President Obama used his State of the Union address to launch a push for massively expanding pre-K and other early childhood education programs. But he was pretty vague about it. Not anymore. At 6 a.m. today, the administration released its detailed plan for early childhood education. Its three main components are:
- A state-federal partnership to guarantee pre-K to all 4-year-olds in families at or below 200 percent of the poverty line, to be provided by school districts and other local partners, and to use instructors with the same level of education and training as K-12 instructions.
- A massively expanded Early Head Start program — building on the existing program, which has proven very effective in randomized controlled trials — which provides early education, child care, parental education, and health services to vulnerable children ages 0 to 3.
- Also expanding Nurse Family Partnerships, a program that has also earned top marks in randomized trials, and which provides regular home visits from nurses to families from pregnancy through the child’s second birthday, intended to promote good health and parenting practices. update – it appears that the White House program is broader than just NFPs but the general practice is the same, if less well-evaluated. Sorry for the confusion
Upon opening the plan for the first time (while on the phone with me) Nobel laureate and early childhood education expert James Heckman exclaimed “Holy smokes!” in approval.
As somebody who has spent the majority of their life working with young children, I can only echo that "Holy Smokes!"
I have spent more than my fair share of time in the trenches working to provide children a head start before entering Kindergarten, and then later assisting them once there, and I have OFTEN wished for better funded and staffed programs that could do what I was trying to do on what amounted to a shoestring budget.
Here is the rest of the plan, (For those of you who never click the link.)
