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Originally Posted by YNKYH8R

This is all well and good but it's unfair to penalize kids of parents who don't care. Face it some parents are not as proactive as other parents. If you're anti-pre-k then that 's fine. It can be really benficial for so many children.

I know I HAD to work when my son was small and my Headstart was great. I did teach him to read at home, but working full time, there's not a lot of time left to teach. He had a great teacher at Headstart who encouraged him and reinforced what was taught at home. With a drunk abusive Dh who wouldn't work, Headstart was a blessing!

Parenting is the parents job - not the goverments.

Originally Posted by Jolie Rouge

Parenting is the parents job - not the goverments.

Indeed. But teaching is a job shared by parents and teachers alike.

Originally Posted by janelle

When did all this pushing kids to read earlier start? Now they have to know how to read to enter kindergarten? We never had the testing they have now to just enter school. We showed up the first day and the teachers took us as a pretty much blank slate.

Now kids are coming from all teaching backgrounds and they are all on different levels. Universal pre-K would get kids into the same box as far as teaching them the same way but why push them so fast?

I thought head start was for disadvantaged kids who had no one at home to help them get ready for kindergarten. Now it seems all kids are in day care or pre-school.

The ones who start kindergarten already knowing what will be taught are bored and that becomes a problem. At what level will a child need to be to start regular school? They must be able to read and write and do equations and know a little bit of a foreign language?

Well, my DD started 1st grade this year, she hadn't ever been to school before. But because she is advanced in most subjects, she is in a "Power Student' class. She does 2nd grade Math, Social Studies and 3rd grade Reading, Science & Computers. But in her homeroom, she does 1st grade level Spanish & Current Events. The Power students class isn't really a grade, it is a level and the students ages range from 5 to 9. She doesn't get bored easliy, because once she masters something she can go on to something else.

Both my children could read at 4, but I don't think I pushed them to learn to read. They had been exposed to books and reading at an early age and just naturally picked it up. And I could read at 4 or 5 also (and that was a VERY long time ago, lol) I remember sitting in my grandfathers lap and he would read the newspaper and the Bible out loud and trace under the words with his finger. I don't think he was trying to teach me to read, but I picked it up from following along.

Our view on Early education: Pre-K programs pay off
Wed Jan 30, 12:21 AM ET

Oklahoma enjoys a popular image as a state of wildcatters, hardscrabble farmers and rodeo riders. So it might come as something of a surprise to learn that national organizations rate the state as tops in the USA in — preschool.

Oklahoma offers "universal" preschool, which means that parents of all incomes have the option of sending their 4-year-olds to a state-sponsored preschool, transportation included. The state also insists that all preschool teachers hold bachelor's degrees, and they are paid the same as regular school teachers.


States have good reasons to aspire to universal preschool, especially high-quality programs with good teachers and low student-to-teacher ratios. Universal preschool can help fill a void: Poor families have access to Head Start. Well-to-do families pay for quality preschools out of their pockets. In between are lower-middle class families whose children badly need the readiness skills that preschool provides.


Oklahoma educators credit their decade-old preschool program with pushing up reading and math scores in the lower grades, and with raising achievement by low-income children.


Elite preschools — such as the experimental Perry Preschool in Michigan, where researchers followed the poor and minority children who attended that school well into adulthood — return more than $16 to society (in the form of lower crime and higher employment) for every dollar invested, according to the non-profit High/Scope Educational Research Foundation. Even decent-quality preschools produce gains in the $4 to $10 range, other researchers found.


States pay a price, however, for pushing too fast for universal systems.


Florida rushed its preschool system out the door with seemingly little attention to setting standards. Florida cosmetologists face stiffer licensing than preschool teachers, and preschool operators there are free to pursue a choose-your-own-curriculum policy.


Making Florida's preschool program more worrisome is the low funding. Among the 38 states that underwrite preschool, Florida ranks 35th. Universal preschool is a great idea that can turn bad when implementation outstrips the money.


Preschool classrooms with too many children and too few teachers have surprisingly high expulsion rates, researchers reported earlier this month. The ratio in preschools shouldn't rise above 10 students for each teacher, they recommended.


Most states are proceeding with appropriate caution. Virginia recently scaled back its ambitious universal preschool plans when its state budget veered toward deficit. Alabama set high standards for its preschool program but is starting slowly, fearful of compromising quality.


Several of the 2008 presidential candidates have embraced the concept of universal preschool, generally without providing much detail. States looking for an effective model can consult officials in Oklahoma. They did it Sooner.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/200...9IDQeUy0as0NUE



Opposing view: Let families decide
Wed Jan 30, 12:20 AM ET
By Darcy Olsen

Pundits are perplexed trying to explain how Iowa went to Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee but New Hampshire went to Hillary Clinton and John McCain. How could there be so much diversity among voters? The presidential primaries remind us that there are millions of Americans with millions of ideas on how to get things done. And there could be no place where there are more ideas than when it comes to parenting.


One of my friends is home-schooling her three little girls. Another friend uses preschool two days a week and a grandparent to round out the middle. One colleague is eager to enroll her children in a Montessori program and return full-time to work. In fact, I don't know any two families with exactly the same child care or preschool arrangements.


This kind of diversity is good for children. According the U.S. Department of Education's national assessment, most children entering kindergarten are familiar with reading, such as knowing that print reads left to right, and they can read numbers, recognize shapes and count. They're also enthusiastic and eager to learn, personal qualities that kindergarten teachers say matter even more than concrete skills.


All but a few parents go to great lengths to seek out the best for their children. The strength of our early education system is that it can respond with as many options as there are children. For families struggling with job loss, single parenting or other challenges, federal and state governments have programs to help in hard times.


It's difficult to understand, then, why so many states are pushing to add preschool to their docket of free programs. Last year, California voters overwhelmingly rejected a universal preschool plan. Three-quarters of parents, conservative and liberal, say that one parent at home is the best arrangement for their young children.


The abundance of options available to families reflects the best of America. Do we really want lawmakers deciding how every 4-year-old should prepare for school? Rather than take over preschool, governments should lower taxes and adopt policies that increase parents' purchasing power and keep family decisions where they belong.


Darcy Olsen is president of the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/200...uGDsd1Ylj8B2YD