Early Childhood News

2012 News Back to Top
added 1/21/12 Evers Statement on Legislative Proposals on Education Announced Today: State Superintendent Tony Evers issued a statement regarding proposed legislation on education. Excerpts from his statement follow.
"Over the past year, I have worked on a wide array of education reforms...However, despite my leadership and constitutional authority, I have not been involved in the drafting of the education proposals that have been announced.

Additionally, education reforms must be fully funded and not simply be more unfunded mandates that result in further cuts to educational programming for our students."
Additional information is available in the complete statement, which is posted on the department's website http://dpi.wi.gov/eis/pdf/dpinr2012_18.pdf. Please direct comments or questions about this news item to Patrick Gasper, DPI Communications Officer, (608) 266-3559, patrick.gasper@dpi.wi.gov .
2011 News Back to Top
added 12/8/2011 Kindergarten for 4-year-olds continues steady growth
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Added 12/1/2011 Poll: 60 Percent in Wisconsin Think Early Childhood Education is a Good Economic Investment

Taken from:
Wisconsin Council on Children and Families
555 W. Washington Ave., Suite 200
Madison, WI 53703
Phone (608) 284-0580
http://www.wccf.org/

Early Learning Matters - December 1, 2011
Dave Edie, Early Education Policy Analyst

An October 2011 poll by the conservative think tank, Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, found that 60% of Wisconsinites surveyed agree that early childhood education is an investment in Wisconsin's economic future. Here are the results of question 29 in the poll:

29. Some people feel that state funding for early childhood education programs should be supported because it is an investment in Wisconsin's economic future. Others feel that state funding for early childhood education programs is not a high priority when state budget dollars are scarce. Which comes closer to the way you feel?

Early childhood education is an investment in Wisconsin's economic future---60 %
Early childhood education is not a high priority when state funding is tight---34 %
Don't know/Refused---6 %

To see the entire poll, go to: http://wpri.org/polls/Oct2011/Toplines.pdf
This may be the only broad-based public opinion poll on this topic in Wisconsin.
The poll had 605 respondents with a 4% sampling error.
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Added 11/22/2011 Survey data shows Effects of Cuts to Education: from WI DPI
"Budgets have consequences and the 2011-13 state budget made sweeping changes to funding for public schools", said State Superintendent Tony Evers. "It's no surprise that school districts balanced their budgets; they always do, even under 18 years of revenue limits. It is clear this year that districts had to cut staff, eliminate vital support services, and reduce course offerings, narrowing educational opportunities for Wisconsin's school children"

A much higher number of jobs were lost in the K-12 sector than under prior years of budget cuts...

Four in 10 students attend a district with larger class sizes in grades K-6; 90 percent of students attend a district that had a net staff loss in one of the four categories surveyed.

Essential support programs were cut, and roughly three in four students attend a district reducing at least one such program; one in five students attend a district that cut five or more of these programs. The biggest cuts were to special education programs (100 of responding districts), followed by library and media center staff, reading coordinators, programs for at-risk youth, and drug and alcohol abuse programs."

"The 2011-13 biennial budget has already had a profound effect on the services delivered to public school students, said Miles Turner, WASDA executive director. "A majority of Wisconsin students attend a school district with fewer teachers, larger class sizes, fewer support programs, and fewer course offerings. Most districts expect next year's budget will be worse."
Read more in link above.

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Added 10/30/11 A War We Could Win
In a column for the Center for American Progress, Jennifer Rokosa writes that given the overwhelming research evidence that Early Childhood Education programs help low-income children to overcome the staggering challenges of poverty, revisions to the ESEA must align preschool programs with the K-12 educational continuum so that children transition seamlessly between preschool and kindergarten and continue to build on skills learned in preschool. A strong first step, Rokosa says, would be making Title I funds more freely available to preschool programs; currently, a mere 3 percent are dedicated to early childhood education. Legislators should also implement accountability standards that more accurately track preschool achievement; standardized testing is not an effective way to track the complex social, emotional, and intellectual growth that takes place in preschool years. Other steps would be provisions for professional development that specifically address the concerns and challenges of early childhood educators, and that incentivize the creation of high-performing preschool programs in districts across the country. Rokosa points out that the ESEA was originally passed in 1965 as part of the War on Poverty. "It's time that we return to its original purpose by expanding and strengthening federally funded programs for early childhood education," she writes.
Read more:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/10/poverty_early_childhood_education.html
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Added 10/30/11 Affluence and Performance Gaps:
Well before kindergarten, significant performance gaps exist between affluent and poor students, and those gaps widen further in school. Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman argues that investments in early childhood education pay a return of 7 percent or more, better than many investments on Wall Street. And David Deming of Harvard found that although critics are right that test score advantages for Head Start participants fade quickly, in other crucial areas, Head Start has a significant long-term impact. Participants are significantly less likely than non-participant siblings to repeat grades, be diagnosed with a learning disability, or suffer the kind of poor health associated with poverty. Head Start alumni are also more likely than their siblings to graduate from high school and attend college. These life outcomes, Kristof writes, are a "stunning" result.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/opinion/occupy-the-classroom.html?_r=2&hp

