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By John Higgins
Beacon Journal staff writer
POSTED: 07:44 p.m. EDT, Mar 30, 2009
Public schools in Ohio and across the nation need to do more to help youngsters make the move from preschool to kindergarten, according to a report released today by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Education Commission of the States.
''There's been a lot of work focused on helping prepare children to be ready for school, but the time has now come to focus on the other side of the equation, that is the readiness of schools to receive all children,'' said Sandy Miller of the Ohio Department of Education.
Miller is attending a national conference sponsored by the report's authors on the issue beginning today in Washington, D.C.
The report includes insights from a series of state forums held last fall in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Arizona and Mississippi. More than 4,000 licensed child-care centers and preschools and more than 14,000 home-based care providers of varying quality feed into Ohio's kindergarten classrooms.
Interest in boosting pre-kindergarten education has been especially high in the Akron-Canton area. The Akron Community Foundation this year devoted about 60 percent of its education grants this year to a wide range of efforts to improve school readiness.
One of those programs — Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids — is a national program funded by the Kellogg Foundation to improve kindergarten readiness by showing parents how to improve their children's reading, language and social skills.
Stark County was one of eight sites in the country selected for the initiative and the first kids in that program are in third grade now. Sisters of Charity Foundation of Canton operates the program in Canton, Minerva and more recently, Alliance, for children ages 3 to 6.
It has proven so successful in improving kindergarten readiness that Kellogg has approved money to replicate it in other cities, including Akron, where it is in its second year of preparing children to enter Leggett and Mason elementary schools.
Now that the children are more ready for school, the schools are focusing on making schools more welcoming and the transition more seamless.
Ten elementary schools in Ohio — including Leggett Elementary in Akron and Youtz Elementary in Canton — are among 10 in the state participating in a two-year pilot program to form a stronger link between preschools and the public schools they feed into.
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland has made early education a priority in his proposed biennium budget.
Two years ago, Strickland created the Early Childhood Cabinet to coordinate the early childhood efforts of key state agencies and develop policy for children from before birth to age 6.
His administration also is working on creating a center for early childhood development and education that would bring all the state's child care and preschool education programs under one roof within the Ohio Department of Education.
However, budget restraints have weakened one of the state's most popular child care programs for low-income working parents.
The Early Learning Initiative (ELI) provides all-day, year-round, high-quality care and education services for about 12,000 Ohio children.
The program, which is administered by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, will have funding for only 8,000 children, a third fewer, in the governor's proposed budget.
But from the governor's perspective, he's actually saving those 8,000 slots from being eliminated entirely, said Alicia Leatherman, director of the Early Childhood Cabinet.
Here's the problem: The state uses federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) money to pay for ELI, and those funds are shrinking at the same time as demand for them is rising.
ELI costs $125 million a year to fund about 12,000 children, but it is not a core, mandated TANF program, so it was cut, Leatherman said.
The governor's proposed budget keeps the program alive by transferring $85 million from the general fund, which will pay for 8,000 ELI slots, but not the 12,000 now covered by TANF.
''Early Childhood is one of the governor's priorities, so we're investing $85 million of general revenue into the Early Learning Initiative,'' Leatherman said.
Eventually, the ELI program will be moved to the new early childhood education center at the Ohio Department of Education.
''Although we have some setbacks in terms of the numbers of kids served in ELI, we're going to keep driving forward with the vision that we have around high quality and the vision that we have around access and creating the system,'' Leatherman said. ''That's so much of the energy around creating this new administrative structure to get everyone housed together, to make sure that we're aligned and consistent.''
John Higgins can be reached at 330-996-3792 or jhiggins@thebeaconjournal.com.
Public schools in Ohio and across the nation need to do more to help youngsters make the move from preschool to kindergarten, according to a report released today by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Education Commission of the States.
''There's been a lot of work focused on helping prepare children to be ready for school, but the time has now come to focus on the other side of the equation, that is the readiness of schools to receive all children,'' said Sandy Miller of the Ohio Department of Education.
Miller is attending a national conference sponsored by the report's authors on the issue beginning today in Washington, D.C.
The report includes insights from a series of state forums held last fall in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Arizona and Mississippi. More than 4,000 licensed child-care centers and preschools and more than 14,000 home-based care providers of varying quality feed into Ohio's kindergarten classrooms.
Interest in boosting pre-kindergarten education has been especially high in the Akron-Canton area. The Akron Community Foundation this year devoted about 60 percent of its education grants this year to a wide range of efforts to improve school readiness.
One of those programs — Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids — is a national program funded by the Kellogg Foundation to improve kindergarten readiness by showing parents how to improve their children's reading, language and social skills.
Stark County was one of eight sites in the country selected for the initiative and the first kids in that program are in third grade now. Sisters of Charity Foundation of Canton operates the program in Canton, Minerva and more recently, Alliance, for children ages 3 to 6.
It has proven so successful in improving kindergarten readiness that Kellogg has approved money to replicate it in other cities, including Akron, where it is in its second year of preparing children to enter Leggett and Mason elementary schools.
Now that the children are more ready for school, the schools are focusing on making schools more welcoming and the transition more seamless.
Ten elementary schools in Ohio — including Leggett Elementary in Akron and Youtz Elementary in Canton — are among 10 in the state participating in a two-year pilot program to form a stronger link between preschools and the public schools they feed into.
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland has made early education a priority in his proposed biennium budget.
Two years ago, Strickland created the Early Childhood Cabinet to coordinate the early childhood efforts of key state agencies and develop policy for children from before birth to age 6.
His administration also is working on creating a center for early childhood development and education that would bring all the state's child care and preschool education programs under one roof within the Ohio Department of Education.
However, budget restraints have weakened one of the state's most popular child care programs for low-income working parents.
The Early Learning Initiative (ELI) provides all-day, year-round, high-quality care and education services for about 12,000 Ohio children.
The program, which is administered by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, will have funding for only 8,000 children, a third fewer, in the governor's proposed budget.
But from the governor's perspective, he's actually saving those 8,000 slots from being eliminated entirely, said Alicia Leatherman, director of the Early Childhood Cabinet.
Here's the problem: The state uses federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) money to pay for ELI, and those funds are shrinking at the same time as demand for them is rising.
ELI costs $125 million a year to fund about 12,000 children, but it is not a core, mandated TANF program, so it was cut, Leatherman said.
The governor's proposed budget keeps the program alive by transferring $85 million from the general fund, which will pay for 8,000 ELI slots, but not the 12,000 now covered by TANF.
''Early Childhood is one of the governor's priorities, so we're investing $85 million of general revenue into the Early Learning Initiative,'' Leatherman said.
Eventually, the ELI program will be moved to the new early childhood education center at the Ohio Department of Education.
''Although we have some setbacks in terms of the numbers of kids served in ELI, we're going to keep driving forward with the vision that we have around high quality and the vision that we have around access and creating the system,'' Leatherman said. ''That's so much of the energy around creating this new administrative structure to get everyone housed together, to make sure that we're aligned and consistent.''
John Higgins can be reached at 330-996-3792 or jhiggins@thebeaconjournal.com.
Comments
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akron, oh
Posted 09:04 PM, 03/30/2009
ELI costs over $10,000 a year PER child. What a waste of money. Could you imagine instead of spending that for poor mom sending her toddler to day care, you instead spend that money on educational assistants in all early elementary grades. And extra money can help teach parents how to BE good parent and get their child ready for school. One of the main focus of these research groups is to 'promote early childhood education'. Basically, create thousands fo jobs for new teachers. taxpayers, do you have a bottomless pit of money? the government thinks so.
