Early Ed Roundup: Week of May 26 – May 30

Reading Funds Cut From Louisiana Budget

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), who is frequently mentioned as a potential running mate for John McCain, is fighting to restore $14 million in funding for reading programs after the state House cut the funding earlier this week. The funds were meant to compensate for cuts in the federal Reading First program and fund a similar state-level program to provide literacy coaches and training for grades PK-4. A proposed $2.5 million increase for the state pre-k program, L4, was cut from the budget earlier this month.

Pre-K Lesson in Bureaucracy

A new, centralized system for processing pre-k applications in New York City, intended to simplify the application process, has instead resulted in widespread parent confusion. Hundreds of families who applied to send their pre-kindergartener to the same school attended by a sibling received rejection letters when they were supposed to be guaranteed a spot. The district, which enrolls more than 20,000 pre-kindergarteners, says it will review the 9,000 applications that may have been affected.

Quality Childcare Where – and When – it is Needed

Bright Beginnings, a childcare program for low-income and homeless children in Washington, DC, recently received a $550,000 grant from the Freddie Mac Foundation to expand its after-hours services. By expanding services between 7am and 11:30pm, Bright Beginnings will be able to expand the number of children it serves and also enable low-income parents working non-9-to-5 shifts to find quality childcare.

An Online Peek Into Preschool Classrooms

More states are putting their childcare safety records on the web, giving parents greater access to safety, quality and cleanliness information from routine state inspections. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that twenty states currently put records online and thirteen more have plans to do so soon. Anything that provides parents with more information to make quality choices is good news–but with some states inspecting childcare facilities as infrequently as once a decade, there’s still a lot of work to do.

Calling All Data Hounds

The National Center for Education Statistics released the 2008 edition of the congressionally-mandated Condition of Education report on Thursday. The report noted that the largest growth in enrollment rates was among 3-4 year-olds, up to 56 percent in 2006 from 50 percent in 2001 and 20 percent in 1970. Students posted stronger performance on reading and math exams than in previous years, especially in fourth grade.

A Different Kind of PK-12 Integration

Budget cuts at a school district in western Florida have forced the end of an innovative pre-school, set in a high-school and taught by teenagers (with the supervision of a professional teacher). The East Bay Little School at East Bay High School was designed to give the future pre-k teachers early experience in childhood education and a head start towards early childhood certification.