Former New Jersey Education Official Offers Lessons for Obama Administration on Early Education

Former New Jersey Assistant Education Commissioner Gordon MacInnes has a great commentary in this week’s Education Week making the case for expanded pre-k investments as part of a broader strategy for improving educational outcomes at scale in high-poverty districts.

MacInnes, who was responsible for overseeing the New Jersey Department of Education’s implementation of Abbott v. Burke, one of the nation’s most-famous and longest running school finance equity cases, draws several lessons from the experiences of high-poverty districts that effectively used Abbott resources in order to significantly improve student learning:

• Focus on the classroom and on improving the “fundamental transaction between teachers and students.”
• Be specific and clear about the educational programs that need to be addressed.
• Emulate the culture and practice of effective school districts.
• Start early, with high-quality preschool opportunities for 3- and 4-year-olds.
• Use evidence from student work to adjust instruction.
• Spend whatever time is necessary to bring young students up to level in reading and writing.

These strategies, which produced significant learning gains in high-poverty, high-minority school districts such as Union City, N.J., closely resemble the approach we here at Early Ed Watch advocate for under a different label: High-quality, aligned PreK-3rd early education. High-quality PreK-3rd programs start early with high-quality pre-k and full-day kindergarten; align standards, curriculum, assessment, and teaching strategies both within and across grade levels; use data to align instruction and improve student learning; and employ qualified teachers and provide them with the support, professional development, and common planning time they need to be effective. All of these efforts are focused towards the same goals as MacInnes’s high-performing school districts: Get young children reading and writing proficiently (and doing math!) by the end of 3rd grade.

Unfortunately, as MacInnes lays out in the piece, efforts to expand children’s access to high-quality pre-k are often missing, or disconnected from, larger efforts to narrow achievement gaps for disadvantaged youngsters:

Expanding high-quality preschool opportunities is a much more complicated endeavor than it may at first appear. Two major obstacles are usually overlooked: The leadership in many urban districts does not accept the connection between a quality preschool opportunity and stronger literacy; and early-childhood education is still a stepchild in most universities, state education departments, and district headquarters.

 

 

 

 

We think that is, unfortunately, correct, although the picture is slowly, and thankfully, changing in a growing number of school districts, such as Maryland’s Montgomery County and Bremerton, Washington, where educators and reformers are beginning to understand the importance of quality pre-k and link pre-k efforts with a broader PreK-3rd reform strategy.

MacInnes’ article is a summary of a case he lays out in greater detail in a new book, In Plain Sight: Simple, Difficult Lessons from New Jersey’s Expensive Effort to Close the Achievement Gap. Earlier this spring I had the opportunity to join MacInnes at a forum on the role of high-quality early education in New Jersey’s Abbott efforts, which you can view here. New America has been paying close attention to New Jersey’s PreK-3rd work, so look for more on these issues later this year.