Early Childhood Education

Early childhood education investment

Over the past decade many studies have reached the conclusion that investing in high-quality early childhood education is a successful hedge against poverty.

Students who attend Head Start, America's comprehensive early childhood education and development program for poor children, are far better prepared to learn when they enter kindergarten. They are referred for special education services less frequently and they are also more likely to graduate high school.

As adults they are less likely to be incarcerated and more likely to be successful, contributing members of society than those who do not attend such programs.

Programs such as Head Start help to break the poverty cycle. For every dollar we invest in early education programs there is a return of between $7 and $16. Head Start programs and services are not entitlements but prudent investments in the future of our children and our nation.

As President Barack Obama and congressional leaders consider where to cut federal programs, they should make sustaining funding for Head Start a national priority.

5 Foundations of Any Child’s Education

Child’s Education Foundations “Is the education of a child important?” This might just be the most ridiculous and obvious question ever asked. Ask any parent this question and for sure, you will get the same answer again and again. However, if the question had asked for the reason behind this importance, there will, without a doubt, be many different answers. One parent may say “So he will be able to easily get a job”. Another may say that it is important so that his child will learn responsibility. Another reason could be that the child’s learning will help him make good decisions. Parents have countless other reasons for a child’s education but ultimately, they mean the same thing—to prepare the child for adulthood.

Some might disagree with this; in fact, many parents do not want to think of adulthood yet, saying they do not want their children to grow up fast. Well nobody said anything about reaching adulthood fast. Rather, it is progressing from childhood and growing up to be adults. You have to bear in mind that in the end, only two things can happen: your child grows up with you, with your guidance, or your child grows up without you, guided by his friends. Which ending do you want for your child?

Surely, you want your child to grow up guided by you. If you are to prepare them to become responsible adults, you must make them learn, understand and live by five essential things. The proper education of a child involves the teaching of values, morals, ethics, problem-solving, and decision-making.

Values are the feelings, thoughts and opinions which your family has determined important. The values of one family may, of course, differ from those of another. A child needs to learn what the things he values are. Morals refer to what things are right and what are wrong. Usually, our morals are shaped by a bigger community’s standards and beliefs. Every child must be able to distinguish right from wrong. Ethics refer to the ideology of how one should behave. These are the principles of conduct and manners. A child will follow what he sees. If parents are not there to show the child how one should rightfully behave, he will then follow those whom he sees; he will pattern the way his peers behave.

Problem solving is the ability to come up with a solution for a particular task or difficulty AND the ability to do everything required to carry it out. Knowing that sand can put out a spreading fire is useless if you do not know where and how to get that sand. A child must be able to determine what must be done with a problem and know to do it. Lastly, decision-making is the ability to make sound decisions that will be for the betterment of all. A good decision is one that is based on the first four essential principles. A child must learn have the ability to make good judgments and sound decisions so that he will be able to determine which direction to follow.

These five elements shape the entire education of a child. Without these five, your child may grow physically and biologically, but he will never grow from being a child to becoming an adult.

Fundamentals of Early Childhood Education

Anyone who’s driven north from downtown Wausau toward Bridge Street may have seen the billboard there featuring the smiling face of a young child and the word “YoungStar.”

The relatively new program of the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families is designed to be a resource for parents and to create a system of incentives for child care providers. The state rates child care providers that receive state subsidies based on a number of different assessments largely focused on how they approach early childhood education. The state provides help for providers to improve their ratings, and there’s a financial incentive, too: Those who score highly receive more state tax credits; those with low scores can lose funding.

YoungStar got a big boost last week when Wisconsin won a $22.7 million grant in federal Race to the Top funding to be spent in the next four years on expanding the program and improving its data collection system.

As our understanding of brain development has become more sophisticated in recent years, the importance of early childhood education has been amplified. Young brains — from birth to four or five years old — are building connections and forming habits that have the potential to have long-term effects.

One way that’s measured is in what’s called “readiness,” a measure of the skills children bring with them when they enter kindergarten. Those who start kindergarten at a disadvantage can struggle to catch up even a decade or more into the future.

