Time to pay attention to a reform that works

12-03-2010

Guest blog by Marci Young/Washington Post

There’s an education reform strategy that has 50 years of solid research behind it, with proven results that demonstrate how to improve student achievement. It’s a solution backed by both political parties to help narrow the achievement gap, increase high school graduation rates and reduce crime and delinquency. It’s an investment proven to yield up to $7 for every public dollar invested, paying dividends to families, school districts and taxpayers. It’s voluntary, high-quality pre-kindergarten. Decades of research reveal that most of a child’s brain development takes place before age five. When young children miss out on experiences during this critical time that maximize their immense learning potential, pernicious achievement gaps emerge among children of all backgrounds well before they set foot in a kindergarten or 1st-grade classroom. Before kindergarten, approximately 60 percent of low-income children and more than a third of middle-income children don’t know the alphabet. Equally alarming, only 6 percent of poor and 18 percent of middle-income children understand numerical sequence. (more…)

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