Excerpted from Public Education Network Weekly NewsBlast, click here to subscribe (http://www.publiceducation.org) and follow the instructions in the lower left-hand section of the homepage .
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Added 10/13/11 US DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES (HHS) RELEASES: Revised HEAD START Child Development and Learning Framework
The changes to the revised Framework are designed to provide more clarity to the domains and domain elements of the original Framework and do not create new requirements for Head Start grantees.
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Added 8/21/11 State Superintendent Tony Evers proposes "Fair Funding for Our Future school finance reform" as part of the Department of Public Instruction's complete 2011-13 biennial budget request. The Fair Funding for Our Future plan:
Fixes Wisconsin's school funding formula to be fair, sustainable, and transparent
Holds the line on property taxes
Guarantees state funding for every student
Strengthens rural schools and schools with declining enrollments
Accounts for family income and poverty
Ends the school funding shell game
Provides predictable growth in state aid
Visit the above website for details. For an overview click HERE. And, What would the plan mean for my district?
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Added 5/24/11 Wisconsin superintendent Tony Evers calls school choice program 'morally wrong': Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to expand the Milwaukee school choice voucher program to other Wisconsin school districts is "morally wrong," state Supt. Tony Evers told students and staff Monday at Green Bay Preble High School.
Evers joined Green Bay school Supt. Greg Maass and local education leaders in denouncing the program for the district and the state, claiming the program failed to improve test scores for school choice students over public school students; would further harm budget-strapped public schools; and would raise local property taxes."Our public school system is under attack," Evers said. "To spend hundreds of millions to expand a 20-year-old program that has not improved overall student achievement while defunding public education is morally wrong."

For more on this from the Wisconsin Department of Education (DPI) click HERE. Adobe Acrobat/.pdf version Click Here.

John Ashley, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, agreed:
"Regardless of what proponents say, the 'tools' provided school districts in the budget repair bill are inadequate for many, if not most, school districts ... After almost two decades of reduced programming for students due to state-imposed revenue limits, cuts for most schools will be deeper this year and next due to the unprecedented cuts proposed..."
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Added April 4, 2011 Staff from WECA and Resource and Referral Agencies are ready to work with programs. Statewide trainings are being planned. Follow this link: YoungStar applications available now.
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Added March 21 4K START-UP GRANT APPLICATIONS ARE NOW AVAILABLE
School districts may apply if they will begin 4 year old kindergarten in the 2011-2012 school year. The funded priority is for districts that are implementing community approaches with child care and/or Head Start. Under the existing funding process, it appears that districts will be approved for participation but will not receive any funding until the 2012-2013 school year.
(Look for Grant Cycle 4: 2011-2013)
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Governor Walker's Budget Impact on Early Childhood Education in Wisconsin

Added March 3rd, 2011 From the Wisconsin Council on Families and Children: Significant Sacrifice, Little Sharing Governor's--Budget Proposal Would Fall Heavily on Children and Families

Added March 3rd, 2011 Early Care and Education in the Governor's 2011-13 Budget--3 Key Items
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Added 2/15/2011 Paying Later: The High Costs of Failing to Invest in Young Children: A new 6-page policy brief from the Pew Center on the States
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Added 2/3/2011 Facts and Tips for Working with Dual Language Learners Series
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has funded a series of FACTS & TIPS documents that are intended to give programs and practitioners easy access to information and practical tips for working with young dual language learners, birth-5 years, and their families. The FACTS & TIPS series will cover a wide range of topics including culture and families, language development, assessment, service delivery, effective instruction, language use, and interpreters. Additional documents will be added as they are approved.