Another way to think about this is that kindergarten is not some magical threshold: Learning doesn’t begin when a child is enrolled in kindergarten. Creating the right environment for a child to learn literally begins in the womb, and proceeds at exponential pace throughout early childhood. We need an education system that recognizes that.

In Wausau, the Marathon County Early Years Coalition is a group of many different local organizations tackling this issue. Parents or anyone interested in seeing ratings of local child care providers can go to http://dcf.wisconsin.gov/youngstar/ to find YoungStar online.

There are not many more foundational goals than improving early childhood education. It’s good to see Wisconsin’s system given a boost, and we all can hope this grant will help Wisconsin’s children move forward.

early childhood education a priority

TORONTO - A new report suggests governments need to be spending more money on early childhood education.

But the TD Economics analysis also notes that since most governments are struggling to balance the books, that investment might not come for a while.

The report explores the benefits of the education kids get before starting school.

It concludes that every dollar invested can provide three times the returns, and the children aren't the only ones who benefit.

The report says early learning also helps the economy, because it allows parents to join the workforce after parental leave and before a child starts full-time school.

It also found Canada's government spending on education before primary school pales in comparison with other European and English-speaking countries.

And it's uneven across Canada, with spending lowest in Nunavut and highest in Quebec.

Altogether, provincial and territorial governments spent $7.5 billion on the sector in 2011, and the federal government spend $1.2 billion plus another $2.5 billion through tax credits.

TD economist Craig Alexander says while steps have been taken to improve the education system across the country, it's clear there is demand for more.

"The challenge is that governments are currently facing deficits and have made commitments to rebalance their finances," Alexander said.

"It's extraordinarily difficult to go to government today and ask them to launch large-scale new financial programs."

It would take between $3 billion and $4 billion just to bring Canada in line with the average of OECD countries when it comes to spending on early childhood education, he added.

"I don't think in the current environment, that is a reasonable ask."

But as government allocate resources going forward, Alexander said they should consider adding more to early childhood education spending, especially once their books are in order.

Early childhood education survey

Early childhood education News, The New Zealand early childhood network, ChildForum, is conducting a national survey on young children’s care and education in New Zealand and the current state of the early childhood sector.

The survey is the only research independent of the Government and its Ministries of Education and Social Development and the financial and political interests of individual groups within the sector.

It canvasses the views of different providers of early childhood care and education and people from across the sector, says ChildForum’s chief executive Dr Sarah Farquhar.

"The survey provides an opportunity to indicate what is best for young children’s care and education and convey what is going well or not going well on the ground in the sector. "The survey results may even have an influence on future policy development."

Dr Farquhar says the turmoil the early childhood and care sector has faced over the last few years with reductions in funding for the employment of qualified teachers and other decisions such as increasing the proxy for class size allowing centre operators to have up to 150 children per licence, may be nothing compared to what may be seen soon.

The Government has so far set a path that is focused on numbers - on strategies to get more children in early childcare and on establishing control of the burgeoning costs of supply of this childcare and education - rather than on quality of experience for children and families, and being supportive of a well-functioning cohesive early childhood sector. Already as a result of the Government’s ECE Taskforce Group report we have seen the Te Kohanga Reo National Trust going to the Waitangi Tribunal and Playcentre people staging major protests to get some assurance on the safety of their funding. With several reviews of funding, standards, and the home-based sector either under way or recently completed many more changes for groups within the sector, and potential stress for teachers, families and children are in the wind. Last year’s survey, also conducted by ChildForum, revealed six key issues occupying the minds of people in the ECE sector and how they thought Government should respond.

The six issues were:

concerns about funding levels and reliability of funding

maintaining teacher morale (optimism and confidence) in the face of policy and funding changes

the financial affordability of early childcare and education for families

maintaining full rolls and child attendance

services and teaching adults being able to give children what they valued as a high standard of education, and

a high standard of care for children.

This year’s survey seeks to find out if anything has changed, identify what issues may be concerning the sector now, and what might be expected to improve or worsen.