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Fortunate '4s'

Pre-K programs: Oklahoma gets it right

Tulsa World - 11/09/2003

Julie DelCour, Tulsa World Editorial Writer

First lady Kim Henry (center) and others
applaud the singing performance of
preschoolers at McClure Elementary
Head Start. 

Photo:  Stephen Holman, Tulsa World

Those naysayers who whined a few years back that public funding of early education programs would, among other evils, create a "nanny state," should fix themselves a big plate of crow.

Just how wrong they were is illustrated in a recent Georgetown University report showing how a modest amount of funding turned Oklahoma in general and Tulsa in particular into a national model of pre-kindergarten success.

Oklahoma is one of only three states -- Georgia and New York are the others -- which offer a free pre-K program to all students in participating school districts on a voluntary basis. So far, 91 percent of the state's school districts participate. Sixty-five percent of 4-years olds are enrolled.

To measure school readiness and other developmental factors, the study, by Georgetown's Center for Research on Children in the United States, focused on the Tulsa 4-year-old program. The evaluation captures gains or losses in achievement one year after enrollment in the 2000-2001 program.
Tulsa Public Schools, which administers its pre-K programs with collaboration from Head Start, was chosen for study because it keeps excellent testing data and because it is the state's largest and most culturally diverse school system.

The TPS racial composition is 43 percent white, 35 percent black, 12 percent Hispanic, nine percent Native American and one percent Asian.

Findings reinforce what a lot of experts have argued for a long time: programs begun at an early age can benefit almost all children and especially low-income minority kids.

What sets Oklahoma apart from the 46 other states offering some type of 4-year-old program -- usually only to disadvantaged students -- is the Legislature's willingness to fund these programs for all 4-year-olds and to have children taught in small groups by teachers with degrees in early childhood education.

A snapshot of findings in Tulsa showed that Hispanic children benefitted most from the program and black children also showed sharp gains, especially when they attended full-day programs. In half-day programs only white children showed significant gains and only in language skills. (Professors William Gormley and Deborah Phillips said that the tests may not be sufficiently versatile to capture improvements by high-performing white students. They did not report results among Asian or Native American students because the number of students was relatively small).

The evaluation showed that of the 2,243 children tested overall, 17.2 percent registered improvement in cognitive skills, 8.4 percent in motor skills and 16.5 percent in language development. The most dramatic improvements were among Hispanic children -- 54.3 percent registered improvement in cognitive skills and 58.6 percent in language development. Black children registered a 28.1 percent improvement in cognitive skills and a 15.2 percent gain in language.

The most dramatic gains -- a 25.7 percent improvement overall -- occurred among children from low-income families. Full-day programs produced the best results.

"The relatively recent proliferation of pre-K programs across the states has been propelled by expectations that they will promote school readiness and contribute to closing the achievement gap between children at risk and their more advantaged peers," Gormley said.

"The findings reported here provide a strong affirmation of this expectation." What Tulsa's successful pre-K program shows is exactly what can happen to young children when they're exposed to education programs promoting adequate attention to every student. The program also reveals what can happen when students are provided highly educated and trained teachers.

Another important aspect of the Tulsa program is that in an era of accountability, Tulsa stands virtually alone in attempting to measure the benefits of its programs. States and school districts not undertaking this valuable exercise have virtually no basis on which to make significant decisions about the direction of their pre-K programs.

Gormley and Phillips plan another year of study. There's no reason to believe that this model program's success will diminish. The study should be valuable to other districts in Oklahoma and other states undertaking programs.

Solid data will show educators what factors seem to enhance learning: reliance on appropriately trained teachers, comparable levels of teacher compensation across the pre-K and elementary grades, full-day programs and small group sizes and small teacher-student ratios. These factors can produce dramatic results in school readiness at a relatively modest cost.

Oklahoma's commitment to offering the program to all 4-year-olds also contributes to classroom mixes of children from ethnically and economically diverse backgrounds.

Oklahoma's history of doing well by its preschoolers is largely one of missed chances. Only recently, after great political wrangling, have steps been taken to truly help this underserved population. The 4-year-old programs appear to be one area where Oklahoma got it right.

