the Forefront of the PreK-3^rd Movement, was published by the Foundation for Child Development and written by Paul Nyhan, a journalist in Seattle who writes the Birth to Thrive Online blog.  (Full disclosure: the Foundation for Child Development is also a funder of this blog and the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation.) Nyhan begins with businessman Stuart Sloan who wanted to create a school that started with pre-K, encouraged parent engagement, focused on multiple domains of child development, offered small classes, aligned early elementary grades and served low-income families – and discusses how Sloan’s idea eventually expanded to a statewide PreK-3^rd movement. To realize his vision, Sloan started a small foundation nearly 20 years ago, The New School Foundation, and established the two schools that kicked off the movement: T.T. Minor Elementary (2002) and South Shore School (2003).

By 2010, Washington State became frequently acknowledged as a leader in early learning and PreK-3^rd. The New School Foundation, still a key player and convener in advancing PreK-3^rd work in Seattle School District and across the state, applied for an i3 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to validate that the PreK-3^rd approach increases third grade academic achievement, accelerates academic growth in the Pre-K-3rd years, reduces achievement gaps, reduces supplemental services for students and improves the social/emotional status for children. According to Nyhan, the proposal placed 97^th among about 1,700 applicants, but that wasn’t enough to win a grant. (We wrote about the foundation’s proposal here.)

Now, in 2011, Washington’s PreK-3rd future is uncertain. The state budget is strapped. Leadership at the New School Foundation has changed. And there is a new superintendent and budget situation in the Seattle School District, where a districtwide PreK-3^rd effort was underway. New leadership, as a way to reduce spending, eliminated the Director of Early Learning position who had coordinated Seattle’s PreK-3^rd efforts. And even though the district says it remains committed to implementing its Five-Year Action Plan to expand PreK-3^rd principles to all elementary schools, Nyhan suggests that there are tough decisions ahead. He asks:

• Will Seattle Public Schools make a district-wide bet and implement PreK-3^rd systems in every school, or at least every Title I school? Or, will its leaders phase in those ideas more slowly, a direction the system appears to be heading? Given the lack of public resources, how long will it take to see measurable change?
• Will Seattle Public Schools attract new support from private and nonprofit sources, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to help integrate early learning and K-3 around the city?
• Will efforts to expand PreK-3^rd strategies more broadly around the state and in Seattle overcome teaching styles and educational systems developed over decades?
• What measurable results, in such areas as high school graduation rates and college attendance, will programs at South Shore, Bremerton, and Toppenish schools produce when students from the first classes reach college and the workforce?

These questions, especially the last two, are ones other communities should ask about their PreK-3^rd initiatives too. The Foundation for Child Development recently put out a map of PreK-3^rd initiatives across the country.

What are the outcomes for children in later grades who attend schools with PreK-3^rd efforts? What pieces of PreK-3^rd initiatives are most essential to achieving the desired to results? How can PreK-3^rd ideas be embedded in teacher and principal preparation? How can these efforts be brought to scale in districts and states without significant support from private foundations?