How To Stretch Your Stimulus Dollars For Early Ed

Still thinking about how to spend your stimulus dollars? Earlier this spring, I visited an elementary school in Montgomery County that offers a great model to ensure the greatest academic bang for your ARRA buck. Hint: It has something to do with PreK-3rd Alignment. (See our video, released today, for more details.)

In 2000, Broad Acres Elementary School in Montgomery County, Maryland, faced the threat of a state takeover. That year, 11.8 percent of the school’s third-graders scored “proficient” on state reading tests, and only 5.3 percent achieved proficiency in math. Today, more than 60 percent of the school’s third-graders (most of them poor, many of them English language learners, almost all of them minorities) are proficient in reading and math.

The source of the transformation? A new approach that focuses on early learning, including pre-kindergarten and full-day kindergarten, and promotes strong alignment between pre-kindergarten and each of the early primary grades. As states and districts look for smart ways to use the funds available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), this approach – known as “PreK-3^rd” – provides a compelling model.

Many states and school districts recognize that pre-kindergarten and full-day kindergarten provide important foundations for educational success. But these programs only get us halfway there. Pre-k investments will pay off only if they are backed up with a comprehensive plan to align standards and curricula through third grade and beyond.

Montgomery County’s emphasis on preK-3^rd alignment, as illustrated at Broad Acres, offers an example of how to avoid what is commonly known as “fade out.” Research shows that the gains children make in pre-k and other early interventions tend to fade out when children graduate to elementary classrooms that are not equipped to sustain their early learning gains. Instead of receiving a seamless experience from preschool through to the third grade, children get a disjointed chain of educational experiences. Lack of cooperation and bureaucratic divides between private preschool programs and the K-12 system exacerbate this disconnect. At Broad Acres circa 2000, teachers in Head Start classroom never talked to kindergarten teachers working just down the hall. Today, PreK-3^rd alignment has enabled those same teachers to be partners in boosting and sustaining young children’s learning.

Montgomery County, one of the nation’s largest school districts, started its PreK-3^rd efforts a decade ago. At the time, says Superintendent Jerry Weast, the county was like two districts in one, with high-performing schools in affluent neighborhoods and struggling schools like Broad Acres in high-poverty, predominantly immigrant communities. Not surprisingly, there were large achievement gaps between the two types of schools.

To close the gaps, Weast implemented Early Success, a plan that expanded access to quality pre-k and full-day kindergarten in high-poverty schools. But it didn’t stop there. The district’s teachers joined together to rewrite the district’s curriculum, aligning learning expectations across grade levels and building seamlessly towards rigorous, college-ready standards for high schoolers. To support these standards, the district introduced a program of ongoing professional development and developed age-appropriate diagnostic assessments to help early elementary teachers carefully track their students’ progress.

This comprehensive, data-driven PreK-3^rd reform has helped Montgomery County sustain and magnify the returns on its investments in pre-k and Head Start. Teachers at Broad Acres say the PreK-3^rd approach has helped them be more responsive to the diverse needs and high mobility of the school’s student population.

Students who were 4 in the first year of the program are now high school sophomores. As these youngsters moved up through the district’s schools, they significantly outperformed those who preceded them. Younger students behind them are doing even better. “We have had to strengthen our curriculum because these children, as they moved up, they were the vanguard for change systemically across the district,” Weast says in a new video about the benefits of PreK-3^rd produced by the New America Foundation.

A decade ago there was a huge early literacy achievement gap among the district’s kindergarteners; today that gap is gone. Since 2003, the percentage of third-graders scoring proficient or higher on the state reading test is up 20 percent and the number of eighth grade students passing algebra has nearly doubled.

But Montgomery County isn’t content to sit on its laurels. Weast and other district leaders continue to strengthen access, quality, and alignment in the district’s preK-3^rd system. Just last month, the Montgomery County Board of Education approved a plan for the district’s federal stimulus funds that specifically prioritizes investments in PreK-3^rd. The district plans to use more than $6 million in stimulus funds to add eight more full-day Head Start classrooms, maintain small class sizes and increase reading and math support in those elementary schools with the highest need.

Montgomery County is not alone in its PreK-3^rd efforts. Several individual schools and districts, including Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Florida’s Miami-Dade County, have implemented successful PreK-3^rd reforms.

As they receive federal stimulus funds, school districts across the country should follow these districts’ lead and use those funds to support the development of high-quality, aligned PreK-3^rd early education systems in their communities. In addition to the kinds of supportive professional development programs and interventions that Montgomery County invests in, districts could also use funds to align curriculum, assessment and instructional strategies across grades PreK-3^rd; help community-based pre-k and child care providers improve quality; strengthen linkages between public elementary schools and community-based pre-k providers; and build or refurbish facilities to make them developmentally appropriate and safer for young children.

Department of Education guidance on the use of ARRA funds encourages states and districts to take steps to promote PreK-3^rd alignment. And a number of provisions in the legislation encourage state-level policies that support PreK-3^rd. For example, states that receive stimulus funds must commit to establishing longitudinal data systems that track data on individual students starting in pre-k through higher education. The legislation also provides funding, through Head Start, for state Early Learning Advisory Councils, which state policymakers can leverage to promote coordination between preschools and the K-12 system. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan should go even further, by taking into account states’ and districts’ progress in establishing seamless PreK-3^rd systems when awarding $5 billion in “Race to the Top” funds designed to reward states that are leading the way on educational reform innovation.

The stimulus presents a one-time investment in early education, but by building a PreK-3^rd system, schools can ensure that it continues to pay out for many years to come.