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Oklahoma Pre-K Program Found Effective Education Week Online - October 29, 2003 By Linda Jacobson Oklahoma's five-year effort to make prekindergarten available to all 4-year-olds in the state is paying off, especially for Hispanic and African-American children, a new evaluation shows. "The Effects of Universal Pre-K in Oklahoma: Research Highlights and Policy Implications," is available from the Center for Research on Children in the United States (CROCUS). Conducted by researchers at Georgetown University, in Washington, the study focuses specifically on the prekindergarten program provided by the Tulsa public school system—the state's largest district, with 40,800 students and more than 1,600 pre-K children. The findings show that, on average, children's test scores increased 16 percent after participating in the one-year program, with the greatest gains made in cognitive and language skills. Smaller increases in motor skills were found, but no significant improvements in social and emotional development. When the results are broken down by race and ethnicity, they show that Hispanic children are benefiting the most from the program, with their overall scores increasing 54 percent. African-American children showed a 17 percent increase in scores. Participation in the program was not shown to have any remarkable effects on white children. A similar pattern emerges when the findings are viewed by economic status. Test-score gains were insignificant for children who didn't qualify for federally subsidized lunches, the common poverty benchmark for students. For children eligible for reduced-price lunches, language scores increased by almost 35 percent. Those qualifying for free lunches posted a 31 percent increase in cognitive skills, a 15 percent increase in motor skills, and an 18 percent increase in language skills. The results could be used to support the theory that targeting services to minority and disadvantaged children is a more effective strategy than opening programs to all children. But the authors of the study, William T. Gormley, a professor of government and public policy at Georgetown, and Deborah Phillips, a psychology professor there, suggest that diversity is what is making the difference. As has been the case with Georgia's lottery-financed pre-K program, universal access brings "the political advantages of widespread public support," the authors write. "It is also possible," they write, "that some of the classroom benefits that accrue to disadvantaged children are attributable in part to the presence of more advantaged children in the same classroom." 'What Really Matters' While the Oklahoma universal pre-K initiative has not received as much national attention as Georgia's or New York state's, the program has grown quickly since it began in 1998. By the 2001-02 school year, 494 of the state's 543 school districts were receiving state money to participate. Unlike in Georgia and New York, where services are provided in both schools and community-based child-care centers, Oklahoma's pre-K classrooms are entirely housed in public schools. And instead of focusing on specific curriculum goals, the state decided to emphasize teacher training as the pathway to high-quality pupil readiness for school. Oklahoma's law requires every pre-K teacher to have a bachelor's degree and a certificate in early-childhood education. Pre-K teachers also receive the same pay and benefits as public school teachers, further erasing the boundaries that typically exist between preschool and K-12 teachers. The Oklahoma model, Mr. Gormley said in an interview, "asserts that what really matters in early childhood is the quality of the teacher and the education of the teacher." A recent study of state-financed prekindergarten programs, conducted by Yale University researchers Walter S. Gilliam and Carol H. Ripple, showed that 12 out of the 33 states surveyed required teachers to have both a four-year degree and a teaching certificate. A separate analysis of research on pre-K programs released earlier this month by Marcy Whitebook of the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that requiring teachers to have bachelor's degrees is the best step policymakers can take toward building programs that give children the skills they need for kindergarten. ("Study: Pre-K Teachers Need 4 Years of College," Oct. 1, 2003.) New Research Approach In Oklahoma, both part- and full-day pre-K programs are offered, with a majority of prekindergartners—57 percent—attending half-day classes, and the rest attending for a full day. Mr. Gormley and Ms. Phillip's study finds that the full-day program was most beneficial for Hispanic children, with Hispanic 4-year-olds in those classes showing an overall increase in scores of 73 percent. African-American children attending the full-day program showed modest gains. But among white children, only those attending the half-day program showed an increase in achievement—specifically, a 19 percent jump in language-development scores. Mr. Gormley said he was most confident about the findings on Hispanic pupils, because the numbers of children attending the half- and full-day programs were roughly equal. He added that the apparent lack of benefits for non-Hispanic white children in the full-day program might be due to the possibility that a greater number of disadvantaged and minority children in the full-day program were getting more attention from the teacher. The study on Tulsa's pre-K effort is different from most studies on the effects of early-childhood programs. Typically, researchers compare the progress of children in a certain program with that of children who were eligible but did not enroll in it. While widely accepted, Mr. Gormley said, that method always leaves a "nagging doubt" that those parents who enrolled their children in the program were in some way different from those who did not—a factor researchers call "selection bias." In Tulsa, however, a test called the Early Childhood Skills Inventory was given in 2001 to 4-year-olds about to begin the prekindergarten program and to 5-year-olds who had been in pre-K and were about to enter kindergarten. The design solved the selection-bias problem, the researchers say, because all of the children's parents had chosen the pre-K program. Ramona Paul, the assistant superintendent of professional services for the Oklahoma Department of Education, said it's possible that effects on social and emotional skills were not found because the test did not capture those changes in children. But she added that she was especially pleased to see that the program was benefiting Hispanic children. Source:  Education Week Online - October 29, 2003  To top of page  I  Home

