What specific section(s) or information
seemed particularly relevant to your current professional development?
Since I do not have a professional stake at this
point, the information that is relevant to my personal life is the section on
Special Education. There is a wealth of
information (publications and research) on various special education topics,
including specific information on Autism.
Much of the information will help me when my son enters the public
school system next year.
Which ideas/statements/resources, either on
the website or in an e-newsletter, did you find controversial or made you think
about an issue in new ways?
I still have not received a newsletter from this
organization. In terms of the website,
the entire website is a collection of research papers, publications and news
releases about a variety of topics in early childhood education.
One of the articles “Getting the Facts Right on
Pre-K and the President's Pre-K Proposal” discusses the question of whether non-disadvantaged
children benefit from pre-K. I was happy
to see that it supported the fact that all children benefit from a pre-K
program. One issue it presented that I
had not thought about before is that research has shown that disadvantaged
children showed larger gains when the programs contained more children from
middle-income families. This is great
news! My fear with the economic/business
case approaches to early childhood programs is that there will be more support
for programs that only include disadvantaged children versus children from
middle class because research has shown that disadvantaged children show the
most improvement. Hopefully this
research will be well publicized and children from middle class families will
not be left out in terms of support for pre-K programs.
What information does the website or the
e-newsletter contain that adds to your understanding of how economists,
neuroscientists, or politicians support the early childhood field?
There is
an entire section of the website that contains publications and research on economics
and finance. The article that I
mentioned above (Getting the Facts Right on Pre-K and the President's Pre-K
Proposal) is one example of articles that have a political basis. I searched the word “neuroscience” and the
website brought up several pages of publications on neuroscience in early
childhood education. While the website
itself does not make statements of support or non-support, it contains a lot of
information that would support either argument.
What
other new insights about issues and trends in the early childhood field did you
gain from exploring the website or e-newsletter?
According to the website, (NIEER) supports
excellence and equity in early childhood education by conducting and
disseminating nonpartisan research and policy analysis. They publish an annual report on the state of
preschool in the United States, based on a survey of state pre-K programs. The report from 2012 states the following: Twenty-eight
percent of America’s 4-year-olds were enrolled in a state-funded preschool
program in the 2011-2012 school year, reflecting no appreciable change from the
previous year. Total funding fell over half a billion dollars, and per child
funding was cut, marking the most dramatic year of funding cuts since the
Yearbook began in 2001.
I was not surprised by this information due to the
current state of the economy in this country, but I was still disheartened to
hear it. After all the research we have
on the benefits of early education, this country still picks this program out
of all of them to cut. I see money
wasted every single day here in DC and it makes me sick to think how much these
programs and our children could benefit if the folks here were not so wasteful!