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Added 1/20/2011--Journal Sentinel Politifact Truth-O-Meter--Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend statements regarding 4-K rated false.
Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend made claims that that any academic benefits of government funded preschool disappear by the fourth grade. The Madison School District has already announced its intention to add four-year-old kindergarten next year. Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, based at Rutgers University stated "There is considerable evidence that preschool programs of many types -- including Head Start -- have persistent effects on academic ability and success. There is no convincing evidence that these effects decline over time." Barnett "reviewed 22 long-term studies of the effects of preschool in a 1993 article entitled Does Head Start Fade Out? Each study followed children from preschool until at least 3rd grade..."
Another study, which looked at 123 comparative studies of early childhood interventions, concluded: "significant effects were found in this study for children who attend a preschool program prior to entering kindergarten. Although the largest effect sizes were observed for cognitive outcomes, a preschool education was also found to impact children's social skills and school progress."
Finally, an Education Week commentary by Nobel Prize winning University of Chicago economist James Heckman, who was part of a pre-kindergarten study, concluded: "I now believe that early interventions with children are not so productive if they are not followed up with ongoing investments in children during their elementary and secondary school years. Instead, we need to invest early in children — and not stop. And by 'invest' I do not simply mean that government should be pumping money into new social programs for disadvantaged youths."
We rate Grothman's statement False.--Politifact Wisconsin
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Added 1/13/2011--The Wisconsin Model Early Learning Standards have been aligned with the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Math.
See Aligning Wisconsin Model Early Learning Standards with Common Core State Standards (Word/.doc format) for Jill Haglund and Paul Sandrock, Content and Learning Teams work to move forward with the alignment of the WMELS and Common Core (PowerPoint/.ppt format) State Standards.

2010 News
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Added 12/22/2010 International Testing: How do U.S. students measure up academically and what should we do about it?

A study of 15-year-old performance in reading, math and science shows that American students lag behind most industrialized countries. Ellen Frede and Steve Barnett found that the differences are likely influenced by the level of preschool education. Shanghai and Finland, the two top performers, both offer high-quality preschool education to all children. Interested? Read their analysis. What the PISA Scores Are Telling Us.

National Research Supports Economic Benefits of Early Education: Excellent summary; See New Research: Early Education as Economic Investment.

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Dec. 21/2010--From Wisconsin Council on Children and Families: Quote of the Month--"To compete and win in this economy, we need a well-educated, team-capable and job-ready workforce. Investments in young children set tomorrow's employees on a trajectory to meet these demands."

Brochure from the Institute for a Competitive Workforce, Starting Smart & Finishing Strong: Fixing the Cracks in America's Workforce Pipeline Through Investments in Early Childhood Development.

Report: Wisconsin Public Spending Sparse for Youngest Children:
According to a new national report, investments in education and development per child for Wisconsin infants and toddlers is 7.7 percent of that for school-aged children, and per child investments for preschoolers is 27.9 percent of that for school-aged children.
Early Learning Left Out: a 3rd edition from Voices for Children, the nation's investments in early learning has not caught up with the evidence of the importance of the first five years. Early Learning Left Out: Building An Early Learning Childhood System to Secure America's Future/ examines total investments in education by state and by age, finding that children pre-school aged and younger get only a fraction of the investment that school-aged children get.

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Added 12/17/2010--The Current Status of Wisconsin's Child Care Workforce: Pathways to Early Childhood Higher Education Policy Brief 3 summarizes the findings of a 2010 workforce survey. Wisconsin Council on Children and Families and Wisconsin Early Childhood Association collaborated on the project, and the Public Policy Forum played a major role in implementing the survey. The brief focuses on educational qualifications, compensation, retention and quality, and suggest that efforts to address turnover and improve quality are on the right track. The survey reveals strengths and obstacles of the child care workforce.