Idea of the Week: High-Impact Pre-K

One of the most important trends in education policy -- or indeed, in social policy -- is the attention being paid in many parts of the country to early childhood education. It's becoming clearer every day that an earlier focus on cognitive development and other "school readiness" skills can have an enormous impact on how well children perform when they enter K-12 schools -- especially those poor and minority children in danger of being left behind because of a variety of disadvantages they and their families face.

So far, just three states have taken the step of moving toward a system of statewide, voluntary pre-K education services for all four-year-olds: Georgia, New York, and Oklahoma. And a new study by researchers at Georgetown University highlights certain features of Oklahoma's program -- especially its emphasis on high teacher quality and school readiness -- that appear to be having an especially strong positive impact on kids who participate. While there are many routes states can take to get to universal preschool, Oklahoma has used the public school system to offer preschool to all 4-year-olds whose families want it, by giving public school districts state per-pupil funds for each 4-year-old they enroll in pre-kindergarten.

The study, which concentrated on Tulsa, found that Oklahoma's pre-K initiative generated significant improvements in cognitive and language assessments for participants in the program, with particularly strong impacts for Hispanic and low-income children relative to a control group of non-participants. (For more on the study, see the Progressive Policy Institute's recent 21st Century Schools Project Bulletin.) According to Education Week, test scores for Hispanic children increased by 54 percent, and for African-American children by 17 percent. Looking at the results by economic status, the study found that students eligible for free lunches achieved a 31 percent increase in cognitive skills, a 15 percent increase in motor skills, and an 18 percent increase in language skills.

What makes the Oklahoma pre-K program different from many others? In an area where there's often confusion among various goals, including child care, social services, and educational/cognitive training, Oklahoma has decided to focus squarely on a mission of developing school readiness skills. Teachers are required to hold a bachelor's degree and an early childhood education certificate, and are paid the same as K-12 teachers. And the programs are guided and evaluated by school readiness standards.

The attention now being paid to Oklahoma's pre-K program by national researchers and educational policy analysts is welcome and long overdue. First launched in 1998 through legislation sponsored by Democratic state legislators Joe Eddings and Penny Williams, the initiative drew strong bipartisan support. It now has a prominent champion in Oklahoma First Lady Kim Henry, a former elementary school teacher. She helped establish a public-private Oklahoma Partnership for School Readiness, set up by legislation signed by Gov. Brad Henry after it was vetoed by former Republican Gov. Frank Keating. "Recent scientific evidence proves that children who are prepared for school when they begin kindergarten are more likely to display stronger reading skills, more likely to graduate and more likely to become productive members of the workforce," said Mrs. Henry.

Oklahoma's school-based approach may not be the answer for all states, but its impacts and focus on teacher quality and school readiness standards offer lessons for local, state, and national policymakers. The Oklahoma experience is also germane to the national debate over the right mix of educational and social services in early childhood for disadvantaged children. This ought to be a topic of debate in the presidential election as well; how to best target education dollars in this area is just as important as the adequacy of funding levels.

Disadvantaged kids need a lot of help in a lot of areas, but getting them ready for the intellectual demands of school should come first.

This article was taken from the National Democratic Leadership Council Online: http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=252176&kaid=131&subid=207

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Oklahoma Encourages Communities to Offer Early Childhood Education

Source:  National Governor's Association Center for Best Practices website -- 5/8/03

Contact: Anna Lovejoy, Education Division

The Act establishes a 28-member Oklahoma Partnership for School Readiness Board which will provide state level leadership and guidance to communities in increasing local school readiness opportunities. The Board (which will include representatives of state government and the private sector) will focus on leveraging private sector funding and coordinating federal, state, and local funds with private funds. The Board will also develop standards of accountability in school readiness programs and policy and will report annually to the Governor and the state legislature on school readiness gains. The Act also creates a non-profit school readiness foundation that will raise private and public sector funds to assist in the implementation of the legislation.

Governor's Press Release

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