Live Blogging Head Start’s 9th National Research Conference

Early Ed Watch is at Head Start’s 9th National Research Conference this morning, and as long as our wifi connection holds up, we’ll be bringing you live coverage of what we hear and learn here. This morning’s keynote session features UNC-Chapel Hill’s Peg Burchinal and UVA’s Robert Pianta discussing “Competencies and Credentials for Early Childhood Educators: What Do We Know and What Do We Need to Know?” Relevant background reading here.

8:50: The Office of Head Start’s Patricia Brown discusses the Office’s implementation of the recent Head Start reauthorization, and the importance of research in supporting that reauthorization, in light of that legislation’s emphasis on scientifically based practice.

8:53: SRCD Executive Director Lonnie Sherrod notes that this conference starts very early in the morning (there’s a session at 7 AM tomorrow). Sherrod notes that Head Start, unlike many other federal programs, was created with active involvement from child development experts, establishing a unique relationship between the Head Start program and the early childhood research community.

9:00: Burchinal takes a moment to pay tribute to Edith Henderson Grotberg, the first Director of Research for Head Start, who passed away last month. (trivia: She was also Burchinal’s stepmother)

9:07: Burchinal shows a video from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America that features high-quality care in action at the Frank Porter Graham center.

9:11: The core of Burchinal’s presentation: Earlier, classic studies that established the importance of quality early education and the definition of quality found that teachers having a bachelor’s degree is linked to higher quality in early childhood education–but more recent research presents a more mixed picture. Bachelor’s degrees don’t guarantee quality, and seem to matter more in some instances than others. How should we think about this?

9:16: Burchinal brings up an interesting idea: Reverse selection bias. School districts are moving the best certified pre-k teachers to work in early elementary grades, where students are tested, and moving lower-skill teachers to pre-k classrooms, because pre-k students aren’t tested. We say that’s shortsighted, and reflects a broader problem: too many public school administrators don’t understand or respect pre-k education.

Another important issue: Variation in the quality of teacher preparation programs for early childhood educators. Burchinal reviews results from a National Survey of higher education programs in early childhood education. Higher education programs for early childhood educators tend to be small and underfunded, and are experienced dramatic enrollment gains as a result of state degree mandates for pre-k teachers. This contributes to uneven quality in pre-service training for early childhood educators. One key problem: Relatively few programs put a priority on teacher prospective early childhood teachers about using research or the importance of interactions with children.

9:23: Burchinal reviews recent research findings that high-quality pre and inservice training for early childhood teachers can yield big improvements in classroom practice, and significant gains in child outcomes. What are some things that are effective? Well-defined curricula combined with discussions of video observations, induction and on-site mentoring, intensive programs with clearly defined curricula and coaching.

Burchinal: We should move beyond a focus on whether or not teachers have a bachelor’s degree, to the content and quality of pre- and inservice professional development for all educators who work with young children and the degree of support available to educators in early care and education settings.

9:28: Pianta begins to speak. He notes that substantial public investments being made in pre-k and early childhood right now add an urgency to getting this right, as does increased pressure for accountability.

“Credentials and state standards are not classroom competencies”–in many fields licensure and certification are minimal thresholds–not a definition of quality.

9:35: Pianta notes that both K-12 education and early childhood education are lack clear definitions of effective practice and ways to measure whether teachers are doing that.

Pianta calls for certification based on evidence of effective practice, rather than continuing emphasis on degrees and courses. The audience applauds.

Pianta suggests states should incent multiple routes toward effective practice for teachers.

9:40: Pianta’s conclusion: Stop asking why the BA doesn’t predict gains and start focusing on building better training programs that demonstrate effects. “Skills and knowledge can be trained, but we have to be serious about the kinds of skills and knowledge teachers need.” Pianta notes that evidence on the Master’s for K-12 teachers is not very good either.

“This is an opportunity for early education to lead the way for K-12. K-12 is struggling with same issues we are here, and we have some flexibility to develop solutions that K-12 doesn’t.”

10:00: All in all, great first panel. Now we’re off to a breakout session on “Implications of Long-Term Studies of Three Model Preschool Programs for Head Start.” Sounds interesting.

UPDATE: 1:16 PM: We had a little bit of wifi difficulties and our laptop is sleepy, so this is going to be it for today’s liveblogging. Before we sign off, though, we want to highlight two important themes that keep coming up in today’s sessions:

First, everyone here is very cognizant of the expansion of state pre-k programs, and there are lots of questions about that means for children’s access the quality early education programs generally and for Head Start specifically. Many of the researchers here have studied both Head Start and state pre-k programs. One very palpable concern in both Burchinal’s and Pianta’s presentations, as well as remarks at the breakout session we attended, is that states are building pre-k systems very quickly, and we could find ourselves in big trouble if states build those systems based on faulty assumptions about how to get to quality. The rapidly growing demand for higher education coursework in early education, as a result of state requirements for pre-k teachers with bachelor’s degrees, and the tremendous variation in quality of higher ed early childhood teacher preparation programs, is an obvious example here. On the flipside, because states are building these pre-k systems essentially from the ground up, policymakers do have an opportunity to be thoughtful about how they build these systems, and create things like the multiple routes to qualified teachers, and high-quality pre- and inservice teacher training Burchinal and Pianta are talking about. (And the feds can play a role here, too. For example, we’ve argued that Congress should create a program to support alternative routes for pre-k teachers, along the lines Pianta and Burchinal are talking about, as part of NCLB reauthorization.)

In addition, there are concerns about how new state pre-k programs and Head Start interact. Perry Preschool researcher Larry Schweinhart argued that states, in creating pre-k programs, are essentially stepping in to fill a gap caused by Congress’ failure to fully fund Head Start to serve all eligible students. But in many states Head Start and state pre-k systems operate largely on separate tracks, creating problems and inefficiencies. Getting all the players–Head Start, state pre-k programs, locally led initiatives, and publicly funded childcare subsidies–to work together is going to be essential, and the recent Head Start reauthorization emphasizes this, but in too many places it’s not happening nearly enough.

The second major strand we’ve noticed is the importance of moving early education policy out of its relative isolation from education policy more generally, and better linking early education and K-12 systems. This comes up in all sorts of ways. Pianta repeatedly noted that the teacher quality debates and challenges facing early education are not unique–K-12 education grapples with exactly the same issues. Many of the things he and Burchinal proposed to improve training and skills of early educators could also improve teacher quality at the K-12 level–induction for new teachers, coaching, clearly defined competencies and credentialing linked to them, rather than coursework. Michelle Englund, a member of the Early Childhood Research Collaborative at the University of Minnesota, noted that both the Perry Preschool program and Chicago Child Parent Centers–two high-quality programs with evidence of long-term positive impacts–we located in public school settings. Englung suggested that increasing the percentage of Head Start programs located in public schools could improve results, by improving linkages with elementary schools and by increasing the proportion of qualified staff. Only about one in three Head Start programs are currently located in public schools. Several panelists noted that schools of education are beginning to see early education as much more central to their missions, and to K-12 reform as well.