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The Fall issue of the Wisconsin Birth to 6 Events Newsletter is now available online. The theme of this issue is "What's New in State Infrastructure? Early Childhood System Updates and Cross-System Collaborations." Fall 2010
Included in this issue:
Investing in Quality Child Care
Statewide Councils
- Governor's Early Childhood Advisory Council
- State Superintendent's Advisory Council on Special Education
- Interagency Coordinating Council (ICC)
- Council on Autism - Children's Long-Term Support Council (CLTS)
Birth to 3 ARRA
Crossing Borders Initiative: Preparing Mentors Project Early Childhood Special Education Updates Higher Education and Preschool Options Project Job Postings Staff Highlights

Thanks to all those who contributed:
Wisconsin Child Care Information Center Wisconsin Early Childhood Association Darsell Johns, DHS Jane Penner-Hoppe, DCF Courtney Reed Jenkins, DPI Linda Tuchman, Waisman Center Liz Hecht, Waisman Center Carol Noddings Eichinger, WPDP Erin Arango-Escalante, DPI Mary Joslin, CESA #10 Simone DeVore, UW-Whitewater Guiliana Miolo, UW-Whitewater Elizabeth Wahl, WPDP

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Focus on Early Childhood Education:
The years before a child reaches kindergarten are among the most critical in his or her life to influence learning. President Obama is committed to providing the support that our youngest children need to prepare to succeed later in school. The President supports a seamless and comprehensive set of services and support for children, from birth through age 5. Because the President is committed to helping all children succeed - regardless of where they spend their day - he will urge states to impose high standards across all publicly funded early learning settings, develop new programs to improve opportunities and outcomes, engage parents in their child's early learning and development, and improve the early education workforce.

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From Collaborating Partners News
Governor's Early Childhood Advisory Council (ECAC) Reports:

2010 WHSA Achieving Excellence Awards - Community Partner and Parent & Staff Scholarship Award Recipients: Oct. 2010

YoungStar Child Care Quality Rating System passes Joint Finance unanimously. See the Joint Finance motion (pdf) for more details.

Supporting Families Together Association report on retention and expulsion in WI child care settings. April 2010

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Voices for America's Children has released a 3rd edition of Early Learning Left Out: Building an Early Learning Childhood System to Secure America's Future. June 2010
To see the report, go to:
http://www.cfpciowa.org/uploaded/Issues/School%20Readiness/Early%20Learning%20Left%20Out2.pdf
Interesting finding: Wisconsin spending per child 0-2 is 7.7% of per child spending ages 6-18; Wisconsin spending per child ages 3-5 is 27.9 % of spending per child ages 6-18.
Wisconsin spends $644 per infant/toddler, $2,693 per preschooler, and $9,601 per school-age child (6-18).
The date is on pp.23-24 in Table 3 on spending per child by age group for all the states.

Dave Edie
Early Education Policy Analyst
Wisconsin Council on Children and Families
555 W. Washington Ave., Suite 200
Madison, WI 53703
608-284-0580
dedie@wccf.org

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Wisconsin Social Emotional Foundations of Early Learning (SEFEL) demonstration sites have been selected.--posted 5/24/2010
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From PEN Blast Weekly (click to subscribe) : Pre-K/4K/EC Programs: the biggest bang for your education buck
A new study--November 2009--by Wilder Research of St. Paul, Minn., undertaken at the behest of Michigan nonprofit Early Childhood Investment Corp., finds that Michigan preschool programs over the past 25 years are saving the state $1 billion this year in crime and education costs, as well as contributing to increased state productivity. Michigan school superintendent Mike Flanagan said the study shows the state should spend much more than it does getting pre-kindergarten children ready for school, and suggested that the state and districts consider reducing the cost of school employee benefits and using the savings to expand preschool programs. "In a K-12 system, we spend $1 billion a grade, but we don't spend anywhere close to that where it would get the biggest bang for the buck." Among the savings cited in the study were a $220 million savings to public schools because fewer students repeat grades and there is less need for special education instruction; $584 million less for programs for juvenile corrections, child abuse, and welfare; and $347 million less in social costs as a result of less crime and substance abuse, as well as increased income for parents. It also affected state unemployment, and boosted work productivity when children enter the workforce.
See the Report.

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Doyle's child-care rating plan gets broad support Jan. 2010:
(excerpt): "Community leaders, child advocates and state lawmakers spoke out Friday in support of Gov. Jim Doyle's plan to rate child-care centers in Wisconsin and link their performance to state subsidy payments."

