What Exactly Is 'High-Quality' Preschool?
"Those kids are going to be in a spiral of failure," says Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. "And we set that up by not adequately investing before they get to kindergarten."
Barnett says a majority of low-income 4-year-olds are in poor quality programs. If there is a silver lining, it's that even substandard preschool is better than the more common alternative: none at all. Children who get no preschool start kindergarten already a year or more behind developmentally.
"It's very clear from the research," Barnett says, "that our problems with inequality... are set when children walk in the school door."
So ... what to do? One answer can be found at Porter Early Childhood Development Center in Tulsa, Okla.
There, each morning begins with the school secretary, Tracy Jones, standing outside as the yellow school buses pull up. She greets the kids as they make the big step down to the curb, some still groggy from their 45-minute ride. Once the last student files past, Jones asks the driver to make sure no one's still aboard, fast asleep in the back. It happens.
Inside, through Porter's sturdy, steel doors, Howard Wible waits in the gymnasium. The principal is an affable, burly man in his late 50s, known to dress up as Winnie the Pooh for special school occasions.
Today, he's happy to lead the children in a few stretching exercises, then a song about the seven continents. From there, the hungry 4-year olds make their way down the stairs to the cafeteria and breakfast. On the menu today: scrambled eggs, toast, potatoes, milk and cereal. Shovel, chew, and repeat ... before it's time to see Ms. Nikki Jones.
Jones, 32, brown hair bobbed at the shoulders and held behind her ears by a pair of upturned reading glasses, has only been teaching for a few years, but she has the classroom presence of a veteran. She's firm yet gentle as she rounds up her 20 kids and sits them down on a thick, shaggy rug. It's time for one of the day's first and most important rituals: morning storytelling.
It's 10:00 a.m., and, instead of reading to the kids herself, Ms. Jones has brought in a kindergartner from down the hall to read aloud. All eyes turn to 5-year-old Madison as she makes her way confidently, sentence by sentence, through Dr. Seuss' The Foot Book. Madison is a hit. The kids watch her, cross-legged and enraptured. When she finishes, Jones leads the class in a thank you "Hip Hip Hooray!"
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