Today I came across, what I would consider to be, an interesting article. As Dayton pushes for preschool, a success story in cultivating young minds discusses how Gov. Mark Dayton would like to increase the funding for scholarships for both preschool and child care. This increase would help an additional 10,000 kids throughout the state. Dayton’s plan is to model an experiment that started in St. Paul five years ago. Various business leaders worked together to raise money to offer scholarships for early-learning for low-income families- with the intention of saving money in the long run.
This article in particular discusses the success story of the Bigelow Head Start program. The program was able to provide much needed assistance to both low-income families and families of color.
I found this article particularly interesting because, in my opinion, it does an adequate job of explaining both “sides of the story”- why a person may push for more funding for early-learning programs and why the program may be under scrutiny. Many people may push for the programs because of the fact that a child’s brain is undergoing significant development at this young age; however, at the same time, people are, for lack of a better word, not as “gung-ho” on the idea because they believe children enrolled in programs such as Head Start will begin to lose the academic gains by the time they enter later grades.
What is your thought on the push for preschool? Do you believe this may lead to further ‘curriculum push-down(s)’? What do you see as the benefits of Dayton’s idea? Do you see any drawbacks? What parts of this article did you find particularly intriguing?
I just read that France is extending free, public education down to two-year old children. I don’t know if it is compulsory. I’m curious about what people think if this.
This is a very interesting topic to explore… At first I didn’t really know how I felt about it because I saw positive and negatives for both sides. First off I think that it is fairly easy to tell which students have had preschool experience when observing a lower level elementary classroom. Kids exposed to literacy at a young age excel where as children who have never had these experiences lag behind. I think offering scholarships to the students who otherwise don’t have the opportunity to attend a program, such as head start, would even out this gap. I also believe that this could lead to more of a push-down curriculum because kids would begin to have the need to be more challenged at a younger age. I definitely do not think this is a bad thing as long as teachers still incorporate movement and allow time for some play as to prevent kids from being worn-down. Overall I think that kids are going to keep attending preschool programs, this isn’t going to change. Why not give everyone the opportunity to attend these same programs instead of just the ones who are more advantaged? I believe that this could be the start to evening out the increasing gap between students and is a rather good idea.