Early Ed Roundup: Week of July 14 – July 18

Louisiana Governor Signs Universal Pre-K Bill

Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) has signed a bill that would extend the state pre-k program, L4, to every 4-year-old in the state. The program is currently available for about 10,000 low-income children. But that doesn’t mean Louisiana is ready to join the Universal Pre-K club just yet–first the legislature would have to appropriate enough funding to provide pre-k for all 4-year-olds. Currently only three states–Oklahoma, Georgia, and Florida–offer universal pre-k, although others, including D.C., New York, and Illinois, are working to get there.

Report Calls Attention to Needs Of Immigrant Children

Nearly one in four children in the U.S. live in immigrant families. A new report from the Society for Research in Child Development takes a closer look at some of the educational challenges these children face, and what policymakers can do to address them. The report says that high-quality preschool programs are important for children in families that speak a language other than English at home and that dual-language programs can be effective for English language learners and native speakers alike. The report’s authors also recommend re-examining the eligibility requirements for welfare, which currently make it difficult for some children in immigrant families to benefit from public services.

Of Toys, Tots, and TV

Children who play in rooms where a television is on in the background spend less time focusing on their toys than when the television is turned off. A new study finds that children spend an average of 90 seconds less time focused on play per half hour with the TV on. While the lost time is small, Dr. Richard Anderson of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst worries that the effect could be cumulative, leading to children who spend a of time playing with television in the backgroun to lose significant time to work on cognitive skills and practice planning ahead. The study, which appears this month in the journal Child Development, used television programs that children would not understand, while other research on educational programming targeted to children shows that some high-quality educational programs for children over age two can have academic benefits.

Tight Budgets Squeeze Childcare Wait Lists

Suffolk County, N.Y., has halted enrollment in subsidized childcare programs, just as hard economic times are pushing demand for the program to even higher levels. Unfortunately, this story is not new. Budget cuts are hitting child care subsidy programs across the country. For example, more than 5,000 children are on wait lists for subsidized childcare programs in Pennsylvania. Earlier this year the Patriot Ledger in Massachusetts outlined how budget cuts can impact the quality and safety of the programs as well.