Early Learning in ESEA, Part 1: Generating Ideas

Will this be the year for the long overdue reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the law known for many years as No Child Left Behind? Speculation over that possibility has been swirling for months in education policy circles, and those who focus on early education are among the throngs on the edge of their seats.

We are watching with interest, hope and genuine concern as the U.S. Department of Education sends signals about what it would like to see in the law.

This week, for example, we got some big hints but few details as President Obama released his budget request for fiscal year 2011. For example, the Department of Education wants to rename Title I, Part A (the largest funding source for schools with disadvantaged students). The title it suggests: College and Career Ready Students.

For children in the primary grades, college and career readiness is certainly an important long-term goal – and research shows that it is much easier to attain with a strong foundation in the early years (we’ll post more on this soon) — but we hope that this proposed name change doesn’t signify a lessening of focus on elementary schools. It’s not hard to find evidence – like the fourth-graders’ low reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and in-classroom studies like this one from Science – to show that they need reform as much as the later grades.

• recognize the reality that a large and growing number of preschoolers are in our public schools and in community-based preschool programs that through virtue of their inclusion in state-funded pre-K programs, have become part of our system of public education.
• use ESEA reauthorization as an opportunity to spur states to create systems to hold districts and schools accountable for how well they serve children in PreK-3rd grades. 

• Increase the use of Title I funds for pre-K.
• Fully integrate early childhood data into seamless state data systems from preschool up through college.
• Support the adoption of validated and reliable observational measures to identify highly effective teachers in grades PreK-3rd.
• Address school readiness gaps of children in communities that feed into chronically underperforming elementary schools.
• Tilt literacy efforts to ensure reading proficiency by grade 3.