Assessing President Obama’s Preschool Plan

The above link takes you to an one-hour (plus) debate on the importance of how well kids do in school is based on their experiences from birth to 5.  Important questions are asked in the debate such as how is quality defined, who should provide pre-school, what can we learn from federal preschool efforts (i.e., Head Start), what can we learn from states’ efforts in providing preschools, and how do we convince lawmakers to spend even more on preschools than we do now in this age of deficits and cut-backs.  

Sara Mead, associate partner at Bellweather Education Partners and former director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation, asks the $10 million question at the beginning of her comments:  Why don’t we do what we works in early childhood education and what we know is good for kids?  She says “we know what we should do but we are failing to do it,” and that it is a problem with execution of ideas that we know work.

The debate is worth watching for those of you who have infants and toddlers to see what preschool may be like by the time your little ones get there!