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A Step Forward for Child Care Quality : Jan.-Feb. 2010--related to above.
(excerpt): Many long-time supporters of a Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) got a boost when Governor Jim Doyle announced his proposal for a $10 million investment at a press conference January 22 in Milwaukee. Surrounded by preschool children from Malaika Early Learning Center, the Governor unveiled his QRIS proposal, called YoungStar, aimed at improving the overall quality of child care in Wisconsin.

2009 News Back to Top
4K Reaches 80 Percent of Districts: Dec. 2009
From DPI ConnectEd; Click here to subscribe: http://dpi.wi.gov/dpi-connected/subscribe.html#subform

4K Reaches 80 Percent of Districts

Eighty percent of Wisconsin school districts now offer 4-year-old kindergarten (4K), State Superintendent Tony Evers announced. Sixteen districts added 4K programs this year. The 333 districts now offering 4K serve 38,075 children, up 4,000 from last year.

Of these 333 districts, 101 offer 4K through the community approach, which blends public and private resources. Wisconsin is one of the nation's leading models for combining educational and community care services for 4-year-olds.

Licensed teachers provide instruction for all public school district 4K programs.

Research has shown that children who attend developmentally appropriate early learning programs do better in school, have fewer referrals for special education, and are less likely to need extra services or to be held back in grade. Additionally, children who attend quality early childhood programs are more likely to graduate from high school, work, and avoid incarceration.

Wisconsin was one of five states involved in the National Center for Early Development and Learning study of State-Wide Early Education Programs (SWEEP). Key findings showed Wisconsin 4K students were above the national average on three of the four academic skills assessed. The SWEEP study found improvement in all four dimensions of children-s social skills: assertiveness, frustration tolerance, task orientation, and peer social skills.

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Child Care:
Child Care Rule Revisions March 2009, Department of Children and Families

The latest issue of the CCIC newsletter focuses on groups of children who require adaptations in their care or more background understanding on the part of caregivers. Some of those include children with health conditions, disabilities, incarcerated parents, or parents deployed in the military. Find the newsletter online at: http://dpi.wi.gov/ccic/pdf/issue58.pdf

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Childfind: New Model Child Find and Referral Notices, August, 2008

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Early Education Matters: News from Dave Edie & Early Education Matters: October 2009
In This Issue: Oct. 2009
Early Learning Challenge Fund Making Progress in Congress
Home Visiting Legislation Looks Promising in DC
DCF Suspends 99 Child Care Programs Suspected of Fraud
Mandatory Kindergarten Signed into Law
In the News
Check out the WCCF blog!
Support WCCF

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NAEYC: News from NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children)
Developmentally Appropriate Practice ,2009

The Core of DAP

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Play:
Crisis in Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School--March 2009, Alliance for Childhood

Can the right kind of play teach self control? September 2009, New York Times

From: DPI-ConnectEd On-line
Natural Playscape in Merrill.
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Teacher performance and student achievement: March 2009
IZA research consistently indicates that an increased focus on individual teacher performance caused a significant decline in student achievement in Portugal, particularly with respect to scores on national exams; the study also documents a significant increase in grade inflation.

Teacher-Performance Incentives and Student Outcomes in Portugal" from Public Education Network Weekly NewsBlast. To subscribe, go to PEN's website: http://www.publiceducation.org and follow the instructions in the lower left-hand section of the homepage.

A recent paper from the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany examines individual, performance-related teacher pay in Portugal's public schools, introduced seven years ago. The study matched student-school data for secondary school national exams, then analyzed the same for two control groups: public schools in autonomous regions exposed to lighter versions of the reform; and private schools subject to the same national exams but whose teachers were unaffected by the reform. In what the researchers found to be scant literature on the topic, their study is the first to look at a reform applied across an entire country (rather than a localized pilot study), and to conduct an analysis with representative population data. Up to this point, research on incentive pay has faced severe data constraints and therefore tended to be based on case studies of individual organizations, making the results harder to extrapolate for larger populations. Looking at a reform in its entirety, the IZA research consistently indicates that an increased focus on individual teacher performance caused a significant decline in student achievement in Portugal, particularly with respect to scores on national exams; the study also documents a significant increase in grade inflation. See the report: http://ftp.iza.org/dp4051.pdf

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