Tag: Early Childhood Education

Ask the Experts: 7 Ways to Improve K-12 Public Education

Posted on by robbie

The United States bests almost every country in the world in many areas, but when it comes to educational achievement, American students are just plain mediocre. According to the most recent (2012) results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) — a test of critical thinking administered every three years to about half a million 15-year-olds around the globe — U.S. students are lagging behind those in many other countries, including China, Finland and Korea, in math, reading and science. Compared with other developed nations, the U.S. performs average or below. Worse, among the 34 countries surveyed, the U.S. school system ranked fifth in spending per student, at $115,000. That’s a hefty chunk of change for so-so results.

PISA scores aren’t the only measure of an educational system, but most experts agree that American schools are in need of a major overhaul. The question is: What kinds of reforms will result in lasting, meaningful changes?

As part of NationSwell’s Ask the Expert series, we asked our panel to share their ideas on how best to improve K-12 public education. Read on for their thoughts, and then join the conversation by leaving your own ideas in the comments box.

MORE: The Radical School Reform That Just Might Work
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The Big Easy’s Big Literacy Challenge

Posted on by robbie

New Orleans has a big goal for its 300th birthday in 2018: Leaders want to make New Orleans the most literate city in America through a program called Turn the Page. The initiative kicked off January 22 with an effort to break the Guinness world record for the largest read-aloud event. About 500 kids attended to hear some of the city’s finest musicians play, including Grammy-winning bandleader Irvin Mayfield, one of the major forces behind the literacy campaign, and New Orleans actor Wendell Pierce, known for his work on “The Wire” and “Treme,” who read aloud from “The Bourbon Street Band is Back.”
The Turn The Page program unites 11 library systems and many media organizations throughout southern Louisiana in a simultaneous effort to improve school readiness among preschoolers, reading ability among school-age kids, digital literacy, and literacy among adults. Last month’s kickoff began a blitz of 30 literacy-encouraging events in 30 days, such as the “Super Bowl of Reading,” through which people vote for their favorite author to be featured at area libraries, individual computer classes to help people get online, and a pajama story time for kids. The Turn the Page website will make literacy tools available.
Central Connecticut State University conducts an annual literacy survey of in cities across America, measuring such factors as educational attainment, the number of booksellers, and the availability of library resources, and ranks cities. Last year New Orleans ranked 25th out of 75. Given all the efforts the people of New Orleans are making to improve literacy, 2013’s number one city, Washington D.C., is going to have to hit the books to hold off New Orleans’ challenge.
MORE: What Looks Like A Birdhouse And Promotes Literacy?

These Kindergarteners Already Speak More Languages Than You

Posted on by robbie

Students at one Wisconsin elementary school are learning to read, write and speak two languages…at the tender age of five! Schurz Elementary start kindergarteners in a dual language, Spanish-English program that runs all the way through elementary school. Their teacher currently teaches 80% of the day’s lessons in Spanish, and the program helps both Spanish-speaking students who are learning English as a second language and vice versa. The district is planning on adding more classes at the middle school level, to make sure that students continue to use their language skills and remain fluently bilingual.

Oklahoma’s Pilot Pre-Kindergarten Program Provides National Model

Posted on by robbie

“Since 1998, Oklahoma has offered universal access to pre-kindergarten and has one of the highest participation rates in the country, with 74 percent of all 4-year-olds enrolled in a pre-K program,” according to the Washington Post. Recently, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof visited a few families participating in the state’s universal pre-K program and was impressed by depth of support it offered low-income families. He noted how the issue of early childhood education isn’t political in Oklahoma, and attributes this as part of the program’s success. In addition to pre-kindergarten, the state also offers younger children free access to full-day, year-round nursery school. “Oklahoma also supports home visits so that social workers can coach stressed-out single moms (or occasionally dads) on the importance of reading to children and chatting with them constantly,” Kristof wrote. “The social workers also drop off books; otherwise, there may not be a single children’s book in the house.” So far, studies have shown that children enrolled in this program outperform those not enrolled. President Obama recently proposed nationwide adoption of this pre-k program modeled after the success in Oklahoma. Read Obama’s plan here. More on the program here.